Colorful Photos With a Polarizer
Shoot More Vivid Outdoor Photos Using a Polarizing Filter
A polarizing filter helps you take more vivid photos outdoors by controlling contrast and reducing reflections and flare.
Digital camera users rarely use filters, but there is one filter that every photographer should add to their kit – the polarizing filter – as it can improve many outdoor shots. The most common effect is darkening blue skies, bringing out any clouds more and controlling contrast. However, the polarizing filter also reduces non-metallic reflections – often making the colors of flowers and vegetation more vivid, and reducing the reflections off water and glass windows. Haze from low-angle early morning or late evening sun is also often polarized, and a polarizer can be used to reduce the amount of haziness in your photographs. Whether you want these effects is of course an artistic decision, and by rotating the polarizer, you can smoothly vary the effect from subtle to intense.
The effect of the filter can be easily seen by holding it up to your eye, looking at the scene being photographed and rotating the filter. It has most effect when you are taking pictures looking at right-angles to the direction of the sun in the sky. The examples below show Orford castle in Suffolk, England, one with a polarizing filter and the other photo without the polarizing filter. The other example is of a sunflower against the sky. With the polarizing filter, the flower colors are intensified – both the yellow of the flower and the green of the leaves – and the sky is darkened, making the flower stand out more.
Polarizing filters come in two forms, linearly polarized and circular polarization. They both have the same effect, but circularly polarized filters are a better choice for most digital cameras. The light leaving them is not linearly polarized, unlike the other type. Linearly polarized light can interfere with the working of autofocus and some camera metering systems. You do lose a little bit of light through a polarizing filter, typically two to three stops of light.
The filters are usually circular, and you have to get the right filter for the size of lens on your camera. It goes just in front of the lens – on many cameras the lens has a screw thread designed for mounting filters. The diameter of the filter thread is usually printed on the lens, or can be found from the manual.
Even a point-and-shoot camera that does not have a lens thread can be used with a polarizing filter by simply holding the filter in front of the lens when taking the shot. If you do this with a point-and-shoot, you need to take care to avoid flare from the polarizing filter reflecting the front of the camera back into the lens.
The polarizing filter is a versatile filter capable of improving many outdoor photographs, and is a worthwhile addition to your camera bag.
