I’m always researching photography. I take classes on CreativeLive, watch YouTube videos, read magazines, subscribe to other photographers, etc. I really love it, so it’s fun for me. Well, here is something I learned about a long time ago from school (and at a workshop too), but just never got around to until now. It’s the polarizing lens! There are two types, linear and circular lenses, but after a lot of research, I chose the circular one (basically it does everything the linear does and more).
So here are the to main benefits:
1) It gets rid of glare from water or glass and
2) It makes blue skies darker, and makes the white clouds stand out more. Plus, it increases saturation of color and works as a lens protector as well.
Here’s an example of how nice the skies look when using the polarizing filter. The only thing I changed about these two images is that I added the filter to the second image and then opened my aperture 2 stops, since that’s roughly how much darker the CPL will make your images.
Amazing isn’t it? All of a sudden I had a sky! Now, it doesn’t work well on an overcast day, of course, because there has to be blue there to enhance it, and you do have to be at a certain angle to the sun to really get the sky to darken, but it was pretty obvious to me as I tried it out on these images. I just moved around until I got it right, and I love the result! You can get a CPL online for about 80 bucks, and if it makes my skies awesome, protects my lens, and lets me shoot water without getting my reflection in it, I think it’s totally worth it!
Here’s another example, notice also that the circular polarizing lens will make the image “cooler.” Not “cool, dude” cooler but cool vs. warm. Just to clarify… 🙂 Hope this helps!
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