Photography 101 - Polarizer

Slow down your composition!

That is the only thing I could think as I realized all of my preconceptions about using a polarizer were wrong. The worst of those realizations?

There is no "on" and "off" position.

You have to dial it in. All images are taken with a Canon 5D mark 2 and a Zeiss Milvus 50mm F1.4. I'm not going to list the rest of the meta data because that is not what this test was about. The polarizer is a Breakthrough Photography x4 CPL and I think it is frankly the best value polarizer you can find.

This is the first image with the polarizer allowing through the other ambient light source I had filtered out.

Notice how you can see the building bouncing off the poster now? The chrome trim on the cars is much more visible? I'll repost the original image so you can scroll between these two.

Even the cars windshield no longer glares back at the camera.

Our world is full of Pollution

Light Pollution. We rarely see it wit the naked eye and when we do it registers as a haze. An example of this shows light bouncing back to the camera from the most unexpected location. The pavement.

And with the polarizer dialed in to cancel out the glare of the windshields we discover even more.

It has pulled the contrast back into the image.

Another unexpected place would be from the leaves of trees.

And dialed in to pull the glare out of the leaves.

They look more like trees instead of looking like trees lit up by Christmas lights.

Are the changes always subtle?

These effects are definitely not subtle when used right. I was passing by a flower shop and saw that everything was bouncing off of the window. It was so bad I could barely see the flowers themselves.

So I gave it a shot and dialed in the polarizer.

Much better and if I had focused on my angle a little further I could have probably removed the rest of that glare as well.

I was really happy with this test and I am excited to see what it can do to my fashion and editorial images.

If you liked this post check out some of my others:

Unless otherwise noted all photos used are the work of Brandon Ruckdashel or official publicity material released by the projects I have been in.