Has a polarising filter ruined my shot?

[Jill H]

I only recently bought my SLR camera, and soon after I took it on a 5 week trip away.
Before we left I bought a polarising filter, tried it out down at the beach with great results, and put it onto my lens. I am just getting into the nitty gritty of learning the technical sides of photography - so sorry for the dumb questions - but has the polariser ruined this shot? I think it was left on the camera even when I really didn't need it - and I probably forgot it was on there, and didn't rotate it to see what looked best. I probably took this photo on Automatic - as I say I am still learning the technical stuff - and not confident with my ability to make those sort of choices myself.

I "think" I was told/read somewhere that filters change the amount of light coming into the lens and that you need to adjust your f stops to accommodate this. Can someone please explain what this means and what I need to do.

And do you think the polariser ruined this shot, and what settings would have been better? (see settings below) The photo was taken at about 9 o'clock in the morning within a gorge setting - hand held. The photo appears to me to be not sharp enough. I haven't done any manipulation in Photoshop - so this is straight out of camera.

Canon 450D, Shutter 1/64 sec, Aperture F5, Focal length 18mm, Exposure time 1/60 sec, ISO 200, Exposure compensation 0

I would appreciate your comments. Thanks in advance

From Life Images by Jill

[radityopradipto]

Hey Jill
as far as I know, polarizer filter doesn't affect your image sharpness at all (meaning very slightly, almost unnoticeable downgrades), if you're buying a reasonably good quality one. Looking at your setting, probably it's about your aperture which too big. F/5 is a bit too big for a landscape shot to ensure everything is sharp from foreground to background.
or by looking at the image, I saw some part of the image, like the foliages, were overexposed.
My recommendation are: try to look at your histogram whether it's overexposed or not, and try shooting at smaller aperture, like F/8-F/13 (meaning you'll need a tripod)
Hope that this will help
Cheers

[Sterling]

Any blurriness could also be attributed to a too slow shutter speed. With proper technique, 1/60 can produce a sharp handheld image but since you mentioned you were a beginner, perhaps your camera holding technique isn't as steady as it could be. Just a thought.

[Jill H]

thanks guys for having a look and taking the time to answer my question.

I looked at the histogram and the bulk of it is over to the left hand side - so you are probably right about it being over exposed. The site within a gorge system was a little problimatic.

I also probably had the camera on auto so let it do it's own thing. I know I have a lot to learn - I tend to take the photo and forget to check what settings I should be using or might be already in there from the last photo I took.

As for tripods - I have one, but I hate lugging it around! Really sapps my creativity and taking shots the minute they strike me. But I know I must try.....

So you don't have to adjust the f stop if you use a polariser?

[radityopradipto]

Originally Posted by Jill H

So you don't have to adjust the f stop if you use a polariser?

Adjusting f stop would be needed if you're shooting full Manual. If that's the case, you need to compensate the loss by slow down your shutter speed or open up your aperture. If you're shooting in P, A, S, or Auto, your camera will choose the "best" (at least that's what they thought) exposure for your image automatically.

About the tripod thing, may be it's best for you to learn more first about angles and building your own style. After you're confidence with your shots, you can start shooting with tripod coz your experience will tell you which angle would be best for particular scenes...

Cheers

[jpschlosser]

Hello,
I am having trouble with my new polarizer filter. I bought a $50 B+W. These are the first results I produced:

From Polarizer Filter Pics

From Polarizer Filter Pics

Seems like there's a lot of fog. I tried rotating the filter but did not help. What am I doing wrong?

Used a Nikon D5000, 18-55mm kit lens on full Auto or Program mode.

Thanks.

[dcclark]

Looks like you were shooting into the sun on a sunny day, with lots of reflecting water -- definitely on the first one, at least. That's guaranteed to cause a lot of glare, no matter what you use (polarizers aren't magic!). My guess on the first photo is that you just had some huge lens flare.

Polarizers can reduce glare on the water when rotated, but you have to turn them a bit to find the sweet spot. It doesn't look like you did that. Even when doing that, you can still get glare from other light sources or reflective surfaces which are pointed in different directions.

That said, have you looked at the filter to check for smudging? Lots of fingerprints, perhaps? That could cause smudging in the photos as well. You can clean them easily with a microfiber cloth (I get mine for free at the optometrist's office).

[PhotogChic]

Originally Posted by jpschlosser

Hello,
I am having trouble with my new polarizer filter. I bought a $50 B+W. These are the first results I produced:





Seems like there's a lot of fog. I tried rotating the filter but did not help. What am I doing wrong?

Used a Nikon D5000, 18-55mm kit lens on full Auto or Program mode.

Thanks.

Another suggestion that sometimes helps with sun flare is to use a lens hood. It looks like you used a kit lens which normally doesn't come with a lens hood. Get one! It's most likely going to help especially, when combined with a polarizing filter.


Jill, I think your photo is amazing! There are some overexposed areas but overall the sharpness of the shot is very good! I would work on it in post processing and see what you get!

[jpschlosser]

Originally Posted by dcclark

Looks like you were shooting into the sun on a sunny day, with lots of reflecting water -- definitely on the first one, at least. That's guaranteed to cause a lot of glare, no matter what you use (polarizers aren't magic!). My guess on the first photo is that you just had some huge lens flare.

Polarizers can reduce glare on the water when rotated, but you have to turn them a bit to find the sweet spot. It doesn't look like you did that. Even when doing that, you can still get glare from other light sources or reflective surfaces which are pointed in different directions.

That said, have you looked at the filter to check for smudging? Lots of fingerprints, perhaps? That could cause smudging in the photos as well. You can clean them easily with a microfiber cloth (I get mine for free at the optometrist's office).

Thanks a lot! I did get a lens hood for my kit lens, plus I have one for my new 55-200mm zoom. Also, the filter is clean: it's brand new and I checked that it was clean.

I'll do some more shots in different angles and filter rotations to see how I can get better results. I was so disappointed with the initial results that I shot without the filter for the rest of that day, since I didn't want to ruin all of my shots.

[PhotogChic]

Jill, I hope you don't mind but I added a graduated filter in Lightroom and this is what I got.

I increased the temperature a little bit on the overall photo. In the graduated filter I decreased the exposure over the trees and rock cliff, decreased the brightness, increased the clarity a little and increased the sharpness a little.