Polarizers and fall colours.

One of my favourite times of the year to use polarizer filters is during the fall. There are a couple of reasons for that which I will point out below.

• Polarizers cut out any light coming from a particular angle which happens to be polarized. This helps deepen blue skies and provides excellent contrast for clouds.


• Polarizers make it far easier to get a correct white balance. The fact is that polarized light is often very blue because of its source. When you determine the white balance of a scene (auto white balance) you are averaging the bluing effect of all that reflected light. A polarizer takes out that polarized light and makes the scene less varied in terms of differing amounts of polarization.


• It produces colours with improved saturation thus making fall shades more vivid.


• If water is involved, a polarizer can reduce the reflection off its surface producing more desirable results.

There are a variety of polarizer manufacturers on the market that make quality products. I have used Hoya, Tiffen, B+W, Optex, and a few others and found them all satisfactory. The can be a bit pricey, especially for larger filter sizes. I like to use a polarizer filter on lenses that I shoot landscapes with. This usually means wide-angle primes or wide-angle zooms. Be careful with ultra-wide angle lenses; they capture such a large field of view that you get an uneven transition with scene polarization. Typically a 24 mm focal length (relative) is higher works well.

Happy shooting!

Thanks for reading.     Ericspix     Eric Svendsen