Polarizer Filter
Most of the time, on a bright sunny day, the world looks a lot better when you remove the polarized light glaring from reflective surfaces and the atmosphere. If you’ve ever worn polarized sunglasses, you probably know what I mean. A few months ago, I spent the $100 or so and bought a Hoya HMC PL-CIR filter for my most oft-used lens, and it pretty much does for the camera everything the polarized glasses do for your eyes. It does wonders for mid-day, bright sunlight photos, or shooting through glass or other reflective surfaces like water. Choosing between dark foreground and blown-out, highlighted sky is also a lot less of a problem. I figured I’d share some example shots showing what a polarizer can do:
I should disclose the details of the experimental setup here: I did not actually remove the filter in any of these shots. In the “polarized” shots, it is simply rotated to block the polarization of the sun glare, and in the other rotated away so that it does not (in which case, it should behave like an ND filter, just making the whole image darker). The camera is in Aperture Priority mode, so the exposure varied between the shots according to the incoming light. It is important to rotate the filter to the right place before each shot, as the required angle depends on the angle of the camera as well as the location of the sun.