Bright sun. . . polarizer or ND or both?

[Stephen Pruitt]

Hi all. . .

I'm curious about the benefits of using a polarizer for shooting outdoors in bright sun, especially up at the sky. We have both polarizers and ND, but I'm curious about experiences with using the polarizer, in particular. It seems to me to darken light skies for some reason, but do you typically use them that way?

I'm shooting a RED Scarlet Dragon.

Thanks.

Stephen

 

[Nick Gardner]

Polarizers are used to increase saturation on grass, leaves, reduce unwanted reflections on water, cars, a bald head, etc, and to darken blue skies and increase blue sky saturation. I use a pola 99% of the time I am outside.

Nick

 

[Stephen Pruitt]

Great! Thanks, Nick. We have a circular polarizer we put on our Canon lenses. Any suggestions about using it?

Stephen

 

[Nick Gardner]

Just make sure you have the right end facing the enemy, and rotate to view the effect. Sometimes the density of the sky will change as you pan, but I have never found that to be a problem in real world scenarios. Also, feel free to use NDs as well. Pola should usually be the first filter, but you can try it behind NDS. Just more likely to get reflections, but that is the nature of stacking all filters.

Nick

 

[Audy Erel]

You can also see thru water reflection or those food behind the showcase glass (or person inside the car) more clearly.

 

[Nathaniel Haban]

I use a pola 99% of the time I am outside.

Same here. If I'm outside, a pola is basically always in. All plants naturally have a light, waxy coating on their leaves. That coating reflects a decent amount of light, so a pola cuts through that, giving you richer colors in plants, rocks, sky, etc.

The other thing you can use it for, is to dial-down the back-light on your subject(s). So for instance, if you're doing a close-up, and the back-light is clipping, or coming close to it, you can rotate your polarizer and sometimes you'll be able to dial back the intensity of the light on the subject.

 

[Michael Wahba]

How does this apply if you are not using a spin type Polarizer but in a matte box?

 

[Nick Gardner]

Almost every mattebox has a rotating stage for a polarizer, and if it doesn't, you can use a rota pola.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod...MI7dSGnpH72gIVSFuGCh3WNASsEAQYBCABEgKS6PD_BwE

If you have a 4x4 clip on with no rotating stage, just rotate the whole matte box.

Nick

 

[Michael Wahba]

Almost every mattebox has a rotating stage for a polarizer, and if it doesn't, you can use a rota pola.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod...MI7dSGnpH72gIVSFuGCh3WNASsEAQYBCABEgKS6PD_BwE

If you have a 4x4 clip on with no rotating stage, just rotate the whole matte box.

Nick

I’m using the misfit atom.

 

[Nathaniel Haban]

I’m using the misfit atom.

You'll just need to buy a screw-in filter for the lens.