Adventures in polarization · Mar 15, 08:54 PM by Simon Mackie
Many people think that polarizers are only really useful for making skies that really deep blue. While that’s true, as you can see in this photo:
polarizers are also really useful for removing reflections. For example, this is a photo of one of the buildings in Federation Square, Melbourne, Australia, showing a nice reflection:
However, we can rotate our polarizer 90 degrees, and BAM!
the reflection has gone and we can see the structure inside. This is a contrived example, but polarizers are great for getting rid of unwanted relections and glare – particularly glare from the surface of water.
While we’re discussing polarizers, it’s important to note that on modern cameras you should only buy circular polarizers, not the linear type. This is because the linear type of polarizer can affect the camera’s metering and autofocusing mecahnisms, so they’re not recommended. Circular polarizers are pretty expensive, but they are so useful it’s hard for me to imagine not carrying one in my camera bag all the time.
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