I love outdoors and love taking landscape photos. However, I take 99.9% of my pictures with a polarizer. Other than evening shots, is there a reason where a polarizer is not always recommended for landscape photography? When do you not use a polarizer? Cloudy days, sunrise, sunset?

I am thinking maybe I am not using the polarizer right since I use it virtually on all my outdoor shots.

Thanks.

It seems to me that there are two basic reasons to use a polarizing filter. First, to reduce reflection. Second, to deepen the contrast in the sky and produce deeper blue skies. One additional reason would be to use the polarizer as an ND filter. You are paying a price when using the filter. Mainly, it is forcing you to use a slower shutter speed or wider aperture. Also, many believe that any time you put a piece of glass between the subject and the film you reduce image quality. You have to decide if what you are trying to achieve artistically is worth the price you pay.

If you are going to take several images to stich into a pano you might want to take off the polarizer. In my experience it makes matching the images very difficult.

ultra-wide lenses sometimes do not take well to polarizers, since there is so much sky in the picture, with a wide variety of lighting/angles so that the sky might end up looking wrong..

I only use a polarizer when i think i need to, mainl to reduce reflections in glass and to deepen the sky, however i don't usually use it on any wider than about 28mm. It has been working fine for me but i would never ever leave it on all the time!!!

Chris

Someone might disagree but I keep polarizer on only when there's use for it. Afterall extra stop or two doesn't hurt, even when it's enough light. Another thing is that extra thing infront of your glass makes more problems, so in case if there's no use for polarizer it's better not to use it. When it comes to ultra wide lenses, it will make sky on one side different color then on other. Some people like this, some people hate it. It depends on your personal taste.

1) Sometimes the sky gets too blue (almost black) when using a polarizer, but as the previous poster noted, it's personal taste.

2) You loose 1 stop of light. For landscape shooting on a tripod this isn't a great problem of course, but sometimes you need all the light you can get.

3) Extra glass between the subject and the film/sensor. Might degrade your image a little bit.

If you point the camera directly at or directly away form the sun, the polarizer doesn't do anything, except block light. The effect of the filter reaches a maximum at 90o to the sun.

Thanks for all the replies. I am aware of most of the things that was written. I carry a tripod all the time when I go hiking/backpacking. So the lose of light isn't too much of an issue. The polarizer is also acting as my dust protector when hiking. Have you ever encounter a scene where you decided that using a polarizer is doing more harm than being useful?

When it is raining, overcast, cloudy, foggy, sunrise, sunset, shaded area, does it make sense to use a polarizer here? Remember, I shoot landscapes. I find that there is always a little reflection that I can get rid of by using the polarizer. But I do not know yet when it might be better to keep this small reflections. Or when it is bad to get rid of all the reflections. I seldom use the polarizer to make the sky blue. I often used it to enchanced the saturation of the scene by ridding the scene of reflections. I also read somewhere that it is not good to use a polarizer when shooting people outdoors.

Oh, I will remember that pointing directly or away from the sun, the polarizer has no effect. And take care using a polarizer on wide angle lenses, below 24mm.

Thanks.

GreenArcher wrote:
Thanks for all the replies. I am aware of most of the things that was written. I carry a tripod all the time when I go hiking/backpacking. So the lose of light isn't too much of an issue. The polarizer is also acting as my dust protector when hiking. Have you ever encounter a scene where you decided that using a polarizer is doing more harm than being useful?


Except for the mising 2 stops of light, I don't know of anything else. Depending on your shutter speed/aperture combo, you might not want it on all the time. If you need/want filters on all the time, get a UV filter.

-geir

It might be a stupid question but why would you use a polarizer on a digital SLR unless you want to remove reflections? The blue sky should be possible to accomplish by use of software filters (Photoshop). For lens protection use a UV filter. Another effect of polarizer filters is the lowering of the colour temperature ("colder" pictures), which not always wanted... You can get polarizer filters with build-in warming filter (81A), but you still loose 2 stops of light.

Henrik :-)

Henrik's got it right. The only need for a polarizer on a DSLR is to reduce reflection in glass etc. and expecially in water, allowing that 2 ft trout to be seen.
As for dust protection, whatcha got against a lens cap?

Henrik, at least for a no-good photo manipulator a polarizer does the trick better than Photoshop. I really can't just darken the sky, without affecting everything else.
Then again I don't have a DSLR either. Red filter and a polarizer does produce nice results on B&W film, though. Not that I would've shot many photos that way yet... hopefully soon! Just got a 67mm polarizer for my 24-85 and the upcoming 70-200/4L.

Lens cap is of limited use as a protection when hiking/backpacking, unless you are not taking a picture. The moment you take the lens cap off, the front element is naked to the elements. There lots of dust, sand, etc.. outdoors. At the end of the day, my polarizer sometimes has accumulated enough dust to warrant cleaning of the filter. Sometimes, I have to clean the filter every couple of hours due to dust.

I use the polarizer to remove the reflections/glare from leaves, trees, rocks, boulders, and water. And so far, I ended up using my polarizer 99.9% of my landscape shots. I should try taking landscape shots with/out a polarizer on my next hike to see the difference.

I only use filters when I am outdoors hiking/backpacking. Otherwise, I do not put filters on my lenses, not even UV. Honestly, I am a bit lazy taking the polarizer off when hiking. So I ended keeping it on during the day, whether it is overcast, cloudy, drizzling. Of course, at night, or when I need the extra light, I take the polarizer off and put a UV or none at all, depending on the elements. I cannot see myself putting UV, then putting POL, then UV again when hiking. Too much hazzle. But I would do it if it renders a scene better. This is what I am trying to find out/learn.

Henrik you can not get the clouds to have the same contrast in using PS
that woudl be my answer

but yes reflections are its main thing I use them for and on those days when the little puffy clouds need to snap out of the sky

I haven't tried them myself but you can get PS plugins that emulates real filters (Nik Color Efex Pro), including polarizer and UV filter, it might be worth a try?

It is of course up to you to use a polarizer, but my experience (from a trip to South America) that I got too cold pictures when I used a polarizer in cloudy and overcast conditions, especially when I took pictures of ice and snow (glaciers). It was impossible to correct afterwards because it was slides... but I got some very dark blue skies!!

Henrik :-)

jlongo wrote:
As for dust protection, whatcha got against a lens cap?
Personally nothing but it might be a bit harder to get good photo with lens cap on Although it's not really often to have problem with dust when shooting landscape but sometimes it is. But still... I preffer UV or skylight filters for this thing not polarizer.