 Raja Lahti |
How to Compensate for a Polarizing Filter I live around lots of water and just bought a polarizer to help compensate for all the glare. After developing my film it occured to me that I probably have to adjust for the polarizer as the prints didn't come out as I'd hoped. What do I change and how?
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Michael Kaplan |
What you do is look thru the lens and rotate the polarizer till you see the shy darken or the glare disappear. You can then take the picture. Be careful though; on some lenses the outer lens where the filter is attached rotates during focus. You would need to 1/2 press the shutter first, let the lens focus then turn the polarizer bufore taking the shot.
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Raja Lahti |
I did do everything you mentioned. I'd get the lense focused then rotate the filter for the desired effect. The lense itself is slightly tinted and my question was really: Do you have to compensate with the aperture settings? All the picures I took with the polarizer came out under exposed. I was shooting during the day with normal light. What could have gone wrong? Could I just have been using bad film? Thanks for the help!
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Michael Kaplan |
No, if you are not in Manual you do not need to compensate. The cameras automatic exposure system will automatically compensate for you because the metering is done TTL (Thru the lens) so since it is looking thru the polarizer it automatically compensates accordingly. If in manual, yes, the exposre would be 1-1/2 to 2 stops difference if using an external light meter and not your cameras built-in one. The thing you have to be careful of is that some cameras need a circular polarizer and not a linear one or metering will be off or autofocus capabilities will be diminished. This goes for most autofocus systems including most digital cameras. Any metering system that uses a split mirror (usually at the bottom of the mirror box) and any autofocus system that uses a split mirror (most of them) need a circular polarizer.
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Raja Lahti |
Thanks for all the information. Ok - so it seems I was doing everything correctly. I was just thinking that I didn't do something I should have done. I shoot with a Canon EOS 2000 which I love. I'm thinking at this point that I inadverantly used old film which caused the prints to come out poorly. I had such great expectations for the prints - through the view finder the scenes were amazing. When they were developed, they came out dull, under-exposed and grainy. (I was using 400 Kodak Max & 200 Fuji film) Thanks!
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