polarized glasses, ironically, is not an overly polarizing subject in the world of landscape photography. The hard truth is that you should have one, and I personally believe you can’t shoot some scenes without them. Now living full-time on the road, I’ve been exploring the eastern part of the US, which has captured a lot of waterfalls. At that point, I realized how often my camera had polarizers on, and truly believed that many waterfall images wouldn’t work without polarizers.
Why?
So what exactly does a polarizer do and why is it so important in a photographer’s kit? It allows photographers to manage and control reflections on surfaces like water, enhance color and contrast in foliage, and even eliminate atmospheric fog in the sky. It’s an incredibly versatile tool that can’t be duplicated in post-processing. You can find an insight into everything it can do right here on Fstoppers, but for this article I want to focus mainly on its strengths when it comes to waterfall photography.
Polarized glasses feel almost magical when you’re photographing waterfalls. Notice the difference in these two captures, which happens just by turning the polarizer to 100% (more on this later). Notice the foliage and how much saturation, contrast and life are added to those areas.
Notice how nearly every aspect of this image changes when a polarizer is used. Unlike the first example, we have wet rocks in the image, you’ll notice the level of clarity and detail that comes out when the polarizer is on. The water area also changed significantly, although we didn’t get a lot of detail, as the result was a rather dark area. The idea is to present another variable in your creative expression as a photographer.
How?
Using a polarizer is simple, but there are a few things I’ve learned over the course of my career that will help you understand both its strengths and limitations in the field.
Polarizers often also act as 1-stop ND filters, meaning they reduce your exposure by just one stop. Many times this is useful when photographing waterfalls, as I want shutter speeds between 1/5th of a second and half a second, but maybe not in other situations where you are trying to get a lot of light. possible .
One thing to keep in mind when using a polarizer is that it will have different results depending on how you position yourself between the subject and the sun. Usually, if your scene is facing away from the sun, you’ll get great results. But if you shoot in the direction of the sun, you won’t be able to remove much of the reflection. This is the case because polarizers essentially cut reflected and refracted light at specific angles.
I find this to happen most often near sunrise and sunset because the angle of the sun on the horizon is lower. Thankfully, sunrises and sunsets also tend to mean less harsh light, so your polarizer shouldn’t matter too much. However, this does not mean that you need directional light on your scene for the polarizer to work. Many times, my best results have come from soft overcast lighting, when allowing the polarizer to remove a lot of the reflections in the foliage of my scene (the first example in this post is overcast light). ).
Keep in mind that if you are working with a very high contrast scene, you may not want to use the maximum amount of polarization. Here’s a mistake I’ve been making for a long time: approach my polarizer as an on-off switch instead of incremental adjustment. Sometimes, polarizing to about 50-70% and leaving reflections on dark spots of water or ice can help keep those areas from falling into darkness, but this will be completely different depending on the location. your lighting scene and situation.
A good tip when using polarizers is to make sure you always rotate them counterclockwise or “to the left” when adjusting the polarizer from the back of the camera. Make sure to reverse this if you’re standing in front of the camera! This will ensure that you never accidentally loosen the filter from your lens. This works especially great with magnetic filter, because it will also never over tighten the filter since your only force on the filter ring is actually the magnetic force between the ring and the filter. Speaking of magnetic filters, you might ask which polarizer you should choose?
The best?
There are many options for filtration systems. The first thing you might come across is a filter that simply screws into the front of your lens. Then you can drill down into the rabbit hole of filtration systems and explore square filter systems like the one above. I have used all of them and by far the magnetic system is my favorite type of filter to use in everyday photography. Every system has its strengths and weaknesses, but in general, a magnetic system is what I recommend for most people.
The set I am currently using is made by Maven and is my current favorite filter system. Their magnets are safer than any other magnetic system I’ve used. They’ve innovated the filter in really clever ways with color-coded rings, the lens cap is 50% gray on the inside to set the right white balance, and even provided a convenient 3D-printed case for keep everything tidy.
Whatever system you decide is best for you, just make sure you are buying something of high quality. You don’t want to invest a lot of money in taking high-quality photos and then put a cheap polarizer in front of the lens that can ruin the quality of your image.
I’d love to see your waterfall photos in the comments or your own words about polarizers in the comments. Am I wrong? Have you ever photographed a waterfall without a polarizer? Tell me!
