# Tips for using CPL



## sunnyVan (Jan 20, 2014)

I'm new to CPL. Bought a decent one (b+w xs-pro 82mm) and tried it the other day. I rotated the front such that my foreground appeared more saturated with less glare. What I noticed was that the sky was partially/unevenly darkened. I was not using an ultrawide lens. I was at 24mm. The sun was more or less over my right shoulder, 90 degrees to my camera axis. How can I saturate the sky more evenly? I'm sure it's a matter of technique and not a fault of my CPL, and I'm hoping someone could shed some light. Thanks for your help.


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## Viggo (Jan 21, 2014)

It actually has to be a quite narrow focal to get full and even effect. What can help matters is to not turn the filter to the maximum effect, but more subtle. 

And sometimes I polarize more on one side to avoid the big dark blimp in the middle of the blue sky. But often make a compromise between FL and the amount of pol applied.

It's REALLY nice with the 200mm as it is completely even. But my 2470 I follow the steps above.


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## sunnyVan (Jan 21, 2014)

Viggo said:


> It actually has to be a quite narrow focal to get full and even effect. What can help matters is to not turn the filter to the maximum effect, but more subtle.
> 
> And sometimes I polarize more on one side to avoid the big dark blimp in the middle of the blue sky. But often make a compromise between FL and the amount of pol applied.
> 
> It's REALLY nice with the 200mm as it is completely even. But my 2470 I follow the steps above.



Ic. Thx, Viggo.


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## K13X5C (Jan 21, 2014)

That's one of the ironies of CPLs. An otherwise beautiful, wide-angle scene in which you'd love to have a bit better sky and it gets fouled because of the CPL, not enhanced. I know someone who is expert in using the CPL in wide-angle scenes, but I'll darned if I can duplicate what she does with it. 50mm and longer and I don't have much problem or if I limit the sky to one quarter or less of the image.


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## Viggo (Jan 21, 2014)

If a bright sky is the main problem, a graduated ND filter might get you where you
Want.


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## sunnyVan (Jan 21, 2014)

It seems that the only solution I could think of so far is to take two pictures, one with CPL and one without, and then merge them in PS. Quite a bit of work but I don't see other ways so far.


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## sunnyVan (Jan 21, 2014)

Viggo said:


> If a bright sky is the main problem, a graduated ND filter might get you where you
> Want.



I use GND frequently. Using CPL is a new endeavor.


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## flowers (Jan 30, 2014)

There's a better technique than either GND or CPL for darkening the skies with wide-angles, but if you use it during daytime you need ND (not GND) filters. It's a technique from China: black card.


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## sunnyVan (Jan 30, 2014)

flowers said:


> There's a better technique than either GND or CPL for darkening the skies with wide-angles, but if you use it during daytime you need ND (not GND) filters. It's a technique from China: black card.



Yes I've heard of the black card technique. I believe it originated from Taiwan. In my scenario I wanted to reduce glare on the foreground. My main purpose was not to darken the sky.


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## flowers (Jan 30, 2014)

sunnyVan said:


> flowers said:
> 
> 
> > There's a better technique than either GND or CPL for darkening the skies with wide-angles, but if you use it during daytime you need ND (not GND) filters. It's a technique from China: black card.
> ...



Yes, it's originally from Taiwan, China. Was the glare polarized? If it's water, you'll be at least able to cut it down with CPL. The amount of polarization is dependent on the angle. Have you tried moving your camera to a different angle?


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## Zv (Jan 30, 2014)

sunnyVan said:


> I'm new to CPL. Bought a decent one (b+w xs-pro 82mm) and tried it the other day. I rotated the front such that my foreground appeared more saturated with less glare. What I noticed was that the sky was partially/unevenly darkened. I was not using an ultrawide lens. I was at 24mm. The sun was more or less over my right shoulder, 90 degrees to my camera axis. How can I saturate the sky more evenly? I'm sure it's a matter of technique and not a fault of my CPL, and I'm hoping someone could shed some light. Thanks for your help.



It's uneven because the area near the sun will naturally be brighter. Nothing much you can do except shoot at a different time of day. GND will not solve the uneveness. You could recover highlight detail in the sky using software. I usually over expose the sky a little in favour of foreground then pull the sky back using a combination of highlights slider, curves and a grad filter tool if needed. Somtimes I might dodge and burn areas too. Use the HSL panel to tweek the blues back to a deep blue color. Adding a slight vignette also helps darken the sky. (This all works in conjuction with a CPL). 

By doing it in post you have more control and can even it out a bit. 

Btw how much of a difference are we talking about? A little is normal and natural for a landscape shot. Especially if there is a lot of sky in the shot. A plain blue sky of one tone is kinda boring anyway in my opinion.


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## flowers (Jan 30, 2014)

Zv said:


> Btw how much of a difference are we talking about? A little is normal and natural for a landscape shot. Especially if there is a lot of sky in the shot. A plain blue sky of one tone is kinda boring anyway in my opinion.



I have to agree, plain uniformly blue sky is just boring!


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## BoneDoc (Jan 30, 2014)

In general, underexposing will give you more vibrant colors. So try underexposing by 1-2 stops, and you'll see more vibrant looking sky


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## surapon (Jan 30, 2014)

sunnyVan said:


> I'm new to CPL. Bought a decent one (b+w xs-pro 82mm) and tried it the other day. I rotated the front such that my foreground appeared more saturated with less glare. What I noticed was that the sky was partially/unevenly darkened. I was not using an ultrawide lens. I was at 24mm. The sun was more or less over my right shoulder, 90 degrees to my camera axis. How can I saturate the sky more evenly? I'm sure it's a matter of technique and not a fault of my CPL, and I'm hoping someone could shed some light. Thanks for your help.



Dear SunnyVan.
Here are great Links for " How -To" CPL

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/polarizing-filters.htm

http://freephotocourse.com/how-to---dramatic-dark-sky-effect.html

Yes, I use B+W 82 KSM C-Pol MRC F-PRO filter with my dear Canon TS-E 24 mm. F/ 3.5 L MK II, with the sun locate at right side/ Left side of my shoulder ( 9-10 AM & 2-3 PM), and I get 100 Percent of beautiful Deep Blue sky . BUT Not for 11 mm Super Wide Angle Lens.
Enjoy.
Surapon

PS, Please see Photo 1765, You can see the shadow of the lady on the bridge = and know the angle of the sun at that time.


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## flowers (Jan 30, 2014)

BoneDoc said:


> In general, underexposing will give you more vibrant colors. So try underexposing by 1-2 stops, and you'll see more vibrant looking sky


It's better to overexpose without blowing the highlights (see historgram, not the on-the-fly JPG preview) and recover and bring down the highlights in post.


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## privatebydesign (Jan 30, 2014)

flowers said:


> BoneDoc said:
> 
> 
> > In general, underexposing will give you more vibrant colors. So try underexposing by 1-2 stops, and you'll see more vibrant looking sky
> ...



Not necessarily, overexposure and pulling, ETTR, will not give you the same kind of saturation a slight under exposure will, even after lowering exposure and upping saturation, try it with a nicely graduated sky, they look completely different.

When shooting statics the best thing to do by far is bracket the hell out of the exposure and shoot RAW, this will give you the absolute most processing flexibility now, and in the future.


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## privatebydesign (Jan 30, 2014)

sunnyVan said:


> flowers said:
> 
> 
> > There's a better technique than either GND or CPL for darkening the skies with wide-angles, but if you use it during daytime you need ND (not GND) filters. It's a technique from China: black card.
> ...



What evidence do you have to support that very specific claim? I ask because it was being taught widely in Europe and the USA in the early 1970's, even I was taught it in a small town in the UK long before the Internet and easy access to specialized techniques. I don't believe for one second it hasn't been widely used since the dawn of photography, and that wasn't in Taiwan or mainland China.


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## mackguyver (Jan 30, 2014)

privatebydesign said:


> I don't believe for one second it hasn't been widely used since the dawn of photography, and that wasn't in Taiwan or mainland China.


+1 on that, I'm sure it's been used forever - it's not exactly rocket science. I can't say I've used it much since I moved to shooting RAW many years ago. 

As for CPL techniques, our buddies at Zeiss say that anything under 28mm (effective FOV) will cause uneven skies. I find that with lots of tweaking I can get good results at 24mm, but there's always some unevenness, even in they sky itself. Your best bet with wide lenses is to use the CPL for water scenes, forests, and compositions where you can avoid putting much sky in the frame, or just live with the results you can get. Shooting during golden hour or minimizing the effects of the CPL help as well.


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## flowers (Jan 30, 2014)

mackguyver said:


> privatebydesign said:
> 
> 
> > I don't believe for one second it hasn't been widely used since the dawn of photography, and that wasn't in Taiwan or mainland China.
> ...



Depeding on the unevenness, you can fix this with black card too. Hold it for a shorter amount of time where the sky is darker to get a better result. 



privatebydesign said:


> Not necessarily, overexposure and pulling, ETTR, will not give you the same kind of saturation a slight under exposure will, even after lowering exposure and upping saturation, try it with a nicely graduated sky, they look completely different.
> 
> When shooting statics the best thing to do by far is bracket the hell out of the exposure and shoot RAW, this will give you the absolute most processing flexibility now, and in the future.



Okay, I will try it! But I usually exposure bracket for scenes with a high DR anyway.
Ps. Everyone knows it was invented in TW, China... But I don't know when. Most camera/photography related things are invented in Asia, is it any wonder black card was too?


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## privatebydesign (Jan 30, 2014)

flowers said:


> Ps. Everyone knows it was invented in TW, China... But I don't know when. Most camera/photography related things are invented in Asia, is it any wonder black card was too?



Hmm, me hopes you are playing........

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_photography


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## flowers (Jan 30, 2014)

privatebydesign said:


> flowers said:
> 
> 
> > Ps. Everyone knows it was invented in TW, China... But I don't know when. Most camera/photography related things are invented in Asia, is it any wonder black card was too?
> ...



Wikipedia is not a neutral source! Even different language wikipedias have contradiction information. But since you insist on using the English wikipedia, here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photography

"The discovery of the camera obscura that provides an image of a scene dates back to ancient China. "
So the process that helped medieval artists make realistic paintings, camera obscura, the basis for a film camera, was invented in China long before medieval ages or anything Western.
"Long before the first photographs were made, Chinese philosopher Mo Di and Greek mathematicians Aristotle and Euclid described a pinhole camera in the 5th and 4th centuries BCE."
If you look at the articles for Mozi ("Mo Di"), Aristotle and Euclid, you'll see Mozi lived before the either two.

" In Russia, the first camera based on the theory of Daguerreotype was invented by Grekov back in 1840, that is, a year after the invention of photography. Alex Grekov also made experiments with photographs by the method of Talbot on the light-sensitive paper.

12. The first portrait by the electric light was made in 1879 by Levitsky, which required the exposure of 15 seconds. "
"15. The story of a digital photo begins with camera Mavica, produced by the company Sony in 1981. Mavica is almost a full SLR with interchangeable lenses and resolution of 570h490 pixels. But then it was considered a "static camera," the result of which was not the video but static images - shots. "
http://www.eurogallery.org/news/general-info/interesting-facts-about-the-history-of-photography-50/

http://old.iias.asia/article/pioneering-portraits-early-photography-japan
They were taking photographs in Japan also at least as early as 1840.

Many inventions in photography came from the West, but camera obscura and the world's first DSLR were invented in China and Japan, respectively. The first non-silver-plate camera also seems to be from Asia. Bellows camera is from Russia:
"In 1847, Count Sergei Lvovich Levitsky designed a bellows camera which significantly improved the process of focusing. This adaptation influenced the design of cameras for decades and is still found in use today in some professional cameras. "

And the explanation why American companies got ahead in photographic technology can also be partially explained by the large scale immigration to America in the 1800's. library.thinkquest.org/20619/Chinese.html most immigrants were Chinese, skilled artisans and hard workers, largely employed by American companies. Who's to say they didn't contribute important skills that helped Kodak develop his photographic paper?

Inventions in photography have been made both in Asia and in the West. You can paint the history whichever color you like, but the truth is more like inventions were made both in Asia and in the West simultaneously and one after the other, and all those inventions put together brought us where we are today. If photography is all a Western invention, why is almost every camera and lens company in the world Asian? Canon, Nikon, Sony, Minolta, Ricoh, Pentax, Fujifilm, Asahi, Panasonic, Hitachi, Hoya, Olympus, Tamron, Samyang, Samsung, Sigma, are all Asian companies, just to name a few.


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## privatebydesign (Jan 30, 2014)

Dude you can go off on whatever tangents you want, but you are being naive in the extreme if you don't know the history of where the two big players got "their inventions" from.


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## flowers (Jan 30, 2014)

privatebydesign said:


> Dude you can go off on whatever tangents you want, but you are being naive in the extreme if you don't know the history of where the two big players got "their inventions" from.



History seems to depend a lot on who you ask. A question a lot closer to home is: how many pieces of your photographic equipment don't come from Asia? It's a ridiculous argument to claim that Asians somehow "stole" Western inventions. If that was the case, shouldn't Western companies make better products and more profit? But they don't. This argument is silly. Just accept that inventions were made both in Asia and in the West, and together they brought us to where we are today! Namely: a world where almost everything photographic comes from Asia.


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## privatebydesign (Jan 31, 2014)

flowers said:


> privatebydesign said:
> 
> 
> > Dude you can go off on whatever tangents you want, but you are being naive in the extreme if you don't know the history of where the two big players got "their inventions" from.
> ...



You can keep asking, and self answering, as many different questions as you like, do it enough times and you might get one or two right. But do not misquote me, I never said, implied, or thought "stole".

Now if you like I can give you a lesson in macro economics, though it is so far off topic I really can't be bothered, or you can use that time going and testing the photographic concept you had wrong. As it is a photo form I'd suggest the later.


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## flowers (Jan 31, 2014)

privatebydesign said:


> But do not misquote me, I never said, implied, or thought "stole".



Yes you did:


privatebydesign said:


> Dude you can go off on whatever tangents you want, but you are being naive in the extreme if you don't know the history of where the two big players got "their inventions" from.



"their inventions" in quotes. Implication?

This ridiculous conversation is over.


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## privatebydesign (Jan 31, 2014)

My apologies, too often we take for granted the people we are talking to have English as a first language, I am clearly mistaken.

My quotation marks were not an implication, they were a paraphrase from you _"Most camera/photography related things are *invented* in Asia"_ see? Your words, not mine.

But if we are honest, if a German company makes a product that two Japanese companies then copy to such an extent that many of the parts are interchangeable, what would you call it?

You clearly live in a different world to me, be happy in yours, I am in mine...........


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## flowers (Jan 31, 2014)

I shouldn't reply anymore, but for your own sake: you have now attacked me on a personal level from three fronts; you have called into question my knowledge of history, my command of the English language, and my photographic skill. The last attack you founded on my correct description of ETTR and my off-hand suggestion that it might be useful in a situation for the kind of which I personally use different techniques, never ETTR. Quite a stretch. Furthermore you called me naïve. For your own sake I hope you'll learn that resorting to personal attacks instead of arguing the points of the person you disagree with paints yourself rather than your opponent in a bad light.
Ps. your last sentence is at least something we can agree on.
Have a nice rest of the day.


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## Hillsilly (Jan 31, 2014)

All this talk about China and Taiwan reminds me....

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Best wishes for the year of the horse!


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## flowers (Jan 31, 2014)

Hillsilly said:


> All this talk about China and Taiwan reminds me....
> 
> HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
> 
> Best wishes for the year of the horse!



春節快樂! Happy New Year!

May this year bring you happiness and wealth!


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## TexPhoto (Jan 31, 2014)

The biggest tip I can give for CPL is to take it off the camera. That is, shoot with it and without it. Especially for that important shot. This is the best way to learn c=what it is doing. you can see some of it throgh the viewfinder, but you will always see more at hoem on the big screen. How can you really know what changed with out the "no filter shot" How can you learn where is the time and place for ir.

Also don't put it on and leave it on. I was shooting with another dad at a kids recital, indoors, and when he said he was having troubele focusing, i saw he had a CPL filter. I told him to take it off and he explained that he had to protect the lens...


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