I'm pretty happy with my Safari photos. Bringing a UV filter was a good idea.

But I can't help but think a polarized filter would have really made the colors pop on some of the photos. I didn't bring one and I'm seriously regretting not giving one a try while there.

Anyone one have experience using a Polarized filter in Africa?

I believe good pictures are your best souvenirs. Feedback would be appreciated.

Hi,
I have used one a fair amount, mainly for river photos. In this situation, where you are less that 30 degress from water surface, often mainly white, it is crucial to kill the glare on sunny days to avoid over exposure if you adjust your shutter/aperture to work for your intended shot.

The higher you move from the glare (eg right above the glare surface the easier it is to deal with glare).
I have used it for some wildlife and environment shots and it is great in bight light. The probelm, unless you are very well versed with reading light and compensating for it, is when you encounter lower light conditions, it becomes a hassle to compensate. thats perhaps just my experience/lack of knowledge!
Basically it seems to work very well for me for certain light angles and is indispensible, but at other times i find I want it off!

For African photography, contact my friend and old college mate Shem at[URL=http://www.c4images-safaris.co.za]

They are African photo specialists and could answer your questions!!

Cheers

Besides glare, polarizers also improve color saturation, especially skies and vegetation. If you process your own images there are a few programs that will give you the desired effect after the fact. The B + W outdoor filter software is a good one. Send me a PM and I'll be glad to show you the effects assuming you can send me a jpeg via email.

quote:

Originally posted by kayaker:
Hi,
I have used one a fair amount, mainly for river photos. In this situation, where you are less that 30 degress from water surface, often mainly white, it is crucial to kill the glare on sunny days to avoid over exposure if you adjust your shutter/aperture to work for your intended shot.

The higher you move from the glare (eg right above the glare surface the easier it is to deal with glare).
I have used it for some wildlife and environment shots and it is great in bight light. The probelm, unless you are very well versed with reading light and compensating for it, is when you encounter lower light conditions, it becomes a hassle to compensate. thats perhaps just my experience/lack of knowledge!
Basically it seems to work very well for me for certain light angles and is indispensible, but at other times i find I want it off!

For African photography, contact my friend and old college mate Shem at[URL=http://www.c4images-safaris.co.za]

They are African photo specialists and could answer your questions!!

Cheers

There is no need to worry about exposure compensation with just about any modern camera as exposure is determined after the light passes through the polarizer (or any filter for that matter). It is done "automatically" by the camera's built-in metering system.

quote:

Originally posted by DC300:
Besides glare, polarizers also improve color saturation, especially skies and vegetation. If you process your own images there are a few programs that will give you the desired effect after the fact. The B + W outdoor filter software is a good one. Send me a PM and I'll be glad to show you the effects assuming you can send me a jpeg via email.

This one needs a little help.

How's this...

I haven't found a polarizing filter to be of much advantage except in the situation of too much glare as mentioned above. In bright light, where you tend to get glare, the shutter speed should be adequate. If you use the filter in dimmer light, the essentially slower lens speed it will cause, can have negative consequences on depth of field.

Thanks Steve that sharpened it up nicely. I'm still a little disappointed with the color and there may be no help for that. I think the original may have just too much glare.

Grumulkin, I agree about using any filter in dimmer light. Filters in dim light = BAD IDEA. I believe however that especially photographing birds in late afternoon a polarized filter might have been exactly the right thing in the trick bag. Post processing software is usually a good compromise but I'm finding the closer the original is to being right the better.

BG,

A polarizer or any other filter would have done little to improve the shot above in regards to color.

Also, if you're using your camera on auto everything, that lighting situation isn't one that produces the best photo. Too much light behind your main subject, so the meter reads that light and then underexposes the part you want exposed properly. And if the exposure for the monkey is right on, the background would be completely blown out -- i.e. way overexposed.

There doesn't seem to be any one area of the entire photo in sharp focus either; did you focus manually or let the camera do it?

Version below after some massaging in Photoshop. -TONY

I like an enhancing filter, it makes the orange to brown etc colors really pop.

I like what Tony did with the colors. I did a sharpen and played with the hue, contrast, and brightness. I didn't dink with the hue as much as I should have, but I couldn't get the balance that I wanted.

-Steve

Steve,

Rather than messing with the Hue, I increased the Color Saturation, and instead of the contrast/brightness, I used the burn/dodge tools to even up the bright/dark areas where necessary, including the face. Then I used the Levels function to darken just the brightest highlight areas and lighten the middle values a teeny bit.

Also note that I cloned out that lone piece of vegetation that was in front of the monkey. -TONY

I leave a UV filter on the camera lens for general protection, I like the B+W filters in general. Leaving a polarizer on the lens is more of pain because it is not fast to use and only really adds to photo enhancement under certain lighting conditions and angles. Some good examples are having to take photographs through glass (like in a vehicle looking out) where you can eliminate much of the reflection, or when the angle of sunlight allows you to eliminate glare without increasing contrast so much that the photo is too light in the light areas and too dark in the dark areas. This isn't that easy to manage. Photos taken mid-day at the beach for example are rarely improved by a polarizer as the sand will be extremely white and the sky extremely dark. This may be the effect you want but it isn't too natural. For scenery a graduated grey (neutral density) filter to darken the sky is a better alternative.

Tony,

Ahhh. I was using a crappy little program on my PC. It has very little tools, but ususally it gets me by. Should have had my wife the graphic designer do a total makeover on it.

-Steve

quote:

Originally posted by Outdoor Writer:
Steve,

Rather than messing with the Hue, I increased the Color Saturation, and instead of the contrast/brightness, I used the burn/dodge tools to even up the bright/dark areas where necessary, including the face. Then I used the Levels function to darken just the brightest highlight areas and lighten the middle values a teeny bit.

Also note that I cloned out that lone piece of vegetation that was in front of the monkey. -TONY

For the most part, I haven't used any filters other than a polarizer on occasion over the 35+ years I've been taking and selling photos.

I've never used a UV or 1A to "protect" lenses either for one simple reason: if I buy a top-quality lens with top-quality glass for several hundred or more dollars, I'm not going to compromise that quality by sticking a cheap filter over the front lens. Every layer of glass and steps to reproduce a photo after it's taken will degrade the image exponentially. So starting with the BEST possible original is the way I try to cut down on that degradation.

For protection, I simply treat my lenses with extreme care when in use and when cleaning the glass. Granted, s...t happens, but so far -- knock on wood -- I've been lucky to avoid such over these many years, even when I have lugged my camera gear on horseback in my saddle bags on many excursions into the mountains. -TONY

Steve,

Pick up a copy of PS Elements. It will do most of what the full-blown program does when it comes to corrections, etc. The expensive PS has lots of bells & whistles the average user will NEVER even need or use. Even PaintShop Pro will do the necessary stuff. -TONY

My try at some post-processing, and I prefer a "lighter hand" in same, albeit as mentioned, the focus being a bit off makes it difficult.



As for a polarizer, I love them and they can work anywhere if applied correctly. But there are advantages and disadvantages.
For instance, if the sky is a bit cloudy, it can indeed make the colors pop a little more - many people who spend a fair amount of time capturing autumn foliage colors use them frequently in such conditions. On the other hand, they do tend to "rob" you of about one stop of light, which means if it is late or early in the day and/or you are handholding, your shutter speed can slip too low and you end up with motion blur in the photo such that it is not usable even if it had better color. My impression is that maybe this one wouldn't have been helped much by a polarizer for that very reason - i.e. the light was such that the aperture was open (giving shallow depth of field), the shutter speed was a little too slow for handholding (giving a bit of motion blur), and under this scenario, a polarizing filter would have only made the problem worse unless you were using a tripod. Tony, please correct me if I am wrong as I am amateur at best, but I believe this particular photo might actually have benefitted from about +1/3 to +2/3 exposure (probably best achieved by increasing ISO so that shutter speed didn't get any longer) to bring out a little more detail in the face of the monkey, and then one could have maybe burned a bit in the background to tone that down a bit.

All that theory aside, I'd have been lucky to have done as well at the time! It's easy to be a Monday morning quarterback.

Best,
Jeff

Jeff,

Not bad on the exposure. Good job.

Yes, you are correct that it needed more exposure for the monkey itself, perhaps even as much as a stop. But as I said, it would overexpose the sunny area quite a bit with that increase.

It was obvious the pix was taken in an auto mode, thus the meter was reading the bright area behind the monkey. And if that background had been real dark, it probably would have overexposed the monkey. -TONY

Outdoor Writer makes a good point about putting a "cheap" filter over an expensive lens. Buy the best you can if you are to use one. If the filter is best quality and you know the pitfalls (like flaring, vignetting, etc) I would bet that you can't see any quality difference in the results.