The *Official Photography Thread*

^^^This. Buy your filters in the largest size you need and use step rings to reduce it. You onle need one filter for all lenses that way.

Or, buy the square system and be set.

 

Actually the Nikon polarizers are better in a way. They are bigger, coated (not many polarizers are), they let more light through them, They are keyed to only turn about 190 degrees (they don't keep spinning when you try to take them off), and they are neutral in color (most will alter color slightly).

 

I would have to disagree. B+W and many of the higher end filters are probably as good or better. All my round filters are B+W.

BTW, if you have trouble getting filters off, try putting a rubber band on the filter for a bit more purchase.

 

That's a good idea. Thanks!

 

Damn it! Just realized I'm missing the first 2289 photos from my T2i... Can't find them anywhere on my laptop, and my parents have been so far unsuccessful with the backups back home. Grrrrr

 

I can see getting slim ND filters for wide waterfall shots, but a slim CPL isn't as necessary. Using a CPL at those wide focal lengths can give you an uneven sky. Check the second pic here: http://photographylife.com/how-to-use-a-polarizer and notice how the sky is dark on one side but light on the other. In any case you can stop the lens down a little bit to get rid of some of the vignetting, just depends on how bad it is, and doing that also gains you a wider depth of field and a little bit of sharpness from the lens as a side effect. Tools like Lightroom can also remove (or add) vignetting easily. I have a slim CPL and I hate the soft cap that it came with because it doesn't stay on. After Canon switched the filter thread on newer lenses to 82mm I had to buy a new CPL and went with the regular one instead of slim.

That sucks! I lost a few hundred pics from one of my trips to Louisiana back before Katrina hit. No idea where they went, but I thought I had them saved.

 

Yeeeessss. My parents found them on an old computer!
Sorry to hear about your lost photos, I'm guessing you already checked all your old computers and stuff.

 

I have some old hard drives that I can check, but at best it would probably just be jpegs and not the original raw files. There's also the possibility that one of my buddies has them on a hard drive that he was using for backing up his photos. I just haven't gotten around to checking, mostly because the images weren't that great.

 

The equivalent for Nikon is any of the similarly priced lenses with the same focal length and aperture usually have a gold hex with an N in it for "nano crystal coat"

Some don't but are still the best Nikon glass, like the 70-200mm f/2.8G AF-S VRII N is nikons equivalent to the canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS

 

Whether or not you choose a slim circular polarizer depends on whether you're using a WA lens. Not whether your shots are wide angle. You choose a slim filter to eliminate vignetting being introduced by the thickness of the filter. You may achieve the same result using a larger filter and a step ring.
Stopping down might help but probably not as much as you'd like.

What you're seeing in that article is the result of how a circular polarizer works (the angle of polarization) and not the difference between slim and normal filters. Because the angle of polarization changes as the angle from the sun does, lenses wider than about 35mm cannot maintain consistent polarization across the entire scene when using a circular filter.

For the difference between slim and normal, think of looking through a funnel from the narrow to the wide end. If you added a tall ring on the wide end, you'll see the edges of it when you look through. If that ring is half the height, you'll see less of it. It's not exact but you get the idea.

 

Yeah I see what you're saying now.

 

Not bad man.

Im not sure what you shot at, but i would have had one for the HDR that was a bit darker to blend in.

In this case. i like the non HDR one better.

 

I expect good things...

 

If you have photoshop, try opening the image in camera raw then process it three ways. Once for the highlights, once for mid tones and once for the blacks.

Then try your HDR again.

 

No he is saying do a single image to make an HDR one. Its one way to to HDR. So with the pano..you could then render one with the exposure way down, one as it is, and then one over exposed and then combine them into a HDR. So you can basically make the different exposure levels you want from one RAW photo.

I never thought they looked as nice though personally..

 

yea..or any photo really..i did that with this one.

Started with this


IMG_1467.jpg by Monte Nickles Photos, on Flickr

Then i made one that was -2 and exported it. One as is, exported. and one +2 and exported. Used photomatrix and was my first HDR attempt so it is over cooked a lot as i wasn't familiar with photomatrix yet. Also exported as jpegs instead of tiffs like i should have so the quality isn't good...i bet with the LR plugin Enfuse it would be better.


Goose Lake.jpg by Monte Nickles Photos, on Flickr

but yea. Its possible. I mean, i didn't know how to shoot HDR when we were up ther otherwise i would have.

 

I'm not familiar with that tool.

What I'm suggesting is you take image A and process it three ways. highlights (A1), mid tones (A2), and for the blacks (A3).

In Camera Raw, I would make my changes and then write a new file with my changes-leaving the original alone.

I should add that you can process it for any number of different exposures. I used three for convenience.

 

I did this when I tried an HDR and the sync button is not your friend. It makes all the images almost the same. (If you have everything checked). Which when combining them makes for just the same image. Are you using CS6?

Also does your camera have a bracketing feature? It will take 3 images or more depending on camera at the different stops automatically.

 

Couple from today/tonight…