How to Use a Circular Polarising Filter – A Complete Guide

1. How to Use a Circular Polarising Filter – A Complete Guide Glare from the sun and other reflective surfaces can wash out an image—and not in a desirable way. When working shooting environments where there’s too much glare and reflection, photographers typically rely on digital camera filter tools that can help neutralise light sources so they end up with crisp and clear images that are free from unwanted reflections and glare. A circular polarising filter is a widely used type of polarising filter that is efficient in countering reflective measures, while deepening certain hues, therefore adding more contrast to backgrounds such as skies, and reducing and to an extent, removing reflections from windows, water, and other reflective surfaces. The result is a well-balanced image in terms of saturation and contrast. A circular polariser or a circular polarising filter is a digital camera filter tool that consists of two filters that are joined together so they can be rotated until they absorb just enough reflected sun rays top obtain the effect you desire in your photos. This filter is an essential tool when composing images and shifting from vertical to horizontal framing (or the opposite). As a CPL filter is rotated, the device cuts out specific reflected or refracted light waves, removing up to 1 ½ stops of light from the image while the camera’s light meter automatically adjusts for the change in lighting. A circular polarising filter can deepen blues, remove reflections, increase contrast, and enhance the overall quality of photographs. What a polarising filter does is cut out polarised light (single wave, direct reflected light) so as to reduce glare resulting from overly bright light sources. There used to be a time when photographers needed all kinds of specialty filters to achieve the image effects they desire. Any photographer would be foolish not to come armed with a good selection of cooling, warming, graduated, coloured, and other specialised filters when shooting outdoors. Today however, editing software and similar programs has essentially rendered many of these specialty filters redundant and somewhat superfluous. Many professional photographers, save for the purists, agree that one needs no more than a polarising and an ND filter these days.