UKC

I'm in the market for a new 72mm polarising filter. Are all filter's equal or are there some brands worth checking out above others?

I'm a punter so please don't suggest any weapons grade filter which cost the earth.

Cheers muchly

In reply to The Lemming:

I've got a Hoya Pro 1 which is very good and not too expensive but I rarely use it. In fact I only use it when I'm photographing water which isn't that frequent!

In reply to The Lemming:

If this is a wide angle lens then many say you should not use polariser since it applies unequally across the image, especially the sky. Check this on google

In reply to The Lemming:

As Nick said, the Hoya Pro-1 are good and also reasonable value for money.
I have one in 82mm for my Tokina 11-16mm - The thin frame of the Pro-1 helps prevent vignetting.

The Pro-1 coatings are better than the standard circ polarizer, giving a better transmission, but I have a 52mm & 58mm std for other lenses and I find the quality of them to be great.

Pro-1
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hoya-Digital-Circular-Polarizing-Filter/dp/B000KZ5Y...

Std (Thicker frame)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hoya-Circular-Polarizing-Screw--Filter/dp/B00006I5B...

After those you move up to the 'HD' version, but I've not used those and at that price point it would be wise to compare with other manufacturer's offerings.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hoya-Digital-Circular-Polarizing-Screw-/dp/B001G7PM...

In reply to MikeTS:


To some extent it depends upon the direction you are pointing your lens, but don't forget, polarisers are not just for saturating blue skies and making clouds look fluffy.
They are great for enhancing saturation, cutting haze and controlling non-metallic reflections - So water, architectural glass and foliage can all benefit in some circumstances from a polariser.
Also, polarisers don't have to be used at their maximum setting and this can mitigate some of the less desirable effects that can appear when they are used on a WA lens.

The trick is to look properly before you click, rather than dogmatically follow any particular rule.

In reply to interdit:

Thanks for the suggested links.

In reply to The Lemming:

I am just looking at the 82mm formatt Hitech firecrest, I've used hoya pro 1 it's OK does decent job.

As previously ssid... used to optimum at mid focal lengths say above 26 below 70 and 90 degrees to sunlight...I rate them, still no convincing software equivalent.

Anyone own the hitech firecrest polariser?

In reply to shaun walby:

I don't think that they can ever create a convinsing software equivalent.

Cheers.

In reply to The Lemming:


To do that properly you would need to know how the photons arriving at the detector were polarized, which a conventional CCD can't tell you. With a modified sensor ( beyond the scope of a forum post, but google if you're interested ), you could add polarization information to each pixel and a software implementation would become possible.

Alternatively, you could try to 'predict' how the pixels were polarized from the scene content, but this would require some heavy duty machine learning.

In reply to The Lemming:

To answer a specific part of the question "are all filters equal" I've got a couple of reasonably expensive ones which are great but on holiday once I'd forgotten both so bought a cheap one for about £20 and it was absolute rubbish. So no, they're not all equal.
Anthony