What happened here?

[Dylan]

I shot a bunch of pictures at a recent airshow and even though I had a polarizer the sky came out in all different shades of blue. I set it once and left it there for the rest of the day. Here's a link to the gallery on my pbase site. Can anyone tell me how come there is such a wide range of blue's and even some greens in my shots?

 

[Azuth]

The more you expose the lighter it will look. The sky will be different shades at different points. The angle of your camera will change how the polariser is acting. Any adjustments made digitally will affect the image.

 

[Dylan]

Thanks for the explanation. I guess I didn't think about the different shades of the sky while I was shooting. I did enhance some of them but I wasn't very happy with the results. Guess I need to work on my PS skills.

 

[Big Mike]

A polarizers affect on the image will depend greatly on the angle to the sun. You can see this yourself by looking through the lens (with filter on) and just looking in different directions. The maximum effect will be at 90 degrees to the sun's rays.

 

[Philip Weir]

You mention you set the polariser at the beginning of the day and left it there. Big mistake. If you do that, in many cases it will act as a ND filter and wont give you the advantage a polarising filter is made for. You must adjust it depending on the angle of the sun as Big Mike suggested.

 

[Dylan]

Thanks all for the very helpful explanations. I will take that into account next time I use one. Unfortunately I dropped my camera (bad,very very bad) and cracked the polarizer. The camera's allright though so all is not lost.