polarizing filter - need help

[twohearted]

Hello, I am new to this forum; happy to be here and looking forward to learning a lot and having some good discussions.

At the moment, I have a question about purchasing a circular polarizing filter. I have done a fair amount of reading, including a search of posts on this topic on this forum, and from that I have concluded that the bottom line on polarizers is (surprise, surprise) you get what you pay for. Fair enough.

That being said, I need to find a filter of decent quality within my price range, which is less than $100. I am primarily a hobbyist/recreational photographer, but I actually bought my DSLR because I have started doing some articles for a fly fishing magazine, too, which need to be illustrated with lots of water and landscape photography, hence the need for the polarizer.

My camera is a Canon Rebel T3i with the 18-55 f3.5-5.6 kit lens and a 75-300mm f4-5.6 zoom.

Any recommendations would be much appreciated.

Thanks,
Bryon

 

[KmH]

The trick is to get a CPL that has a big enough filter thread size to fit the biggest lens you expect to own - and then use step rings to use that big CPL on smaller lenses.

Both of your current lenses have 58 mm filter threads.
B+W is a top brand:
B+W 58mm Circular Polarizer with Multi-Resistant Coating

As long as you don't expect to be needing to thread any other filters to the front of your CPL, you could get a 'slimline' version that has no threads on the front of the CPL. The slimline versions cost a bit less, in part because many of them aren't 'multi-coated' which is desirable..

B+W 77mm Circular Polarizer with Multi-Resistant Coating
Fotodiox Metal Step-up Ring, 58mm-77mm

 

[epeddy1]

The trick is to get a CP: that has a big enough filter thread size to fit the biggest lens you expect to own - and then use step rings to use that big CPL on smaller lenses.

Both of your current lenses have 58 mm filter threads.

Great advice. Luckily I bought my wide angle (probably the largest filter thread size lens I'll ever get @ 77mm) before I bought my relatively expensive CP filter. Otherwise I probably would've messed up and bought it too small. I bought step rings for my other lens.

 

[twohearted]

Thanks KmH and epeddy1 - that is good advice--I would have to spend a bit more up front but it would save me the cost of additional filters later when I inevitably buy more lenses. Thanks for the recommendation on the B+W filters as well.

 

[Derrel]

There's another scenario to consider if you shoot a lot around water, and that is the use of a lens shade. As you know, around rivers, there can be some STRONG light bouncing back at the lens, and that, as well as large expanses of open sky, can cause very damaging loss of contrast due to overall "veiling glare". Using a lens shade is CRITICAL to get the best contrast and therefore the best color, especially when shooting toward strong light sources, and this goes double over water!!!

So, what am I getting at? With a regular style, not slim-line polarizer, you have front filter threads. On a tele prime or a tele-zoom, the lens shade impedes quick access to the filter!!! MOST "new-style" lens hoods bayonet on onto a channel on the outside of the barrel, leaving the filter trapped "inside", where it cannot be manipulated unless the hood is removed...that leaves the hood vulnerable to being dropped...perhaps into the river. Slim-line polars and other filters typically have no front filter threads, and they lose lens caps like crazy. Many caps do not fit onto slim-line filters.

Bottom line: on primes, and tele-zooms, consider using a STANDARD thickness filter ring design polarizer, and a lightweight plastic SCREW-IN lens shade. Screw the shade right into the polarizer's front filter threads. That allows you to simply "spin the shade", and adjust the polarization to where you want it to be, without a continuos, life-long pain in the ass scenario of removing the shade, adjusting the shade, then re-installing the shade.

TAMRON a few years back, introduced some new SP-seies lenses that featured a bayonet-on, external mount lens shade that had a cut-out, allowing the user to use a fingernail to access the knurled ring on a polarizer. I've not seen one of these lenses in real-life for a long time, so I forget how they made it exactly. My old Nikon "over-sized" polarizers offer custom lens shades for various focal lengths; this design has polarizer filter lenses that extend outward, way past the threads, allowing it to be used stacked, with other filters behind, or on ultra-wide view lenses,without causing vignetting. But remember: a lens shade is one of the best ways to get the BEST image quality from a lens being used where there is bright light coming at the camera!

 

[twohearted]

Derrel - thanks for your advice! I do use a lens shade, I think--is that the same thing as a lens hood? Little plastic thing with a scalloped edge that threads onto the lens and projects out over it, right? (I'm still learning the jargon, sorry). I hadn't thought about how it might or might not impede the use of a filter. That whole remove the shade-adjust the filter-replace the shade business does sound like a pain. Is a standard thickness filter ring design polarizer more expensive than the kind KmH recommended?

 

[KmH]

I did not link to any slimline filters.
I only wanted to mention that they are a reduced cost option that have some additional considerations that i made a point to mention - no filter stacking capability and often no coatings.