polarising filters

[Freddy2]

Does anyone have any experience, or any advise, on using polarizing filter with the s2, raw or jpeg settings etc etc.

[kgravett]

Freddy, I have used them and they work great! Make sure you buy the circular type for the Fuji to work correctly. Of course they cut down the glare and enhance the sky at the same time. To me they are a must for outside daylight shooting. Ken

[Tom V]

Originally posted by Freddy2
Does anyone have any experience, or any advise, on using polarizing filter with the s2, raw or jpeg settings etc etc.

Free Advice: Buy one filter large enough to fit your largest lens, and buy step-up rings for your smaller lenses. You can go broke buying expensive polarizers for each of your lenses.

Free Advice: Buy a good filter. Thinner filters make a difference, especially on wide angle lenses. Thinner is better. Non-glare coated is good. You have coated lenses, why toss a reflective, non-coated lens in front?

Free Advice: Buy a circular polarizer. There are linear polarizers available which can baffle your meter.

Free Advice: Beside the obvious reduction of glare and reflections on sunny days, polarizers also work well on overcast days (remove cloudy sky glare on foilage to make green plants greener, etc.)

Free Advice: The clear blue sky is naturally polarized at 90° to the sun. Shooting with a wide angle and a polarizer at a wide vista of sky can give you an unnatural looking range of sky blues arcoss your image.

Free Advice: Since a polarizer can increase contrast and saturation, you should be careful with your S2's COLOR and TONE settings. I would leave both those setting on ORG, and then if I had the time try bumping them up to STD, or going crazy with HIGH and HARD. Shoot in RAW mode and you can adjust all those things after the shot. I can't think of any adjustment you would have to make regarding jpg format shooting.

Free Advice: Realize that a polarizer blocks about 3/4 of the light. Your in-camera meter automatically takes this into account by measuring the light that actually gets through the filter. What you could handhold at a 1/60th of a second becomes a tripod-dependent 1/20th (at the same aperture and ISO).