What is it that a polarizing lens filter can do for you and how does it work? Well, to be honest we're going to skip how a polarizer works for this article and stick mostly with how it effects your pictures and how to use one. If you search the net for when you should use a polarizing filter you will get back a slew of results about landscape photography and how it enhances the blue of the sky. Well great, so we don't have to cover that stuff here, because you can get it elsewhere! What we're going to quickly look at here is the effects of a polarizing filter for automotive photography.

Let's start by looking at two pictures of the same Mitsubishi Lancer Evo taken on the same day minutes apart. This particular day was heavily overcast all day.



You can see in this image that the reflection of the clouds is plainly visible across the entire surface of the car. The reflection leaves this bright red car with a dull almost orange appearance with a uniform flat color across the top surfaces. This shot was captured with a Canon EOS 30D with a Canon 70-200 f2.8 lens, f5, 1/500, ISO 200.



This second image was captured with the same camera and lens as the first but a
77mm Super HMC (Multicoated) Circular Polarizing Pro 1 Glass Filter
. Exposure of this shot was f4, 1/400, ISO 200. With this picture you can see that the polarizer did eliminate the reflections from the clouds from the hood, front bumper and windshield of the car very nicely. The roof line is also very much improved with a smooth transition from deep red to a gray reflection near the rear of the roof. The driver is plainly seen in this shot and the car now looks the dramatic rich color it was intended to look.

Pay close attention to the sides of the car in both shots and notice that it doesn't appear much different from one to the other. That is simply because the filter was set to minimize the reflections along the front surfaces of the vehicle. By rotating the filter the sides of the car could have had the reflections removed however it would would have brought them back along the front of the Evo. This happens because the polarizer can only block the reflected light that appears from one specific and somewhat narrow direction at a time therefore it is not possible to eliminate the reflections from the front and side at the same time.

Just to reinforce the usefulness of this filter below is one more example of shots taken with and without a polarizing filter in place.


Shot without the polarizer.


Shot with the polarizing filter on the lens.

77mm Super HMC (Multicoated) Circular Polarizing Pro 1 Glass Filter This low profile Circular Polarizer takes advantage of Hoya's patented optical glass technology to create a hardened optical glass that is thinner than the normal optical glass. This allows the overall thickness of the filter to be reduced to avoid vignetting when used with ultra-wide lenses. The Hoya Super-HMC Pro 1 low-profile frame is a slim 5mm, making it the same size as a regular Hoya filter frame. Standard Hoya Circular Polarizer frames are 7.5mm thick where other manufacturers filters are as much as 10mm thick. Another advantage to the Super-HMC Pro 1 Circular Polarizer is it has normal front filter threads, meaning a normal clip-on style lens cap can be used. The Super-HMC Pro 1 Circular Polarizer has a 6 layer Hoya Multi-coating, the most used in industry, applied to the front surface of the filter to greatly reduce the chance of lens flare or ghosting caused by reflections.