Glare, CPL, and the "right" exposure

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LancsMak

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Afternoon all. Bit of a blend of topics here. Some of you will know that I tend to mostly shoot dog events and whilst I'm mostly indoor I do sometimes do outdoor too.

The challenge of indoor is fairly typical with low lighting levels, but it's fairly diffuse so no real issues with glare.

Outdoors though I've found that glare is very tricky, and a nice black and white dog ends up with a huge dynamic range between the highlights and the shadows. Now currently I just shoot these aiming for just a hint of blow-out on the flashing highlights from camera. It gives me the best chance of capturing the detail in the blacks without completing messing up the whites.

I was wondering if using a CPL would help with this? I had the thought after the event so not been able to just have a go and see.

Equally what would people view as the "right" exposure here? As I've described? Or get nearer to what we see with the naked eye and blow out more of the highlights?

Really interested in experiences and views on this. Thanks.
 
Short answer is no, a CPL will not help. The only thing it will do is reduce the light available some (~1 stop).

Reflected light (and in fact all light passing through air) is polarized to some extent, but when it is reflected from a diffused (textured) surface the polarization of each ray is random... so a CPL cannot be effective. CPL/LPL filters require the light to have a specific polarization in order to be effective; the light has to have already been "filtered" by a transmission medium (water/glass/gloss/polarizer/etc).

The right exposure is going to be camera dependent. With my cameras I pretty much exclusively use highlight weighted metering with auto ISO to ensure no highlights are clipped. But my cameras are basically ISO invariant; so reducing the exposure by lowering the ISO has no notable effect on what the camera actually sees/records, or what I can do with the file later on.
 
Useful, I thought that might be the case with CPL but couldn't find anything definitive about fur, thanks.
 
LancsMak said:
Afternoon all. Bit of a blend of topics here. Some of you will know that I tend to mostly shoot dog events and whilst I'm mostly indoor I do sometimes do outdoor too.

The challenge of indoor is fairly typical with low lighting levels, but it's fairly diffuse so no real issues with glare.

Outdoors though I've found that glare is very tricky, and a nice black and white dog ends up with a huge dynamic range between the highlights and the shadows. Now currently I just shoot these aiming for just a hint of blow-out on the flashing highlights from camera. It gives me the best chance of capturing the detail in the blacks without completing messing up the whites.

I was wondering if using a CPL would help with this? I had the thought after the event so not been able to just have a go and see.

Equally what would people view as the "right" exposure here? As I've described? Or get nearer to what we see with the naked eye and blow out more of the highlights?

Really interested in experiences and views on this. Thanks.
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I guess it depends on what you/your audience find acceptable regarding lack of s***e fur detail.

I've been photographing sheep dog trials for a few years and on bright days aim to get the exposure right for the white bits and lift the dark tones in post. But a lot will depend on the camera's sensor for doing that. On dull days it's less of a problem.
 
LongLensPhotography said:
Cpl is only helpful with reflective surfaces. I would hope your dog isn't one

Cpl will however happily cause extra flare and ghosting. If in doubt keep it out
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All surfaces are reflective (other than pure black)... And a CPL won't work on all shiny surfaces either; e.g metal, chrome paint, mirrors, etc.

I've never seen a quality polarizer cause flare/ghosting; but I am sure it is possible. I have seen cheap filters of all sorts cause any number of issues...
 
sk66 said:
All surfaces are reflective (other than pure black)... And a CPL won't work on all shiny surfaces either; e.g metal, chrome paint, mirrors, etc.
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It works, just not enough to be worthwhile
 
sk66 said:
I've never seen a quality polarizer cause flare/ghosting; but I am sure it is possible. I have seen cheap filters of all sorts cause any number of issues...
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You haven't looked carefully enough then
 
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