NOTE: Images with an icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 400 — Exif — near pics

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/500 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — Exif — near pics

With Polarizer      Without Polarizer

mouseover button to see that version

Since writing “A Few Polarization-Filter Examples” several years ago, I've been meaning to do a post on a polarization filter's effects when shooting fall foliage. Over the years I've mentioned some effect or other of a polarization filer on my blog (such as here, here, and here), but I'm only now getting to filling in a huge deficiency of my 2007 post on making the best of bright light in fall-color photography by demonstrating how useful a polarizing filter can be when shooting foliage.

While at the Yoshiminedera Temple south of Kyoto during various trips last year, I did something I do often: snapped some pairs of shots with and without a polarization filter. Today I'm doing something I don't often do: actually making use of them. As I mentioned last year in “Photo Shoot Among the Fall Colors at Shouzan”, I thought I'd get around to this post soon, but a year later, finally, here we are.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — ¹/2500 sec, f/1.4, ISO 200 — Exif — near pics

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — ¹/3200 sec, f/1.4, ISO 200 — Exif — near pics

With Polarizer      Without Polarizer

As you can see in these examples, colors can be much richer, and shiny reflections reduced. Before I talk about why, I should mention a bit about how I made these shots....

First, I should have used a tripod, and perhaps sometime I'll go to that trouble, but these were all snapped freehand. Most often I'd find the rotational angle of the polarizer filter that maximized the effect, then snap a shot, quickly rotate it 90 degrees while trying not to move, and snap another shot. Later in Lightroom I attempted to compensate for slight camera movement by adjust one crop or the other, but otherwise each pair has identical, default “just loaded into Lightroom” processing. (I did subject the photos to my standard treatment via my bulk-develop plugin, but I don't think any of these photos would have been affected by it.)

So, to be clear, this means that the “without” is not really “without a filter”, but “with the filter at its least impact”.

So, what's happening when we use a polarizing filter? If light is polarized for whatever reason, a polarizing filter blocks most of the light, at least when the filter is rotated to “align” to the polarized light. Most light is not polarized, so the filter does not block much of that light, but some kinds of light are strongly polarized, and those can be strongly blocked while, again, leaving other kinds of light mostly alone.

Strong reflections from the sun on the leaves in the photo above cause the whole “Without Polarizer” version to be washed out a bit, and each individual area of reflection is washed out considerably, towards pure white. But for whatever reason, those reflections are mostly polarized, so when I use a polarization filter and rotate it to maximize the filtering of the reflections, the overall dynamic range of the scene is reduced to a sweeter spot for the camera sensor, resulting in richer colors and a more aesthetically-pleasing result. The non-polarized light is still there so we still see the leaves, but the blinding reflections are greatly reduced. It's the same effect for your eyes when you put on a pair of polarized sun glasses.

(By the way, a polarizing filter would be better called a “polarized-light filter” because it filters that kind of light; the term “polarizing filter” sounds to me as if it somehow turns non-polarized light into polarized light.)

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — ¹/4000 sec, f/1.4, ISO 200 — Exif — near pics

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — ¹/5000 sec, f/1.4, ISO 200 — Exif — near pics

With Polarizer      Without Polarizer

Light from a blue sky is often polarized, though it depends on the time of day and the direction you're facing relative to the sun. In this case, a polarizing filter tends to bring down the overall brightness of the sky relative to the rest of the scene, compressing the dynamic range, which allows a deeper blue.

You can read on Wikipedia all about polarized light if you're interested in the physics behind it.

Not all scenes are affected by a polarization filter. You can test the effect by holding the filter to your eye (have the part that would face the lens facing your eye) and rotating... you'll either see the effect clearly, or you won't. I've some experience using these under my belt, but I'm still not very good at predicting which lights will be polarized, and the overall effect of using a filter on them. But luckily, it's easy to test and experiment while out and about, so I generally keep a filter or two in my camera bag.

By the way, as a good test of your filter, try viewing a smartphone screen through the filter and rotating... my old iPhone 3G's screen becomes perfectly black at certain angles, though my new iPhone 4s's screen merely shifts colors, a technical advance sure to be a boon to sunglasses-wearing phone users.

Anyway,not all scenes look better with the filter. Both versions of the following photo are uninteresting:

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — ¹/800 sec, f/4, ISO 200 — Exif — near pics

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — ¹/1000 sec, f/4, ISO 200 — Exif — near pics

With Polarizer      Without Polarizer

Consider the water reflections in “Snowy Gardens of the Heian Shrine”... removing them would destroy those shots, so it was definitely a situation where one would not want a polarization filter.

Some more examples follow...

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/500 sec, f/2.5, ISO 280 — Exif — near pics

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/640 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — Exif — near pics

With Polarizer      Without Polarizer

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/640 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — Exif — near pics

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/800 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — Exif — near pics

With Polarizer      Without Polarizer

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/1000 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — Exif — near pics

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/1250 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — Exif — near pics

With Polarizer      Without Polarizer

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — ¹/400 sec, f/9, ISO 1100 — Exif — near pics

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — ¹/400 sec, f/9, ISO 800 — Exif — near pics

With Polarizer      Without Polarizer

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/320 sec, f/4, ISO 560 — Exif — near pics

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/320 sec, f/4, ISO 250 — Exif — near pics

With Polarizer      Without Polarizer

NOTE: Images with an icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 70mm — ¹/1000 sec, f/6.3, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
What Kind of Place am I?
The foreground is a marina, but what's just beyond that?

It's been a while since I posted one of my “What am I?” quizzes, so here's a new one. But let me be up front about one thing: the picture above is a daytime picture that I've tried to make look like it was taken at night. It's really dark because it was an area with few lights, and there was no moon.

On our trip last week to Bunny Island, we stayed at a hotel on a mountain overlooking a small marina. This hotel, the Bella Vista Sakaigahama (ベラビスタ境ガ浜) had, by far, the best baths I'd ever been to.

Among them was a large open-air hot bath with a great view of the sea, and in that view near the shore was a small marina and a large complex that I couldn't quite figure out what it was. The photo above (from my room during the day) approximates my first view of the complex (from the bath at night). There was no moon so it was quite dark — even darker than the photo above conveys — but I could tell that there are boats, and beyond that some big structure with pipes and tanks and such.

I couldn't figure out exactly what it was, but assumed it was related to the marina and the boats' need for gasoline, but with all those pipes it looks to be related to the manufacture of gasoline more than its distribution, and that makes no sense at a marina, so I was left scratching my head.

Given this slightly-more-detailed view than I had then, can you figure it out?

NOTE: Images with an icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.

Wow, what an ordeal. It started a month or so ago when I decided to put some of my photos on my iPad and iPhone, and found that it was harder to do well than I would have thought. A lot harder.

A month later, finally, and I have a good workflow. It turns out that I ended up writing a new Lightroom plugin (“Crop for iPad”, which I've just released), and updated two others, geoencoding support and my Tree Publisher. All just to get reasonable copies of my photos on my iPad and iPhone.

I wrote up my experiences in a long, detailed post,

It was a heck of a lot more work than I would have ever imagined. I'm glad it, and the long writeup (with 22 screenshots!) is finally done. I hope someone finds it useful.

(Note: it should be useful for preparing photos for other devices as well, not just Apple devices.)

NOTE: Images with an icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — ¹/8000 sec, f/2.2, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos

While putzing through my photos from our weekend trip to “Bunny Island”, I found myself playing with some exaggerated renditions in Lightroom's develop module. I go crazy with “stylized” renditions from time to time (most recently in last week's “Impressionism in Lightroom”, but also here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, among many others, I'm sure).

I don't know that any of these are interesting, but I thought I'd share them.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 116mm — ¹/500 sec, f/20, ISO 560 — map & image data — nearby photos

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 70mm — ¹/800 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/500 sec, f/2.8, ISO 5000 — map & image data — nearby photos

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/250 sec, f/2.8, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/320 sec, f/2.8, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos

This next one isn't exaggerated, but it reminds me of one of my early posts, so I'll throw it in here...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 86mm — ¹/500 sec, f/2.8, ISO 1600 — map & image data — nearby photos

NOTE: Images with an icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — ¹/8000 sec, f/1.6, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Feeding The Bunnies
“Bunny Island”, Okunoshima Japan
30 miles east of Hiroshima

As I mentioned the other day, we paid a visit to 大久野島 (Okunoshima), also known as “Bunny Island” because it's populated by “wild” rabbits that have no hesitation to appear in great numbers at the slightest suggestion of food.

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/500 sec, f/2.5, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Bunny Whiskers

You can get a cup of bunny-food pellets for 100 yen (US$1.25), and even borrow gloves if you want (though they're not really needed). You can also rent bicycles and enjoy rides on paths all around. The island is small — a bit more than half a square mile — but mountainous, and bunnies are pretty much everywhere, though less in the higher grounds. There's not much else on the island but the ruins of the chemical-weapons factories that occupied the island in the 15 years up through the end of WWII, and a modern visitor center and hotel.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — ¹/1000 sec, f/3.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — ¹/8000 sec, f/1.4, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Special Treat
someone had came by and threw bunches of old lettuce

The English Wikipedia page on the island claims that the rabbits were released from the chemical-weapons factory on the island after it was shut down by the Americans after WWII, which is a good story and all, but the Japanese page says that the rabbits descend from a group released by some elementary-school kids in 1971. A form of the old programmer's adage probably applies here: when the comments and code disagree, both are probably wrong. Who knows.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — ¹/500 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Power-Plant Shell
Abandoned 1945

iPhone 4S @ 4mm — ¹/670 sec, f/2.4, ISO 64 — map & image data — nearby photos
“Say, Is That Thing Edible?”
(taken with my phone)

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/800 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
“Whaddya Lookin At?”

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/1600 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Bunny Ears
Backlit by the late-afternoon sun

Speaking of “bunny ears”, they had these mounted horn things that you could put your ears up to and, in theory, hear stuff much better....

iPhone 4S @ 4mm — ¹/1400 sec, f/2.4, ISO 64 — map & image data — nearby photos
Bunny Ears
photo by Fumie

We couldn't really get them to work well, perhaps because they were hard to turn and to get seated to your ears. I've seen this kind of thing at playgrounds before, though not with such an odd shape. It wasn't until the next day that it actually clicked with me that they were meant to be bunny ears. Doh! I can be slow.

Then again, it was a long day. Anthony was running around on his rented bicycle, so I took a moment to relax, but the bunnies never for a moment let their guard down, lest I suddenly whip out a head of lettuce....

iPhone 4S @ 4mm — ¹/750 sec, f/2.4, ISO 64 — map & image data — nearby photos
Being Observed
photo by Fumie

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/500 sec, f/2.8, ISO 450 — map & image data — nearby photos
Feeding Frenzy

Near the main hotel area where tourist visits generally start and end, the rabbits are so plentiful and so quick to arrive when food is presented that to an adult it's past the point of “cute” into “pest”, but it's sheer joy to a kid.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 70mm — ¹/500 sec, f/2.8, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Crinkling of the Food Bag
bunnies immediately materialize out of thin air

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 70mm — ¹/500 sec, f/2.8, ISO 360 — map & image data — nearby photos
2.57 Seconds Later
really, less than three seconds after the prior photo

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/500 sec, f/2.8, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Overrun

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 82mm — ¹/500 sec, f/2.8, ISO 560 — map & image data — nearby photos
Escape!
among a tsunami of giggles

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 175mm — ¹/500 sec, f/14, ISO 1400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Sunset with the Bunnies

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/500 sec, f/2.8, ISO 640 — map & image data — nearby photos
Lounging
Living the easy life of a people rancher

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/500 sec, f/2.5, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Squiggly Ears

We eventually made our way to the ferry dock on the other (non-sunset) side of the island for the trip back to the mainland. While waiting, Anthony availed himself of the breakwall...

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/500 sec, f/2.5, ISO 900 — map & image data — nearby photos
Passing The Time

iPhone 4S @ 4mm — ¹/30 sec, f/2.4, ISO 64 — map & image data — nearby photos
Leaving Bunny Island
photo by Fumie

Continued here...