Good Information

This post was in response to Waterfall Photography Beginners Tips and Tricks

This is a good overview on how to photograph waterfalls. A few notes though:

1) The “circular” part of circular polarizers refers to how the filter changes the light, and not the filter’s shape. The filter changes the light in a such a way so that it will corkscrew after it passes through the filter, allowing the camera meter system to do its job. Otherwise if you used a linear polarizer, the camera cannot meter correctly. You can try this by putting polarizing sunglasses over your lens, and attempt to meter a bright scene.

2) UV filters: Their purpose isn’t to protect CCDs from being fried. If that were true your eyes would be in big trouble if you lived in the tropics. Without a UV filter, photos taken around midday in the tropics or at high altitude can have a blue haze – this is the UV light affecting the way you see a particular scene. Since our eyes cannot pickup UV light, and the camera does, this is an undesired effect.

I hope these additional notes can help others who are getting into photography. Again, this is a great and informative site, thank you!