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Do-It-Yourself Polarizer—08/23/10

You don’t always need a filter for great polarizer effects

This Article Features Photo Zoom

No sunglasses

With Sunglasses

Recently, I was fortunate to spend a week on the beach in Jamaica. This wasn’t your average photo outing, it was my honeymoon. So I took a minimal kit: a point-and-shoot pocket camera.

As a photographer, being in any gorgeous location without my normal abundance of DSLRs and lenses was a bit disquieting, but all the frozen drinks and warm sun helped me get over it. Still, I did want to take a few pictures and I wanted them to look as good as possible. Mostly I wanted to show the beautiful seascape, which would benefit greatly from a polarizer.

Through a series of unfortunate accidents I had just days earlier stepped off the plane and broken my sunglasses. A visit to the sunglasses shop provided me with even better optics than I had when I arrived: nice Ray-Bans. Nice polarized Ray-Bans.

Can you see where this is headed? Yes, I used my sunglasses as a polarizer on my point-and-shoot. And it worked pretty well. I’m never going to suggest that a makeshift sunglass polarizer is an ideal fix, but I’ve got to be honest—it worked better than expected. And much, much better than nothing.

No sunglasses

With Sunglasses

To turn your polarized sunglasses into a polarizer filter (if you use nonpolarized sunglasses, all you’re creating is a neutral-density filter that may not actually be terribly neutral), just hold the sunglasses as close to the camera lens as possible. This will minimize the chances of glare and flare, which may never go away completely, depending on your position relative to the sun. That’s why trial and error is also important. The only other thing to do is to make sure you’ve got the glasses oriented in the best direction for maximum polarizing effect. To test this, just wear your sunglasses and tilt your head to check.

Am I suggesting you throw away your filters? Heck, no. I am suggesting that the next time you find yourself on a beach somewhere and you’re ill-prepared for photography, don’t hesitate to think outside the box. Your polarized sunglasses will provide many of the same benefits as a polarizer filter—including deeper-blue skies, better color saturation and less glare in the scene overall. And that almost always results in better pictures.

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