CPF Banding

[Ju Ju Bean]

I shot some landscape pics with my Circular Polarizing Filter and when I had them developed there were bands of blue across the sky in my pics. Has this happened to anyone and do you have any suggestions on how to avoid it? I'm going skiing spring break and would love to be able to use this filter w/o it ruining my pics.

 

[deletedpenguin]

Can you post an example?

 

[mabas9395]

I'm sure there are others here that can explain it better, but it sounds like you had too wide of a lens on.

I don't normally suggest people go to Ken Rockwell for technical advice (insert your own KR joke here), but he sums it up in a way pretty easy to understand. There is a sample photo about half way down. http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/filters.htm

He says "The weird results on ultra-wide lenses are because the polarization of the sky varies from one end of the sky to the other. Polarization of the sky is maximum at 90 degrees from the sun, and none at the sun and 180 degrees from it. This is no issue with a tele lens, however with a super wide you are sweeping such a broad expanse that the polarizing effect will vary greatly across the sky. You often get a dark area in the sky, which usually looks nasty. I rarely use polarizers with ultra wide lenses."

 

[VVFF]

I shot some landscape pics with my Circular Polarizing Filter and when I had them developed there were bands of blue across the sky in my pics. Has this happened to anyone and do you have any suggestions on how to avoid it? I'm going skiing spring break and would love to be able to use this filter w/o it ruining my pics.

If it was just in the prints then it can probably be blamed on bad developing equipment which has difficulties with the fine blue gradient often caused by polarizing filters.

 

[jann1033]

I'm sure there are others here that can explain it better, but it sounds like you had too wide of a lens on.

I don't normally suggest people go to Ken Rockwell for technical advice (insert your own KR joke here), but he sums it up in a way pretty easy to understand. There is a sample photo about half way down. http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/filters.htm

He says "The weird results on ultra-wide lenses are because the polarization of the sky varies from one end of the sky to the other. Polarization of the sky is maximum at 90 degrees from the sun, and none at the sun and 180 degrees from it. This is no issue with a tele lens, however with a super wide you are sweeping such a broad expanse that the polarizing effect will vary greatly across the sky. You often get a dark area in the sky, which usually looks nasty. I rarely use polarizers with ultra wide lenses."

i've had something similar to this when i use my fisheye, no cp. it's true if you just really look at the whole sky you see different shades of blue but probably just don't notice it till you look at a photo. i can see where a cp would accentuate that and make it even odder looking. the normal non cp looks like this

 

[boBQuincy]

A polarizer will cause one area of the sky to be darker than others but will not cause banding by itself. Banding is caused by too few tonal values to give a smooth transition, often from editing a jpg. We can sometimes see banding in the histogram, showing up as gaps. Is this evident in the original file?

No need to insert a KR joke, just the reference is enough!

 

[Ju Ju Bean]

This is the original file and it looks fine. It printed awfully however and looks like a rainbow of blue going across the sky as if it has been resized terribly. It was taken at 55mm. Thanks for all of the input. I might try getting it developed somewhere other than Wolf and see what happens.

 

[Golf4food]

This is the original file and it looks fine. It printed awfully however and looks like a rainbow of blue going across the sky as if it has been resized terribly. It was taken at 55mm. Thanks for all of the input. I might try getting it developed somewhere other than Wolf and see what happens.

I would just assume a bad print and try elsewhere. I had a sunrise photo that came out green around the sun from the first developer, but just fine and yellow/orange only from the second. Some machines handle certain colors better than others.