Are Heliopan circular POL-filters the best?

[Henrik]

Hi,
I was experimenting with my Heliopan 52mm circular polfilter, but I wasn't satisfied with the result. Found a review at www.photographyreview.com saying that Heliopan makes the very best polfilters, which only confused me further.

So now I ask you, clever ladies and gentlemen. Please compare the following two pictures.

My conplaint is that not only did the polfilter make most of the reflections vanish, it also stole a great deal of the details in the tubes.

The exposure of the two pictures is not exactly the same (for natural reasons - and because of AWB), neither is the view. And to be absolutely honest, I don't recall if I might have had the polfilter on in both pictures. But to my best knowledge I didn't. (Polfilters may be a wonderful thing, but they can be hard to trace in the picture's EXIF information.)

First, without the polfilter (ISO100, 1/100, f/5.6):



Second, with the polfilter (ISO100, 1/100, f/4.2):



Regards,
Henrik

[revi]

The reason to use a polarising filter is usually to get rid of reflections, so no surprises there.

To be honest, I don't see loss of detail with the polariser, but that one does seem slightly soft on the tubes.

As for checking whether the polariser was on in both pics: if it wasn't on in one of them, you'd see a 2-3 EV difference in exposure in your EXIF data (which are missing from the pics you posted). Changing the orientation of the polariser won't give such a large shift in exposure.

[Henrik]

The reason to use a polarising filter is usually to get rid of reflections, so no surprises there.

To be honest, I don't see loss of detail with the polariser, but that one does seem slightly soft on the tubes.

As for checking whether the polariser was on in both pics: if it wasn't on in one of them, you'd see a 2-3 EV difference in exposure in your EXIF data (which are missing from the pics you posted). Changing the orientation of the polariser won't give such a large shift in exposure.

Thanks for your clarifying answer. Meanwhile I discovered, that the pictures (unlike my preview) were only thumbnail size, so you actually didn't have a chance to judge them. Now they are bigger.

Regards, Henrik