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Even with a good lens and camera, you might encounter challenges with reflections or uneven colors when capturing real estate images. The following ND filter vs polarizer will help you choose a filter that works best for your lighting conditions, helping to boost the overall appearance of your image.
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Generally, architectural, travel, real estate, and landscape photographers love to capture dramatic and more natural scenes, such as the blue skies and motion blur of water bodies, such as swimming pools.
Regardless of the type of lens you use, filters have emerged as one of the best tools you can use to control exposure as well as create more vivid colors in a photo.
Neutral Density (ND) filters are thin pieces of transparent glass mounted on the front part of your lens to help regulate the amount of light reaching the camera sensor.
There are varying types of ND filters like NEEWER 67mm ND Filter, each providing varying stops in blocking light, such as one-stop, two-stop, four-stop, or ten-stop. This allows you to capture with bright apertures and take long exposure images without overexposing your photo.
A polarizing filter is a tinted circular lens that you can use to intensify a picture's color and manage ghosting and surface reflections. Mostly, it is used by architectural and landscape photographers to reduce haze.
Haze normally occurs due to pollution, smoke, humidity, and dust present in the air, as they all reflect the sun's rays into your camera, resulting in images with reduced contrast.
Keeping in mind that polarizing filters like Nikon AF-S 50mm f/1.8 only remove light that is polarized in a certain direction, they are unsuitable for use with wide-angle lenses as they collect light from varying directions, causing uneven light distribution on your picture. It is, therefore, advisable to use them when capturing at 90 degrees to the sun.
Keeping in mind that polarizers and Neutral Density filters are different types of filters that you can use to alter the overall appearance of your images, they share some similarities in their usability. However, the two filters have varying uses when addressing certain issues, such as dull skies and water reflections.
Although a Neutral Density filter and a polarizer differ in how they reduce the amount of light reaching your sensor, they have the following similarities in their design
Although the two filters serve almost the same functions of blocking some light, they differ in appearance and usability. This makes them have the following design and performance differences.
Typically, when capturing doors or kitchen cabinets, there are higher chances that you will encounter reflective walls due to the interior lighting in the room, which might cause unpleasant reflections in your photos.
Using a slow shutter speed to capture motion blur or bright apertures to blur the background when capturing in bright lighting conditions can result in overexposed images. Adding an ND filter on your lens helps minimize the light, allowing you to use slower shutter speeds and bright apertures without overexposing your images.
This lets you take pictures of swimming pools in a real estate property without reflection. On the other hand, a polarizing filter doesn't prevent overexposure. Instead, it blocks polarized light from a certain direction, eliminating the distractive reflections on water bodies and making them appear more natural and vivid.
Keeping in mind that using a polarizer filter helps you produce vivid images when used at 90 degrees angle to the sun, it is advisable to avoid using it when capturing at sunset or sunrise when the light is behind. As the polarizer filter blocks out the polarized light, it minimizes the amount of light that reaches your sensor.
This makes the polarizers unsuitable for use in low-lighting conditions. On the other hand, although it might seem contradictory, ND filters are designed to be used even in low lighting when using long exposures.
Low ND filters such as ND2, ND4, ND8, and ND16 are designed for use in poor lighting conditions to create stronger motion blur when the shutter is open, and the subject moves. In most cases, this technique helps to blur out or eliminate the visibility of a moving subject in the frame.
The major distinguishing factor between an ND filter and a polarizer is the effect on the colors. Using polarizing filters helps maintain color contrast and saturation in your photos to appear clear and vibrant.
It helps darken clouds or add the natural blue color of the sky when capturing exterior photos of a property. Generally, having uneven saturation of colors on your image makes editing the photos in the post-production phase challenging.
This saves you the hassle of editing the colors during the post-production phase. On the other hand, an ND filter only controls the amount of light reaching the sensor and does not affect the colors in the image.
You can use an ND filter when capturing real estate exterior photos and want to create long exposures of the cloudy skies without resulting in overexposure.
In some instances, you might find that the exterior of the property you capture is full of passers-by that you don’t need in the resulting photo. Fortunately, an ND filter can allow you to get rid of the moving subjects from the scene by using slower shutter speeds.
Usually, slow shutter speeds blur the moving subject, making them disappear from the scene before the light is reflected from them is sufficient to create an image in the camera sensor.
When capturing the interiors of a property, there are chances of the light from your Speedlites or built-in camera flash causing distractive reflections on your image. A polarizer is an ideal option if capturing the sophisticated doors or kitchen cabinets in the interiors of a property, as it helps reduce glare and reflections.
Generally, a polarizer is better as it allows you to produce rich images with blacker shadows, more saturated colors, increased contrast, and photos with minimal. For instance, it can make a subject rich in colors, such as a rainbow painting, appear more intense and prominent than how human eyes can see.
Yes, you can use the polarizer and the ND filter together to eliminate unwanted reflections from highly reflective surfaces to produce images with enhanced contrast and color neutrality while using a slower shutter speed to blur out some parts of the frame.
Low-quality ND filters can affect image quality as they impart weird color casts that are difficult to correct, even during post-processing. Due to this, it is advisable to use high-quality ND filters and only use the filters only when you want to achieve a certain artistic effect on your images.
You should avoid using a polarizer when using wide-angle lenses like Canon as they make skies in your images appear uneven, with a graphic effect. You should also avoid incorporating a polarizer on your lens when capturing reflections on water bodies.
With the above ND filter vs polarizer guide, choosing which filter best suits the artistic effect you want to create on your real estate images is easier. Although they affect the image differently, both ND filters and polarizers are ideal for use in brightly lit conditions.
