Polarizer on wide angle lens

<p>Hi,</p>

<p>My polarizer is apparantly too thick for my Nikkor AF-S 17-35mm lens. It causes an unpleasant vignetting. I would appreciate some advice on a thinner filter.</p>

<p>Best regards,</p>

<p>Jonas Fjellstedt</p>

<p>There are many "thin" polarizers made for wide-angle lenses at places like Adorama and B&H. They usually are more costly than the normal thickness, and may require a slip-on lens cap when they are mounted.<br>

You are mounting your polarizer <em>alone</em> , not on top of a UV or clear filter?</p>

<p>Yes, I usually remove the UV filter (which is thin) before I put the polarizer on.</p>

<p>When I browse the online stores there is unfortunately no mention about the thickness. Nor if I look at the sites of B+W and other manufacurers. It is somewhat of a djungle out there. </p>

<p>There camera stores where I live are too busy selling stuff that no serious photographer needs and are not able to help me.</p>

<p>Here's a link to B+W that lists "slim" polarizers.<br>

<a href="http://www.2filter.com/prices/products/bwslim.html">http://www.2filter.com/prices/products/bwslim.html</a></p>

<p>Nikon makes a "thin" polarizing filter which I useon that lens and it works well. Make sure that the vignetting you are seeing is truly vignetting rather than variation of polarization across a blue sky. This latter is not vignetting and is a potential problem with using any polarizer with a sufficiently wide angle lens.</p>

<p>I assume you're seeing this on either a film or other "full frame" body since you shouldn't see much of either problem on a Dx body with that lens.</p>

<p>The best slim polarisers I've used have been made by B+W- the MRC version, and the Hoya Super Pro 1. They are both optically very good and give nicely coloured photographs ( some polarisers don't.) The Hoya has the advantage of taking a lens cap or another filter. Its disadvantage is that it is much more difficult to clean and the coating is much more easily scratched. The B+W is the exact opposite. I have both and the B+W is very slightly slimmer- which might or might not be relevant to usage on your lens. But both manufacturers make such a variety of filters and change their specs often so its hard to tell. </p>

<p>You might want to take note of the point alluded to above. Polarisers used with wide angle lenses do tend to produce a rather artificially exaggerated variation in blue saturation in skies across the frame. If your response to that is to avoid polarisers with a very wide lens then the whole vignetting issue might assume considerable irrelevance.</p>

<p>If you insert the word <em>thin </em> into your search plus the filter size you may find what you want. Also at Camerafilters.com they list them as "CPL filters for very wide angle lenses" (<a href="http://www.camerafilters.com/pages/cpl.aspx">link</a> ). The B+W filters may be the best, but if Hoya, etc. are good enough for you they cost less.</p>

<p>Thanks guys for you comments!</p>