Polarizers - leave them on or take them off?

[tony_martin1]

<p>How many of you ya'll leave your polarizers on your lenses, even when not really required?<br>

Any reason to take them off, other than gaining an extra stop?</p>

[Matt Laur]

<p>I take them off. Not only are you losing some of your lens's speed, you've got two more layers of glass, plus the polarizing films, in between your subject and your sensor/film. That's more opportunities for flare and loss of sharpness. </p>

[JDMvW]

<p>Always take them off. Too much chance of the problems Matt points out. The only exception was most of a day I spent walking around old San Juan, PR. It was sunny bright and the polarizer reduced reflection and made the colors more saturated than they otherwise would have been.</p>

[g dan mitchell]

<p>Leave them off! They affect the image quality in multiple ways - they reduce light reaching the sensor/film, they affect reflections, they can alter color, it is possible that you can get reflections in the filter or even additional flare, the effect is unpredictable dependant upon the light.</p>

[ellis_vener_photography]

<p>unless you have absolute need for a polarizing filter don't use it.</p>

[luca_stramare2]

<p>I am with Ellis.</p>

[steven_clark]

<p>Leave them off. They're a little expensive to put on every lens, and not every camera I own has TTL metering.</p>

[luca_stramare2]

<p>The polarizer is a tool, as per any tool, use it when you need it. There are situation in which a polarizer helps a lot, for example when shooting trough a window or water, there are situation in which it is nice to have to reduce distance fog or enhance the color of water, and there are situation in which it is useless if not reducing the quality of your pictures. I have standardized all my lenses to 52 mm and 62 mm filter thread, hence for me having two polarizers (one each thread) and use them when needed is enough.</p>

[pvp]

<p>and it's 2 stops, not 1.</p>

[glenjo]

<p>Off. Unless it's very sunny and your shooting landscapes all day.</p>

[nathan_allworth]

<p>I would encourage you to consider what the polarizer is actually doing to the image and evalulate whether you want that effect in the image you're taking. Take it off when you aren't going to make use of the effect. If you shoot indoors with the lens that you leave it on, remember that you're losing close to 2 stops of light with the polarizer. Additionally the polarizer changes color temperatures and saturtion values, for some indoor light sources such as Tungsten this can be a very bad thing as these lights tend to be saturated and difficult to correct anyway.</p>