Lense Flare/glare off the water

[aubintbay]

Help!!! I tried taking a few pictures today looking back towards the edge of the falls to try and capture the look of the "infinity pool" when you look downstream. To the eye the sun was making a really nice reflection on the water but I could not quit figure it out. I guess what i'm asking is for this type of shot where is a good starting point. When I realised I had a problem I tried several different and obviously uninformed/unorganzed moves. There must be an "organized approach" to getting this kind of pic. I'm just not sure where to start and where to go once I start. The camera is a rebel xsi and I had a polariser on it.

[JAS_Photo]

Basically, if you shoot into the sun, you will probably get flare. If you use your lens hood and shield your lens you can reduce some of the flare. Pointing your camera at a different angle may help or waiting for the sun to not be so high in the sky. Shoot at the "golden hour" for best effect (one hour after sunrise and one hour before sunset). Generally when you look through your lens, you can see the flare and sometimes flare can be a good thing, well handled. Others can probably give you a few other ideas as well.

[Richard]

If your a hat wearer, and can shot steady with one hand, you can always use your hat as an extended lens hood to block the evil lens flares...

sometimes though they can be a desired effect.

[Iguanasan]

Well, you had a polarizer so you are off to a good start. Have you used the polarizer much? A lot of people don't understand that they must be rotated to orient with the angle of the reflections. Used correctly, they will remove reflected light. The lens hood is a good friend in these situations as well. The lens hood, however, will not help if you are shooting directly into the sun. I wish I had a whiteboard handy to draw this out but basically, lens hoods prevent light from coming in at an angle and causing all those lens flares and such which can ruin a shot.

Unless someone has a better idea the best suggestion I could make would be to arrive at your destination at a different time of day and let the light come in from more of an angle. This would probably not let you capture the wonderful reflection that you saw but it might help you capture the "infinity pool".

[Marko]

All good suggestions everyone!
aubintbay - you never mentioned if you used as lens hood.
Iggy is correct - EVEN with a lenshood you are shooting into the sun here so you risk flare, but the lenshood gives you more leeway to slightly vary your angle to reduce or possibly eliminate it.

[aubintbay]

Hey all. Thanks for the input. It appears I was trying to do something near impossible or at least very hard. OOPS! I have a polariser but I need a lot more practice with it. My problem is that to my eye as I adjust it I do not see a lot of diff in the viewfinder. I will definitely work on that.
I have no lense hood but you can bet I will soon.
I wear a hat all the time but until now had not considered it a piece of valuable photo hardware!!!
I will hopefully post some improved pics soon.

[Andrew]

The polarizer works on reflected light coming from something that is being lit by the sun and bouncing off in your direction. They work best when the sun is off at a 90 degree angle to the subject doing the reflecting. Angles less than 90 reduce the effect of the polarization. This includes water drops in the air which is why on a wide angle shot you have different levels of effect across a broad sky. You see the light(blue sky) at a different reflected angle from one side to the other so the polarizer will have more effect and the sky in the photo will be darker on one side of the picture. A good way to see the effect is to take two pair of polarized sunglasses, put one lens of each together and rotate the glasses. As you turn it gets darker. To understand how is works, spread out your fingers on both hands as wide as you can and put them together in front of you with your fingers on top of each other. You can see the gaps between the fingers letting light through. Now rotate your hands. The space between your fingers where light gets through will get smaller until you get to the smallest when your hands are at 90 degrees then get larger again. Reflected light comes in from many angles. Polarizing is done with verticle lines like the boards in a fence. At the smallest they will be small squares. Just like the little squares you see coming off of a windshield when you have your polarized sunglasses on.

Lens flare is sunlight directly hitting the lens. Because it is straight on, no refletion, the polarizer doesn't have the impact because it is not reflected nor is it at 90 degrees. To stop flare you need to stop the light from hitting the front of the lens directly. A hat, a tree, a book, an umbrella, whatever, needs to shade the front. Only thing you need to watch for is to keep the hat, book or umbrella far enough to the side that it's not in the picture. A tree you can include in your composition.

Hope that helps.

Take a look at this as well.

Lens flare - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[mbrager]

Great explanation Andrew. Thanks for that.
Aubintbay: I took the liberty of attempting an edit. (you have editing permission turned on). Not very successful, but I did like your original picture enough to make the attempt. Was able to take out some of the lens flare and the glare with a gradient layer. It's a beautiful location.

[aubintbay]

Hey mbrager.....nice edit. I take it the editing was done in photoshop? That is certainly alot better than my original. Was the application of the gradient layer a big job or is that just a quick fix kinda move?? I'm not to familiar with the whole editing thing yet.

[mbrager]

I was trying to explore what is possible in editing. I just started using Photoshop Elements 9, which has a lot of new features. Well worth the price. The gradient layer is simple to add in. Because your photo was overexposed both top and bottom, I used a reversed, reflected black and white gradient to put bands of dark at the top and bottom of the photos. You can control the gradient placement and then change the opacity and blending mode of the layer to get different effects. There's an excellent healing brush that with a quick swipe took out the lens flares. It really only took me a few minutes. By the way, I really liked your photos taken from the other side of the falls with the sun behind you. Mike