Product Description

Light rays that are reflected by any surface become polarized and polarizing filters are used to select which light rays enter your camera lens. PL (Linear Polarizing) and PL-CIR (Circular Polarizing) filters have the same effect, but it is important that you choose the correct version for your camera. They allow you to remove unwanted reflections from non-metallic surfaces such as water, glass etc. They also enable colors to become more saturated and appear clearer, with better contrast. This effect is often used to increase the contrast and saturation in blue skies and white clouds. HOYA's polarizing filters do not affect the overall color balance of a shot.

Product Details

• Brand: Hoya
• Model: 0555
• Dimensions: .10 pounds

Features

• Designed to adjust brightly reflected light especially sunlight (reflected off of water or snow) and reduce unwanted glare
• The controlled dual-layer filter adjusts for axial variants to gain the optimal settings for your needs
• Fits the front of lenses that have 55mm filter-mounts

Customer Reviews

Great for water shots
Great filter for taking pictures over the water or ocean. Removes all 'haze' found when not using a filter.

A 'must-have' accessory for your camera...
This filter works great with my Panasonic DMC-FZ50 10.1MP Digital Camera with 12x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom (Black).

As the other reviewer said, this filter is great with water shots where it cuts out the reflection, enabling you to see beneath the waves. The color balance is completely neutral as far as I can tell. However, due to the polarizing efftect, some colors like the green on leaves actually look more natural due to the removal of glare. Also, I can detect no distortion or loss of detail, even on enlarged 10MP pictures.

It must be noted that the use of a circular polarizing filter will require you to adjust the aperture settings in daylight by two 'F stops' or shutter speed by two levels to compensate for the lower light. For example, if without the filter your camera's setting is F8 @ 1/500 sec, the setting with the filter would need to be F4 @ 1/500 sec, F5.6 @ 1/250 sec or F8 @ 1/125 sec. Typically, your camera will automatically compensate in Auto mode. But keep in mind that if you shoot in low light you may need to use a tripod.

Adjustable polarizer
Not having formal training, I wasn't exactly sure what to expect with a "circularizing" polaroid lense.

Basically, it's a normal, polarizing lense, free floating in a ring.

You screw the ring onto your camera, and the polarizer is still free to spin.

It's not a circularly polarizing lense, rather, it lets you adjust which angles of reflection are blocked.

So, you have reflections from location X, and you spin the ring until they go away.

It's amazing how much difference it makes to filter out glare and reflections. Your mind does this automatically when looking around, but when looking at a photo, you really need one of these to take care of it for you.