Can a polarizing or UV filter reduce bluish window flare in a backlit photo?
Asked 12/21/2015
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I photographed an interior in an old tenement house with strong window light in the frame, using a Canon EOS 1000D and Canon 50mm f/1.4 USM with no filter. When I included more of the bright window, I got bluish reflections/ghosting in the image. Shielding the lens with my hand didn’t help. Would a polarizing filter or a UV filter fix or reduce this?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
10y ago
2 Answers
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No. Adding filters will only make this worse.
The reflection in your picture is not actually in the scene, so there is nothing a filter can get rid of. The ghost image is caused by reflection between lens elements. Therefore, adding another possible surface light can bounce off of will make things worse.
You might wonder why light is bouncing between the lens elements in only this picture. Actually, it's always doing this. You don't normally see it because these reflections are highly attenuated by lens coatings. For a normal scene, the reflections are so dim compared to the direct light from the scene that you don't notice them.
In this case, the light coming from the window was so much brighter than the very dim light from the stairs, that the reflection was significant relative to the stairs. If you were to expose for the window light, then the rest of the picture would appear black, and the reflected light would be so dim as to probably not be noticeable.
Originally by user7603. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user7603
10y ago
0
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Probably not. What you’re seeing is lens flare/ghosting caused by very bright light from the window reflecting between lens elements. Because the unwanted reflection is being created inside the lens, a UV filter will not fix it—and adding extra glass can make it worse.
A polarizer might help only a little in some situations by darkening polarized sky light, which could slightly reduce a bluish flare, but it’s not a reliable cure for this kind of on-axis flare.
More effective options are to change the shot rather than add a filter: recompose so the brightest light is less direct, shoot at a different time of day when the sun is less intense or less direct, or otherwise reduce the brightness difference between the window and interior. Since the light is coming straight toward the lens, using your hand as a hood won’t do much here.
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