Kenko
58mm Circular Polarizer Lens Filter

Circular Polarising Lens Filter

Polarizers come in two varieties, Circular Polarizers (CPL) or Linear Polarizers (PL). Generally, linear polarizers are best for manual focus cameras, and circular polarizers are best for autofocus. The reason for this is that with a linear polarizer, many autofocus and metering systems have problems focusing or metering light. When light rays reflect off of a surface, they become polarized. Polarizing filters allow you to basically select which of these light rays you want to allow to pass through. Polarizing filters allow you to remove reflections from any non-metallic surface, such as glass, water, granite countertops, etc. They also increase clarity and vibrance of colors, and drastically improve the appearance of a blue sky. By increasing the contrast between the sky and clouds, and darkening the blue of the sky, they make for some very vivid sky shots.

Light rays which are reflected by any surface become polarised and polarising filters are used to select which light rays enter your camara lens. PL (Linear Polarising) and PL-CIR (Circular Polarising) 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. KENKO's polarising filters do not affect the overall color balance of a shot.

How to select the correct Polarising filter:

Many of today's cameras use semi-silvered mirrors or prisms to split the light entering the viewfinder in order to calculate exposure and focusing distance. PL (Linear Polarising) filters can sometimes interact with these items to give unpredictable exposure or focusing. So we recommend that you choose a PL-CIR filter unless you have a manual focus camera which has no beam splitter.