Marumi 72mm Circular P.L- Review by VN Photo.

Hello and good day.

I'm gonna share my opinion and thoughts about the Marumi 72mm Circular Polarizer.
This one here is the standard or classic filter; Marumi names it "Marumi 72mm Circular P.L" and that's how it appears printed on the filter. I have a Japanese make ordered through eBay.

Click here > Go to the CPL filter review

Basics of a Circular polarizing filter (CPL)

Before we get into the review, let talk about the basic of polarization.
I'm gonna keep this simple as you might not be very keen in understanding the physics of this effect, me neither! I shall be referring the circular polarizing filter as CPL henceforth.
The CPL filter is the most popular must have for a photographer be it amatuer or proffessional.

So the story of polarization goes like this..

• light is non polarized and scatters in all direction, although it travels in a straight line.
• scattering light creates unwanted reflections that appear in our images.
• to avoid this we need to polarize the light entering our lenses.
• the CPL filter does the jobs of polarizing ( blocking particular direction of light ) and removing those unwanted reflection.
• think of the CPL filter as some sort of mesh that will allow light only in a particular direction as you rotate the filter and block others (reflections).

What can you do with the CPL filter?

• Remove unwanted reflections; off water surface, off glass doors/windows etc.
• make the sky rich blue. (read more on this below)
• saturate colors ( this is again the removal of reflections and glare that make the colors stand out)

Getting that rich blue sky!

Just adding a CPL in front of your lens wont make the sky rich in blue nor rotating the CPL filter will.
You need to understand how it works;
says its 12' O clock and the sun is right over your head now point your camera towards the horizon (any direction) and start to rotate the filter slowly, you should see the sky getting more bluish and the clouds stand out! if the sun is at the horizon the sky over you (camera lens axis at 90deg to the sun always) is where you will get maximum blue.

Illustration showing where you can look for to get rich blue sky w.r.t the sun.

          

CPL filter parts. 

OK, now you got your CPL filter. lets identify the parts of this simple filter.
it has a outer ring, the ring which you will use to adjust the polarization effect, the thread that attaches to the camera and of course the polarizer lens element.

CPL filter basic test.

Use this simple test to make sure your CPL filter is indeed one!
You will need a LCD screen (laptop, lcd tv, wrist watch will do) to begin with the test

• point the CPL filter towards the lcd screen, the thread, camera side should face you.
• now rotate the outer ring (see illustration above) and you should notice the filter turning dark! and hence blocking the light from the LCD screen
• keep rotating and you loop back between light and dark allowing and blocking light.
• Now reverse the filter (outer ring facing you) rotate the filter you should see some light color cast, blue to yellow or red to green depending on the make. The CPL filter will not block any light, just the changing color cast.
• a good quality CPL filter should turn dark against the LCD screen and should produce very faint color casts.

If your CPL filter does'nt react anything like mentioned above it isn't a CPL!

Buy yourself a quality polariser to use with your camera. Marumi, Hoya, Tiffen and B+W are some top brands in the market. Pay attention to the description on online shopping product pages, check with the seller if you have any questions and if you doubt their quality.

Hope you learnt something useful. Good day!
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