Day Trip

I took a little day trip out to a couple nature preserves to try out my polarizer filter. I went to the Lockport Prairie Nature Preserve and to Lake Katherine in Palos Heights. I had higher hopes for the day. Some of the prairie shots turned out so-so, but I didn't have very good luck at Lake Katherine.

First, the polarizer filter seemed to cause more trouble than good (though, to be fair, I wasn't shooting many sky shots at Lake Katherine). The exposure just came out all wrong on most of my LK shots. The colors were drab and there seemed to be a haze on any photo that didn't have sun lighting. Anything in the shade turned out awful and washed out. I was surprised, considering that these filters are supposed to saturate colors and provide better contrast. It seemed like it did the opposite in most cases.

/edit: I have a feeling part of my color problems lie in the fact that I switched my in-camera color space to Adobe RGB 1998. My last two shoots have felt very drab. I'm switching my in-camera setting back to sRGB and we'll see what happens...

Some of the prairie shots with sky in them turned out decent, but I'm not fully convinced that it was due to the polarizer.

I'm pretty bummed, as I was careful to read lots of reviews when I bought this filter a few months ago. I knew I couldn't afford a "pro" filter, but this one was not cheap, either. It's a $75 B+W 58mm circular glass polarizer.

I could probably use more practice rotating the filter for proper effects, but all in all it was a disappointing outing.

Here's one "keeper" shot that I took. I have no idea what it is (probably a weed!), but I like the bokeh effect.



Here's the entire set of photos - at least the ones worthy of uploading:
Lockport Prairie & Lake Katherine Day Trip

What is Bokeh?

What is bokeh?

In photography, Bokeh is a Japanese word - the transliteration of a Japanese word for "blur" - describing the subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image projected by a camera lens. For example, in some images the background may be deliberately caused to be out-of-focus to reduce distractions and to emphasize the primary subject.

-- Wikipedia -Bokeh

I've seen the word "bohek" mentioned on the DPS forums a lot lately, but didn't really know what it meant until I came across an article posted by newbie (who doesn't seem to be a newbie at all!). The article is called "Bokeh Lesson from a Patient Bee" and I found it to be hugely helpful in explaining and demonstrating what good vs less than good bokeh looks like.

newbie goes on to give 4 detailed lessons on what makes good bokeh, including descriptions, examples of camera settings, and illustrative photos.

Very helpful! Thanks, newbie!