Home > Consumer Reviews > Tiffen 52mm Circular Polarizer

If you have an autofocus camera and shoot photos outdoors, this filter needs to be attached to the end of your lens. (If you have a manual focus camera you need a linear polarizer) The polarizer darkens blue skies (if the sky is light blue, you get deep, rich blue) and eleminates glare and reflection in glass and water.

With this filter, you can take a photo of someone standing in front of a window and not have the glare or reflection of the window shooting back into the lens. It also helps you shoot indoors at an aquarium (you can take crystal-clear photos of the killer whales and dolphins without glare from the glass).

This filter can't take the photos for you, but it can make your photos look much more professional. The only thing to be careful of is the fact that the polarizer makes the image a little darker, so if you are shooting in dark light, you need a flash or a slower shutter speed.

This item is either not coated or has a single coating and thus any time sun hits the filter, it produces flare in the picture. Furthermore, after doing more research it turns out that these uncoated or single coated filters can cause up to 9% light loss vs multi-coated filters like Hoya S-HMC or B+W MRC filters. As for polarizer effect itself, I think it's amazing and you owe it to yourself to at least try it on a nice sunny day. (the sky and foliage will look completely different and alive)

The Tiffen circular polarizing filter does exactly what it's supposed to do, and it does it well. The threading fits on my Nikkor lenses perfectly, screws on and stays put. The rotating ring on the filter is not too tight, nor too loose and rotates very smoothly, staying put where it's set at. When comparing identical images taken with and without the filter, there are no noticable distortions or color shifts present.

What a revelation! For the longest time I had been taking photographs without a filter only to end up with hazy skies and washed out scenes near the water. I got this filter before my honeymoon to Tahiti and as a result I came back with fantastick pictures. You simply turn the filter to get the correct angle for the UV rays. Clouds appear crisper and blue skies are much more vivid. The filter also helps to drastically reduce reflections particularly off of water surfaces.

I have other Tiffen filters and I love their overall quality but I ordered this polarizer on-line and it was defective. After studying the lens itself, I found that it was assembled backwards! As you look through it from the male threaded side of the lens, there was no polarization but looking through from the female threaded side I would notice proper polarization (I set out a bowl of water with sunlight shining on it at an angle). I quickly returned this one and went to my favorite local camera store to purchase the same filter, at least I got to inspect it before buying. I highly recommend this filter but if you buy on-line be sure give it a close inspection as soon as you get it!