Home > Consumer Reviews > Hoya 52POL 52mm Polarizing Photo Filter

Although I don't use Hoya filters myself on my Leica and Rollei cameras, I have friends that use them and are quite happy with them, and I've used them on their cameras, too. They're good quality and at a reasonable price, which is more than I can say for the Leica and Rollei filters. So I thought I'd put in a plug for Hoya here even if I don't own any myself. Actually, I recently was given a Canon EOS Rebel for my birthday, which will make a perfectly decent knockabout, everyday camera when I don't want to carry my more expensive ones, and I'll probably get a few Hoya filters for it.

A polarizing filter is great for reducing unwanted glare from reflections, and will even help to enhance color and produce more saturated colors as a result. Remember that the filter's greatest effect is proportional to the sine of the angle with respect to the sun, which means that at 90 degrees the effect is greatest, and at 180 degrees, the least. This is no problem when using an SLR since it's all through the lens metering. But if you're a rangefinder user like me, you'll need to take this into consideration when correcting for your exposure. You can do this by using a spotmeter set to the exposure settings on your camera and then taking a reading with and without the polarizing filter in front of the spotmeter, subtracting the two, and then dialing in that correction on your camera. It's not 100% accurate but it's pretty darn close. This will enable you to get the most out of your filter. When I haven't had a spotmeter, I've just used bracketting to make sure I get enough exposure. Although that wastes an exposure or two, it usually works okay for those times when you don't have your meter.

I'm very happy with both the price and quality of this filter. I would buy it again.

The polarizing filter works fine. A linear polarizer was ordered and an circular polarizer was delivered. For the small difference it was not worth returning it.