I'll leave it to everyone else to debate the various brands. I want to touch on two items:
- Wide Angle Lenses & Polarization - The Angle of View can become too wide for use with a polarizer - where the polarization effect is not able to be uniformly applied across the lens. That usually occurs around the mid 20's in focal length.
- Polarizing filter & Stitching - This is just an extension of the above. As you slide from frame to frame (overlapping), you are changing the angle with the sun, so even if you are using a focal length well longer than the mid 20's, your polarization effect is going to vary from frame to frame and your end result will be uneven causing some stripping, where the images are stitched. You will not have a uniform exposure across the frames.
Wide angle lenses tend to treat the light a bit differently, and inherently have a better/higher appearance of saturation of colors with their rendering. This might have been the effect you were seeing on various images and just assumed a polarizing filter.
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PS - Since I live in Aridzona - the best time of day for the Grand Canyon is sun rise and sun set, along with the hours around that time. The
absolutely worst time is 10am to 3pm, when the sun is high in the sky and the colors will be washed out. To counter this to some degree - you can use a neutral density filter. Also, with a tripod, you can get a LOT after the sun goes down. One more thing. Clouds are your friend, since they will create shadows and streams of light. So, if you have clouds or overcast skies - you are in luck!
The folks load up in the bus and ride all morning to get to the park at 10am. They take a look at the hole in the ground, and mutter - what is so great about it - can't see a thing. It does not look like the pictures at all. By 11am they are ready to get out and leave the park - and go do something interesting.
Last edited by interested_observer; 04-18-2015 at 09:07 AM.