Recently I took a "nature" walk, hoping to find a suitable scene to try my new neutral density filter #16. Some moving water, perhaps?
Along the Cherry Creek bike path, I found a rocky downslope that looked promising. The sun was a problem, I was shooting nearly straight into it, but because of the terrain and rocks, it was the only suitable spot for my tripod.
I set up and took an establishing shot (photo # 1), K10D, Pentax "A" 28mm, f/8.0, 1/60s, no hood, no CPL, no ND. Pretty bad, huh? Glare, washed out, no contrast. Yuk!
Photo # 2. Added a generic W/A lens hood, same f/8.0, same 1/60s shutter speed. Slightly better glare control and contrast, still not good.
Photo # 3. Added Marumi 49mm CPL set at max contrast, still using hood. The CPL lowered the shutter speed to 1/20s with the same f/8.0 aperture, so, about 1-1/3 stops compensation. Again, better contrast, sky and clouds improved, water flow slowed down but not great, overall.
Photo # 4. Now I added a ND #16 to the CPL and hood. Shutter speed 0.7s, f/11.0, we're getting somewhere! Much better contrast, colors and the water flow is much smoother.
Photo # 5. Increased f/stop to f/19.0, shutter speed 4.0 seconds, still using hood and CPL. Best contrast, glare is gone, water flow smoothed out pretty well.
In the interest of full disclosure, the ONLY PP used was a slight lightening/darkening of # 4 and # 5, to even out the brightness, there was a small difference in the overall value compared to # 1, 2, 3. That's it, no contrast changes, no color added, no boost, all photos are RAW, ISO 100, full frame. I used aperture priority, tripod, cable release. The EXIF will show a lens size variance, that's user error, I forgot to re-set it from the previous lens. No shake reduction anyway, it was turned off.
Eventually I tried f/22.0 and got a shutter speed of 6.0 seconds, but had moved the camera to a different scene; The water flow is even smoother. But, I wanted to show the same scenes here, for comparison.
Hope it's useful!
Ron