CPL vs ND grad to enhance sky

[Craikeybaby]

How do people decide to grab the ND grad filter or the CPL filter when setting up a landscape shot?

Is it something like grey skies ND grad, blue skies CPL?

 

[markmullen]

With blue skies it depends on what direction I'm shooting, if the sun is directly in front or behind me and I know a CPL won't help much, or I'm using a wide focal length and know I could get weird results with a CPL I'll use a grad and underexpose the sky a little. If there are bright clouds I'll sometimes use a CPL with a grad stacked behind it, I keep a foundation kit built up with just one slot and the Lee 105mm CPL mounted on an adaptor ring for situations like that.

With bright white or grey skies I stick with grads, more often or not using hard edged grads.

 

[allymac]

Remember a CPL won't darken the clouds in the sky which on a sunny day are likely to be the brightest part of the scene.

 

[Woodsy]

Grads and CPL's (which are in fact linear polarisers with quarter wave plates behind them) are entirely different things, and as such should be used for their specific purposes. As said above, a CPL wont darken clouds beyond that of the overall effect it has at cutting out a proportion of the light hitting it. Grads do not exhibit any wave plate properties, and so will darken everything that hits it according to it's response curve (which is ideally as flat as possible across the visible spectrum).

 

[jerry12953]

I often use both. Its rarely that I take a blue-sky landscape without a polariser - in fact I have one glued to each of my lenses. lol

Despite this white clouds in a blue sky can often still be blown out and to combat this I often use a 1 stop hard grad as well. Skies can sometimes look un-naturally dark in this situation with a 2 stop grad.

To dramatise a really moody sky I will add the two-stop grad, and sometimes a 1 stop as well. Depending on the angle of the sun I may or may or may not the polariser - sometimes its just not worth it. (Polariser is ineffective into or away from the sun)

I find that as dusk approaches a polariser can add a slightly unpleasant darkening to a blue sky and I may not use one then.

Polarisers are realy useful in other situations as well, in woodland and to saturate colours where wet or shiny vegetation is a major feature of the image.

 

[andyscott]

Both, easy as that, pretty much always need a nd grad just to bring the clouds down a little, and 90% of landscapes has a CPL on

 

[Les McLean]

Very rarely use a polariser, as I often use wide angles with landscapes (17mm on a FF body), using a polariser more than often gives an very patchy sky, particularly the blues, so I avoid using one for this reason, I'll occasionally use one on running water shots, partly to slow the shutter down, partly to avoid reflections.

ND grads are my most used filters for landscapes.