Polarizing or Neutral Density Filter??

[houseng]

I am deciding whether to buy a polarizing or a neutral density filter. can anyone help? here is my problem with my camcorder: when shooting under bright sunlight.. the bright part will be very bright such as shooting at a white floor...the floor is reflected by bright sunlight therefore it appears total white to my camcorder, but my camcorder has auto exposure so the subjects are fine. but when i decrease the exposure of my camcorder, the floor will look better but the subject becomes darker..

is there anyway to balance the subject and the background ?

by the way...isn't ND filter same with the exposure control? ND filter is used to darken the picture, so why not use the manual exposure control to do that?

[D_Knife]

unless your floor is metal a polarizer won't do a lot of good
but then again a ND won't either
true it will decrease the brightness of the floor - but at the cost of the people as well

you could-
-change the lighting so the floor is not so bright
-change your shooting angle so your not looking at the floor
-get a half-ND and decrease only the floor, though these might not be easy to get in a camcorder size (most common for 52-58mm camera size)

[JimJohnD]

You could get a gradiant filter. Most of the time people use them to add color to the sky and have the clear end at the bottom. You can flip the filter over and have the darker tint at the bottom and the clear at the top. But as was said neither of the mentioned solutions will really do what you want. They come in different colors but black or gray shoud do something like you are looking for.

Try some thing like....
http://www.tiffen.com/color_grad_filters_pics.htm

[vitualis]

I am deciding whether to buy a polarizing or a neutral density filter. can anyone help? here is my problem with my camcorder: when shooting under bright sunlight.. the bright part will be very bright such as shooting at a white floor...the floor is reflected by bright sunlight therefore it appears total white to my camcorder, but my camcorder has auto exposure so the subjects are fine. but when i decrease the exposure of my camcorder, the floor will look better but the subject becomes darker..

is there anyway to balance the subject and the background ?

by the way...isn't ND filter same with the exposure control? ND filter is used to darken the picture, so why not use the manual exposure control to do that?

A circ polariser can help in this setting. Reflected light (regardless of whether it is metal or not) is always partially polarised so on the right setting, you can definitely improve/reduce the glare from reflected lighting. It's probably something worthwhile having anyway...

A null density filter is more useful for a still camera -- or at least, something where you can control the shutter time. By using a null density filter on a still camera, you can then either use a larger apeture, or use a longer shutter time.

Best regards.

[cbkilner]

In bright conditions, I use an ND filter. Under extremely bright conditions, the camcorder's exposure control can run out of room - the aperature can only be closed down so much and the shutter speed can only go so high before the picture starts looking too jittery. The ND filter helps bring the exposure control into the middle of its range, where it has the best control due to more choices.

The gradient filter mentioned above might be a solution if it is impossible to frame the subject differently, but I think that the best solution is to simply shoot the scene differently. At a different or low enough angle, the floor can be eliminated from the shot - shooting the subject(s) tighter will also take the floor out of the frame - and, of course, shooting with the sun at your back always helps.