A circular polarizing filter is an essential part of any landscape photographer’s toolkit. STC's Hybrid CPL Filter makes it so easy to remove the glare from reflected surfaces like water or glass.
Made of tough Schott B270 glass, this filter is designed to allow top transmission of 65% with uniform 70% polarization. Simply put, you can get great images without color cast or strange artifacts in your image.
Features
PURE Hybrid CPL is STC’s globally unique coating technology designed to render natural, evenly balanced scenery that closely matches human visual perception. It moderately reduces localized reflections and atmospheric haze, restoring more scene details without causing color shift. With an ultra-low light reduction level, it doubles as an excellent polarizing and protective filter for travel photography. However, for situations requiring stronger reflection suppression, switching to the SHV CPL is necessary to achieve up to 99% polarization.
Hybrid CPL is the predecessor of PURE, originally developed to suit the preferences and environments of Asian users. It produces a slightly cooler (bluish) color temperature tone.
SHV CPL is specifically developed for maximum polarization performance (up to 99%). Its strength lies in significantly reducing surface reflections (note: 100% metallic reflections cannot be eliminated) and diffused atmospheric light, while enhancing overall color saturation and contrast (sunlight enhancement may slightly shift tones toward yellow). The trade-off is that under clear blue skies, it may cause uneven deepening of certain areas, such as making parts of the sky appear deep blue or blue-black.
Please note: Reflections cannot be fixed in post-processing, as overexposed highlights lose recoverable image data. To effectively control reflections, a proper filter must be used during the initial capture.
We polish our lenses to a flatness of ±20μm for optimal imaging, with no bright spots or impurities above 20μm. Then we add our eco-friendly EU RoHS 2.0 standard double-sided multilayer nanocoating that is hydrophobic, anti-reflective (AR), anti-smudge (AS), wear-resistant, and antistatic, making it very easy to keep clean while also defogging quickly.
For the rim, we use precision machining for a tough but lightweight aluminum alloy frame. The super slim 6mm design reduces vignetting when using a wide-angle lens. The inner circle is treated with non-stick Teflon and a matte black finish and the embossed frame is easy to rotate. The shock-absorbent frame also reduces the chance of damage to your lens if it takes a knock.