9-18 and Polarizer: pics from Mauritius, Indian Ocean

Just LOVE the 9-18 with polarizer mounted all the time ...

I took the 40-150, 14-45 and 20 mm and found the 9-18 to be used most of the time !

Enjoy and if you want some advices for individual travel and lodging in Mauritius, please contact me.

Comments wellcome !

Stefan

Poste Lafayette, Northeast:









Cap Malheureux, North:

















Blue Bay, Southeast:

nice work. I especially like the water shots!

Nice shots, Stefan.

What type of polarizer did you use?

Nice work. Polariser definitely came into its own on those water shots. Did you get any vignetting at 9mm?

Great colours and landscapes. IMHO you should have filled the foreground with interesting objects, otherwise with an UWA attention is dispersed.

Also I prefer not to use a PL with my 9-18, it has natural polarisation by itsself. Brightness or the Sky tones may suffer.

Did you find the Mauritius an expensive place to lodge? What you show seems untouched by tourism, which I like.

Am.
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amalric said:

amalric said:

Also I prefer not to use a PL with my 9-18, it has natural polarisation by itsself.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

no it does not.

(whatever "natural polarisation" is)

A B+W circular polarizer. Didn't notice any vignetting or other disadvantage. In my opinion the B+W even increases the overall sharpness !

Hi,

generally speaking you find the most expensive hotels in the world, at 1000 a night, with helicopters fllighing around, but I would hate to go there ! Mauritius public beaches are nicely maintained and you get a much better impression of the lovely people. But besides the South coast with deadly currents, there are not much really "wild" spots left, just some laid-back places which are not overrun.

We had four very charming family hotels with up to 10 people capacity maximum and they were all stunning. Picture 1 for example ist just in front of our appartment at Poste Lafayette. For a family of four we paid between 120 and 180 Euro a night, for all four people, including breakfast. These are low-season prices, around christmas you pay at least 50 % more. Rental cars (40-50 Euro a day), taxi (same) and food are much cheaper than lets say Italy, Spain or US. If you go out eating in a moderately looking but tasty beachfront restaurant you pay around 5-6 Euro per person. If you eat fried rice and fried noodles at the mobile beach vendors stalls you pay around 2-3 Euro.

So in total, no, if you don't spend your money on speedboat or catamaran rent and like small, cosy family run hotels, and if you don't need lobster for lunch but like local indian or chinese food, its actually quite cheap !

Here are the hotels I can only recommend:

Northeast, windy but my all time favourite hotel worldwide: http://www.lamaisondete.com/

Southwest, with clean, simple rooms for a real bargain, at 2 (!) meters distance from the sea, with the most breathtaking view of all the island : http://www.lamariposa.mu/

Mountains, huge farm with own wilderness, spectacular lodging, hiking and riding, just paradise: http://www.lavieillecheminee.com/pages_en/index_en.html

But the best is Blue Bay, South east. Go to Chantauvent guesthouse, at two minutes from the most spectacular corals of the whole island: http://www.chantauvent.com/

Don't be afraid: all names are frendch, but everybody speaks good English.

We will be back there next year !

Stefan

You are right of course, in principle, but being on a boat in the middle of a lagoon it is damn difficult to find a whatsoever foreground ! So, I knew that it might look a bit boring, but the surnatural beauty of the water colours is just all you will get there !

Stefan

That cemetery with the droopy trees in the background is very unique. It should be the cover for some horror book/movie. Thanks for sharing your great photos... Al
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Amateur Photographer of family mainly

Yeah I thought the freaky hanging vines over the cemetary was the coolest photo, but the rippling green water pictures are very nice indeed.

I too find a CPL sometimes brings out some extra perceived sharpness in photos ...

Looks a fantastic place. I hope to go there one day.

Be careful not to get too carried away with the PL. Its very easy to think the photos are looking great on the camera, and then when you get home find that the skys are too dark (or with a wide angle, a graduated polarisation due to the nature of wide angles being over 90 degrees)

After using a PL on Film for years, I found I needed it less and less with digital. I now prefer the results I can achieve with careful postprocessing, rather than a PL filter.

Eg



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yes, that photo is much better

The OPs photos look a stop underexposed; and a tad "grey". (the greyness can easily be fixed in photoshop.)

Always worth bracketing. Memory is cheap.

great illustration of old timers best filter! the shadows are a bit heavy though.

I think it always paid in film to bracket a bit with a polariser, so it would be good to do

With tripod work, it makes for easy exposure blending...

don't even think HDR please....! ;-)
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Nice shots, and wonderful blues. My question is, whenever I've used my polarizer(s) on my wide angles, I get an unevenness of the sky, sometimes if I'm at 90% to sun, my sky will be dark in the middle and lighter on edges, yet see none of this here. How did you combat this? The sky looks so even. Thanks...and looks like a dream of a place.
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Like the Joker said: Why so serious?

Thanks... yes, I was surprised myself not having any problems with uneven skies... I got that problem VERY much in April on a Marocco trip whre I abandonned the use of the CP because of unnatural looking skies. I cannot tell whats the difference betwen a Maroccon sky and a Mauritian sky (obviously, Maroccon skies are much clearer / less humidity), but no such problem in Mauritius !

if you have photoshop; duplicate the layer and set it to screen. This will fix the under-exposure problems and make the photos less gloomy. I'd also adjust the colour balance of the highlights towards blue/cyan.

Beach photography nearly always requires a exposure compensation of +1; possibly more. Might want to make it mor punchy than this example (but there is only so much that can be done with a screen-grab like this, there is almost no info in the histogram)

layer duplicated and set to screen; shadows lifted a little

Richt2000 said:

Looks a fantastic place. I hope to go there one day.

Be careful not to get too carried away with the PL. Its very easy to think the photos are looking great on the camera, and then when you get home find that the skys are too dark (or with a wide angle, a graduated polarisation due to the nature of wide angles being over 90 degrees)

After using a PL on Film for years, I found I needed it less and less with digital. I now prefer the results I can achieve with careful postprocessing, rather than a PL filter.

Click to expand...

I agree with respect to the sky. Especially with ultra WA, polarizers often result in (even more) uneven lighting, with some areas going to inky blue. Can still be quite desireable for water/vegetation, though.

The E-PL1 has a setting called "Shading Compensation" which can help with the light-falloff problem that polarizers cause. Maybe you had that turned on?