Circular Polarizer

It's been months that my Circular Polarizer(CPL) has been sitting in my drawer collecting dust ever since I bought it.

I wasn't until recently that I notice that an impact and 'umphhhh' it creates in one of my friend's photo that I finally decided to dig it out from my drawer and decided to give it a try myself.

It took me a while to pick up how to actually use this thing.

Here's some Disadvantages that I've found out using a CPL:-

1. it instantly drop your shutter speed down by around 4 freaking stops.
2. thus, making snapping moving objects (monkeys etc) virtually impossible.
3. it takes some gut feeling to get to the desired result that you want.

Of course, there are the Advantages as well once you've got it right:-

1. It totally eliminates glare, which makes the picture kinda having a washed out feeling.
2. It totally eliminates reflection, which sometimes 'distract' the attention from the viewers.

-or-

You can totally make the reflection 'clearer' and more detail, if that is actually what you wanna achieve.

Here's a sample of one of the photos taken. (move mouse over to see changes)

Notice that without CPL (1st pix), the photo looks kinda washed out, glarry, and the river is very distracting with reflection of the sky.

With the CPL, the reflection is being eliminated, and no more washed out feel, which kinda makes the colors more vibrant and non-saturated. 

( ps:- photos are not photoshopped )