Filter to remove window reflections?

[Davidk]

On various holidays I've often found that in video or photo images, a window reflection - eg from a bus or car - mars what is otherwise a good shot, even tho it's taken hurriedly of a passing scene with no time to compose it. Sometimes its not just the sun-angle which is the problem but curvature in the glass itself. Anyone who's travelled Canada on the Rocky Mountaineer train in Gold leaf will appreciate what the curved overhead windows do to spectacular mountain shots.

Can anyone suggest a filter that would remove reflections from an image?

Davidk

[Terfyn]

Your filter should be on the camera - not in VideoStudio.
Have you tried a polarising filter on your camera?

[Davidk]

True. And for the Pentax SLR I have both a sun hood and several lens filters. These days I use that camera with a telephoto lens for the distance shots one would take eg from a river cruise boat. But it's bloody heavy to lug around, and attaching filters assumes the images are fairly stationary - which is a big assumption, usually. Got tired of a sagging shoulder from the camera bag, so eventually I joined the crowd and I got a Canon compact, which has no ability to attach an external lens filter, or sun hood. There is an ability to electronically enhance colours (with a 'filter'). The JVC video camera I use just can't do anything like filtering an image.

However fitting a filter to an SLR is still a time consuming effort. And the camcorder and canon compact, just hasn't the facility. Moreover, with many images that are really worth getting, one is on the move when they happen: there just isn't time to do much more than point n shoot.

And so far, I've lived with images with reflections - or more accurately, not used them, whether they are stills or video. But it occurred to me that a video filter might exist which could remove some of that refection effect - and thus the question.

Davidk

[Terfyn]

How can you remove what is already there? PaintShop Pro has a process to overwrite features with background but this would need to be applied to every frame and you would need the background information to replace the reflection which has blanked it out.
I can and do fit a polarising filter to my Panasonic HC-V750 in order to eliminate reflection problems and it works very well. It is always best to start with as perfect raw material as possible and not expect VS to clean up every mess.

[aljimenez]

I pretty much agree with the answers you have received already. I have never had to deal with your problem as I will pop in a polarizing filter if I am going to be behind a glass or if the sun is very bright. Visit the NewBlue website and scan their extensive set of filters; they might have one that will help you, but I doubt it.

The second thing I want to suggest is to look into mirrorless cameras from Panasonic and Olympus. They have 4/3 sized sensors that are very good quality nowadays. The system goes by the acronym MFT. All the cameras use interchangeable lenses, some of the lenses have incredible quality. The cameras from Panasonic capture very high quality video, even 4K, in addition to photos. Some MFT cameras are incredibly small and way above old Point&Shoot compact cameras with fixed lenses and tiny sensors. In my opinion, Point&Shoot cameras are dinosaurs, replaced by modern smartphones. I am telling you this because of your complaint of heavy equipment; going down to Point&Shoot cameras is not serving you well.

Al

[RobertOZ]

True. And for the Pentax SLR I have both a sun hood and several lens filters. These days I use that camera with a telephoto lens for the distance shots one would take eg from a river cruise boat. But it's bloody heavy to lug around, and attaching filters assumes the images are fairly stationary - which is a big assumption, usually. Got tired of a sagging shoulder from the camera bag, so eventually I joined the crowd and I got a Canon compact, which has no ability to attach an external lens filter, or sun hood. There is an ability to electronically enhance colours (with a 'filter'). The JVC video camera I use just can't do anything like filtering an image.

However fitting a filter to an SLR is still a time consuming effort. And the camcorder and canon compact, just hasn't the facility. Moreover, with many images that are really worth getting, one is on the move when they happen: there just isn't time to do much more than point n shoot.

And so far, I've lived with images with reflections - or more accurately, not used them, whether they are stills or video. But it occurred to me that a video filter might exist which could remove some of that refection effect - and thus the question.

Davidk

I have a Canon G9 compact and fortunately this camera has the ability to add an extension tube to which can be added a range of filters, I have and use the wide angle, telephoto and polarizing filters, adding these to the camera does not increase the weight by much, the extension tube can be a hassle, so care is needed to avoid damage.
With a standard camera a workaround when taking photos through glass is to have the lens touching the glass then try to remove as much light source behind the camera as you can

[Davidk]

As to removing what is there already - generally agreed, but I don't have a great exposure to video filters - using 2 or 3 mainstream ones generally - with virtually no experience with New Blue, Boris or others. But it's very obvious from the forum posts that others there do. So as I've said I thought I'd ask.

And there are useful kernals in the comments so far.

New Blue - a google search turned up a range of weblinks for newbluefx.com but ALL of them returned a blank page. no 404 errors or site unresponsive messages, just a blank page.

The camera makers might have suggestions about hoods and filters for the specific items, and I've posed questions. The manuals for them just don't mention those things at all. No answers yet. Not sure that Canon will be able to help because for the SX280HS the retractable lens and cover are major obstacles, but the JVC camcorder might have something positive, assuming accessories for that are still available: I've just noticed - duh! - outside the lens cover but inside the lens frame there's a small 2mm wide thread that filters or a hood might screw in to. I've used this one so often I just look to see if the cover is open or closed.

Re the comments on camera types - useful for when the current item either fails or gets pensioned off. Not sure when that will be. But I don't think compacts are really dinosaurs - you only have to look at how many there are (everyone I saw on my recent holiday tour had one, that fitted the hand nicely. Only one other person had an SLR like mine) to understand that. So it may be that commercially the heavy but capable SLR's are the ones in danger of extinction.

[aljimenez]

Here is link to NewBlue website: https://www.newbluefx.com/
As for your post about Compact cameras being everywhere, take a look at this graph
https://photographylife.com/is-there-re ... es-volumes and any other graph showing sales of cameras. Here is Canon:
http://gadgets.ndtv.com/cameras/news/ca ... ump-686017