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Uh, if you don't think this is real, try this simple test. Get a polarizing lens, walk over to the nearest body of water that can support a reflection.
Rotate the polarizer though 180 degrees or so. Amazing things, the polarizers. And even if the polarizer isn't helping clarity (they work some of the time but they are not magic) thew WILL change your exposure value. So if you are exposing manually, you will constantly have to change the EV. If you are on auto exposure, note that the camera has a delay of 1 - 2 seconds before exposure 'settles' If you are flying at any speed, you won't have enough time to get a frame by frame accurate exposure.
Oh, and I forgot you were taking stills - same principles except that if you go slow enough the auto exposure should hold pretty well. But stills have even a bigger problem - if the EV (exposure value) differs dramatically from shot to shot, the combined scene will look weird. You can fix this in Photoshop but it's a pain. In your particular case, I presume you are going to just look at hundreds of stills? Sounds exciting. So the combination problem might not apply. Video might be better - you will lose some resolution, not all that much as P3 stills tend to fall apart at pixel levels (as opposed to a modern 24+ megapixel DSLR that weighs more than the entire phantom). Easier enough to try.
From my experience with whales, I think the best sun angle is around 45 - 60 degrees. Straight up gives you more penetrance but way more specular reflection. Shallow doesn't penetrate and gives you reflections. (I don't use polarizers on whales because they have this annoying tendency to move).
If you are really **** compulsive and have some access to the lake, you could time lapse some static pictures to get an idea of the visual characteristics.
Do you know anybody with a magnetometer? Our local Civil Air Patrol has an old military one. In shallow water it would probably find something like that if the brass alloy had enough steel.
Rotate the polarizer though 180 degrees or so. Amazing things, the polarizers. And even if the polarizer isn't helping clarity (they work some of the time but they are not magic) thew WILL change your exposure value. So if you are exposing manually, you will constantly have to change the EV. If you are on auto exposure, note that the camera has a delay of 1 - 2 seconds before exposure 'settles' If you are flying at any speed, you won't have enough time to get a frame by frame accurate exposure.
Oh, and I forgot you were taking stills - same principles except that if you go slow enough the auto exposure should hold pretty well. But stills have even a bigger problem - if the EV (exposure value) differs dramatically from shot to shot, the combined scene will look weird. You can fix this in Photoshop but it's a pain. In your particular case, I presume you are going to just look at hundreds of stills? Sounds exciting. So the combination problem might not apply. Video might be better - you will lose some resolution, not all that much as P3 stills tend to fall apart at pixel levels (as opposed to a modern 24+ megapixel DSLR that weighs more than the entire phantom). Easier enough to try.
From my experience with whales, I think the best sun angle is around 45 - 60 degrees. Straight up gives you more penetrance but way more specular reflection. Shallow doesn't penetrate and gives you reflections. (I don't use polarizers on whales because they have this annoying tendency to move).
If you are really **** compulsive and have some access to the lake, you could time lapse some static pictures to get an idea of the visual characteristics.
Do you know anybody with a magnetometer? Our local Civil Air Patrol has an old military one. In shallow water it would probably find something like that if the brass alloy had enough steel.