Light Pollution Filters - Do they help a lot?

            Every time I post an image taken with a light pollution filter, I get a lot of questions whether they are helping a lot in light polluted skies.

My answer normally is rather long, but in a nutshell it is a "no". 

One of the problems with advertisments or reviews of these filters normally is, that they compare unprocessed images. In these, the filtered exposures seemingly show much more contrast. This however is mainly because the filters make the images more blueish/magenta and are thus hiding the yellow skyglow and not because there actually is more real contrast.

By simply adjusting the color temperature and the tint to equalize the overall look of the filtered and unfiltered images, most of the difference in contast is normally lost. This can easily be done in Photoshop or Lightroom by moving two simple sliders (takes just a few seconds). 

I do not say that these filters never make a difference, as it depends on various factors, like the light sources (sodium vapor lights profit more than LED lights), humidity, strenght of light pollution and whether you are tracking or not (you lose about one stop of light with these filters).

However, the maximum improvement I normally get is maybe about half a step on the Bortle scale.

As an image says more than a thousend words, I made the following comparison of two tracked single exposures of my recently posted panorama of the Rhine Falls. I incuded the unprocessed images in the upper row and the color balanced versions in the lower row.

What is your experience with these filters?

Taken on: July 5, 2019

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Light Pollution Filter

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