shooting through glass

Any tips on shooting through glass? I went to the British Museum with my daughter during half term, and got some good shots of antiquities behind glass using high ISO and no flash, manually setting the white balance: but also got some bad ones! I didn't think about manual focus until after I left though, perhaps this is the answer

Manual focus, careful lining up to avoid reflections and maybe a polarizing filter.

I've heard that hair spray is effective at killing the reflections on glass and chrome.

But I doubt they'd like it in the British Museum.

I have always found that a polarizing filter works very well - in good light

Many moons ago I saw an artefact in a museum display that I was very interested in so I carefully took a photograph of it using all the tips (except hairspray!) mentioned above. When I finished a gentleman asked me why I was so interested so I explained. As I walked away he pushed his disk camera [that dates this story) up against the glass and took a photo... with the built in flash! Somehow I think he might have been disappointed when his photos came back.

K.

The age of the glass plays a part too. Modern float glass is much better than earlier stuff. I know my kitchen windows (approx 100 years old) baffle the AF on my 100-300mm zoom as they've got all sorts of tiny ripples in them.

A rubber lens hood is handy as well, you can put it right against the glass. Again, it's probably frowned upon in museums, and maybe too close to the subject.

But somewhere like the top of the CN Tower in the glass enclosed restaurant it makes night pictures of the city possible.

You can use flash easily through glass if you get a rubber lens hood. Just put the hood against the glass to avoid reflection.

Polarising Filters won`t do much to reduce reflections but will help with glare (though at a cost of 1.5 -2 stops.) If it is possible i put the lens right up to the glass and manual focus in the subject. The old rubber lens hoods used to be very useful for this as you could alter the angle without letting any stray light in. I use a plain aluminium tripod so i sometimes have to cover the legs with something dark so that the reflection does`nt show. ( Memo to self - buy a black one next time!)

If i use flash then i place it away from the camera preferably on a different side of the glass case from the camera if possible.

Regards - Pete

Polarizers will reduce or remove reflections from glass and water, but not metal surfaces. The final effect depends upon the polarization of the light.