A polarizer would have helped cut out the bright spots. If it had been summer, I would likely have had a CP on my lenses most of the time. But since it was winter, I really couldn't afford to the light loss. As it was, I had to boost the ISO on most of my shots, not to mention that I had some fairly slow shutter speeds to deal with. The other problem is that it's kind of a pain to clean the raindrops and mist off of my multicoated CPs.