Exposure for Landscape Pictures
onel_m...@my-deja.com
pictures with bright skies. I just returned from
Yosemite National Park and shot nine rolls of
film (Kodak Royal Gold 100 ASA). In general, the
sky appeared white in most of the pictures
instead of blue. I shot the same scene multiple
times using different zooms (same lens) and the
wide angles showed more blue sky than the zoomed
shots, but not always consistent. I was using a
Nikon N70 with a 24mm to 120mm lens. What is the
trick to shooting landscape pictures that have
areas of multiple brightness (i.e. bright sky
with mountain bakground and rocks / trees in the
foregroud)? Should I use any special filters?
Should I have manually set the exposure instead
of letting the camera do the work? Please help!
I'm going to Hawaii in three weeks and I want a
better set of pictures.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Balazs Ujfalussy
1. Shoot between sunrise to approx. 10 am, and 6 pm to sunset. Otherwise
u get very contrasty light.
2. Use a polarizer. It darkens the sky, and also reduces contrast.
3. Use a graduated neutral density filter.
Have a nice time in Hawaii!
Balazs
Michael
I'll agree with Balazs but I'll change the priority list.
1) A polarizer is a MUST.
2) Sunset and sunrise give very warm and impressive results, the sun is not
so harsh and you can really capture the "feeling" of the scene.
If you are patient and you have carry a tripod you will take some really
beautiful shots just after the sunset, while the sky is still glowing with
all the warm colors.
3) I believe a half neutral density filter will be more useful.
4) Neutral density filter will help in a very bright day.
Michael
onel_m...@my-deja.com wrote in message <7spkkf$i2q$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>...
chris kelly
possibilties).
1. Print film and the developer
2. To much contrast in the scene.
1. I hate to tell you this, but what you shoot is not what you get with
print film. Print film
has a lot of lattitude with how it can be developed. There are
advantages to this. You can
underexpose or overexpose the whole role a fair amount and the developer
can "redo"
your exposure and print everything correctly. The flip side of this is
that the developer
prints what he/she thinks you wanted to see. That is the best case
scenario. The worse
case scenario is that the machine is not properly maintained, no-one was
really paying
attention, and you get shitty prints. A way to tell if this may be the
case is to look at the
negative. If you can see detail in high lights or shadow that is not
printed take it back. They
can do better (they will probably whine about it - then say thank you
and find someone else
to print your pictures). Take a look at the skies in the negative. Are
they the same tone as
things in the picture that are white and SHOULD be? If they are not, if
they are a light tone
or a mid tone then you got screwed by the developement process. Just so
you know, this
used to piss me (and probably alot of other people here) off to no end.
You use good film,
pay attention to what you are doing, and get back a bad print.
-I wouldn't push anyone to slide films, but they are the only answer,
and man they look great.
On the other hand, they are a bit difficult to bring in to the office
and pass around.
2. Contrast. This is where things get interesting. I have read lots
of bad explanations of this,
hopefully I can do better. If you look outside on a bright sunny day,
you will see huge differences
between the bright spots and the dark spots. Your eye, can take all
this (or most of it) in, and
your brain can make sense of the huge differences between light and
shadow. Film can't. We
can see about 2.5 to 3 (some say 4) times as much contrast as can be
recorded on film. This is
what makes those really gorgeous nature photos that much more amazing.
They are (often) harder
then they look. So, since you can see so much more than your film can
record, you may be shooting
a picture with more contrast than your film can record and not know it.
Happens all the time. The
sky may have been too bright for the landscape to be anything but a dark
silhouette, or the sky too
be white. Your N70 (or any other camera that I know of) won't
automatically tell you this, and it
can't automatically compensate.
You are probably saying "This guy doesn't know what he is talking about,
I see lots of picture that
have it all." There are ways around this problem. It can be done a
couple of ways. A circular polarizer
will make the sky darker so that it shows up better against the
landscape. You can wait for the best light -
early morning and late afternoon - evening light is not nearly as
contrasty as middle of the day, and it
looks nicer on everything you see. You can go wild with neutral density
filters. I don't recommend
this apprach until you are VERY technically proficient. Others may
(will) disagree with me on the last
point.
I can recommend several books. The most helpful may be John Shaw's
"Landscape Photography."
He has several books out, all are good, but this may the best for the
beginner to intermediate
photographer.
Off hand, I would probably say they gave you shitty prints ;) If they
sky was a nice deep blue that day
then it probably is in the film, the just printed them badly.
If you want me to go into using the N70's light meter to tell when you
have two much contrast e-mail me.
Chris
cke...@imsi.com
Bruce Wilson
bad, but that they are poorly printed. Only slide film lets you see the
shots at you took them. Fuji Velvia is great for landscapes/scenic shots,
poor for people shots, though. But I'd also bet that your shots don't look
on film the same way you saw them.
Like the guy said before, you can fix a lot of problems by taking the shots
when the light is more flattering. Shots at noon can look good, but only
when you are shooting straight down. The light at sunrise and sunset can be
great if the angle of light on whatever you are shooting is in the right
direction (from the front to the side is good, backlighting will wipe out
any detail in the thing you are shooting). Sunrise light is better than
sunset because less people are about to get in your way, but use both of
them. Also, if you want to shoot foliage and flowers, overcast days and an
81A or 81B filter can be miraculous in giving the film the colors you see
(just keep the sky out of your shots).
But sometimes (rarely) you will need some help controlling the contrast of a
scene by darkening the highlights. Polarizer filters can turn a poor sky
into a nice one, but they can only lower the sky intensity a max of about 2
stops, and that is then you are shooting 90 degrees form the angle of the
sun. If you shoot into or away from the sun the effect is diminished. Be
careful, though, because too much polarization can give a non-real look to
the sky with some films. Velvia can create an almost blue-brown sly if you
start with a blue sky and use a polarizer at full-darkening, but Elite Extra
Color or E100VS look great with full-darkening.
If you are shooting a scene where there is a bright half and a dim half,
then using a gradual neutral density filter can save you. Half of an ND grad
is gray, the other is colorless, so you can position the filter so that the
dark half covers the brighter part of the scene. This will open the shutter
up, so you can get much more detail in the dark half of the scene while not
washing out the top half. What the printer did with your shots was
overexpose the printing so that some detail was visible in the valley, but
doing this washed-out the sky. If you can give the printer film where there
is no extreme contrast, he'll have no choice but to print it properly.
For filters, the round glass ones I think give you a better image and are
more durable than the plastic ones (like the Cokin system), but the plastic
ones are cheaper and it's the best way to do the ND grad for less than $100.
Don't get a round screw-in ND grad, as that will limit where you put the
horizon. Also, make sure you get a circular polarizer, not a linear one.
Linear ones will mess up your autofocus.
Remember that using these techniques will lower the amount of light going to
the film, so if you start with a slow film (Velvia is rated at either 40 or
50, Kodachrome 25, great for details, rates at 25, and many other films rate
at 100) you'll definitely need a tripod to avoid camera shake. You should be
shooting at a f/8 to f/16 f-stop if you want to max out the sharpness of the
lens, but sometimes you'll want to go to f/22 or higher to increase the
depth of field, and with a slow film you have no choice but to use a tripod.
Tripods have the additional advantage for the new guy of slowing down the
process a little, to give you time to think about the shot before you just
start banging away on the shutter release like a tourist. Since it will take
you some time to set up, walk around and find the best place. Find a
position that gives you something interesting in the foreground, the middle
and the background, if you can. Find simple compositions that highlight the
thing you are shooting, that remove extra clutter (like tourists milling
around, tree branches poking in from the side, of other almost-interesting
objects close by the interesting one). Also, if you are taking pictures of
flowers, move around until you find as dark and distant background you can,
to make the flower stand out. Along with a tripod a remote shutter release
is a good thing, because nothing shakes a camera, even tripod-mounted, like
a finger pushing on it.
Some situations the exposure will be impossible to get right. Sunsets are
one of them, especially if you want to capture some details in the
foreground. In this case, exposure bracketing is your only solution. Take
the picture at the camera-recommended exposure, then take shots at -1, -2,
+1, +2 ev (or stops). Sure, it uses more film this way, but it will give you
the option of selecting the exposure that worked later on. I bracket shots
all the time, and sure, I use way more film this way than I otherwise would,
but there is no greater feeling of fun in photography than seeing three
shots of the same thing, each shot 1 ev apart, and each giving a different
mood for the shot, so I can pick which one gives me exactly the mood I want.
Using brackets gives you a new perspective on the scene that I find very
educational. Maybe the day will come when I can expose one shot that gives
me the mood I want, but for now I bracket and choose the mood on the light
table.
So the take-home message: use filters only when you must fix a specific
problem, use good slow film and a tripod, and compose your shots with your
feet, not your zoom.
Bruce Wilson
<onel_m...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:7spkkf$i2q$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
Old Hen
Would slide film show better detail than print film? Say, feathers on a bird?
I know this is a very basic question but how does slide film work? You don't
take it in to develop it? Or, you develop it and what you get in your hands is
a bunch of slides? What do you do with them then??
Thank you very much.
Gloria
Bruce Wilson wrote:
> First I'd recommend using slide film. (snip rest)
>
> Bruce Wilson
>
--
Gloria: "And on the Fifth Day God Created Birds" nuff said!
Gus: "I Can Talk ... Can You Fly?"
Bill Welch
>news:7spkkf$i2q$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> Hello, my question is in regard to landscape
> pictures with bright skies. I just returned from
> Yosemite National Park and shot nine rolls of
> film (Kodak Royal Gold 100 ASA). In general, the
> sky appeared white in most of the pictures
> instead of blue. I shot the same scene multiple
> times using different zooms (same lens) and the
> wide angles showed more blue sky than the zoomed
> shots, but not always consistent. I was using a
> Nikon N70 with a 24mm to 120mm lens. What is the
> trick to shooting landscape pictures that have
> areas of multiple brightness (i.e. bright sky
> with mountain bakground and rocks / trees in the
> foregroud)? Should I use any special filters?
> Should I have manually set the exposure instead
> of letting the camera do the work? Please help!
> I'm going to Hawaii in three weeks and I want a
> better set of pictures.
>
>
>
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.
The trick to getting a good exposure for a landscape scene with varying
amounts of brightness like the a bright sky with a dark foreground is to use
a neutral density graduated filter such as those Galen Rowell uses
(http://www.mountainlight.com). The sky is usually two or three f-stops
brighter than the foreground. You camera's meter is probably metering on
the dark foreground to correctly expose it and making the sky overexposed.
You will need a depth of field preview button on your camera in order to
tell where the dividing line between the dark area and light area of the
graduated filter falls in the scene. The N70 doesn't have a depth of field
preview button.
A polarizing filter that others suggested can be useful. However, you must
take into account the fact that the polarizing effect is most evident at a
ninety degree angle to the sun and gradually falls off until you face
directly toward or away from the sun. This gradual decrease of the
polarizing effect can result in a sky with slightly differing shades of blue
from one end of the photograph to the other if you use a very wide angle
lens.
Fuju Velvia 50 is pretty much the standard film for professional landscape
photographers. Some print films that produce similar vivid colors are the
Agfa Ultra 50 or Kodak Portra 160vc (not 160nc).
Other than this, the best you can do is to be selective about the scenes you
photograph. Be sure to select only scenes where the lighting is fairly
even, no bright spots like a bright sky behind a dark background. Keep in
mind that some scenes can't be photographed satisfactorily because film has
a much narrower range of light sensitivity than your eye. These scenes
you'll have to skip or devise a way to photograph a part of it that is
do-able.
Good shooting in Hawaii.
Bill Welch
--
ellis
Michael <elpi...@otenet.gr> wrote:
>1) A polarizer is a MUST.
Bull!
Take a look at http://www.fnet.net/~ellis/photo/tioga1-125.JPG and tell
me a polarizer is a must.
IMO using a polarizer to darken the sky just makes a bad looking
dark sky.
--
http://www.fnet.net/~ellis/photo/
Ross Warner - Information Products
Nice pictures -- what equipment are you using?
-Ross
Old Hen
I used to live and work in YNP and have never, -ever- seen better photos of
that park!
Magnificant!!!!!
Excellent!!!!!
ellis
Ross Warner - Information Products <ro...@East.Sun.COM> wrote:
>Nice pictures -- what equipment are you using?
Calumet 45n scanned on an Agfa Duoscan. Most are shot on Velvia with
some EPP and RDP.