Dealing with scenes of a large dynamic range...

AnCatDubh

here's a scenario;

Overcast afternoon - shooting parkland scene: trees, foliage, lake, lots of nice autumnal colour. The sky ranges from overcast white to very light grey and slightly darker grey but quite bright overall. There is a great difference in brightness between the sky and the ground level imagery.

You compose your scene in the viewfinder including both ground imagery and sky. You shoot. Result = Your sky is blown out.

One solution; Meter off the sky. Compose off the sky and use the exposure lock function / AE-L button to freeze the exposure settings, then recompose your scene and shoot. Result: Your sky now looks good but your ground imagery slips into the dark and unrecoverable.

So the point of this post: How would you approach & what's your technique to accurately capture such a scene? 'Bracket and blend' in post production perhaps..??

Ok.. any thoughts.

sasar

Use CPL filter, shoot raw.
If no filter handy, use a tripod, make two shots and stitch them in PS.

0utpost31

A graduated neutral density filtler would be better. I use the cokin system.

YogiBear

That reminds me I finally got round to getting a second (darker) ndgrad filter (cokin), must try it out. Haven't used one before, will be interesting to see the results.

CabanSail

I agree. The Graduated Neutral Density is the method that will work for both Film & Digital. Spot meter the Highlights (sky) where you will be putting the GND & the midtones in the in the scene. Then you can calculate how many stops you have to hold back the Sky & select the appropriate GND. I might point out I have not done this but have heard those talented people who take stunning landscapes explain this method.

Then you can try shooting the scene RAW & exposing to keep detail in the shadows. This way you can pull the detail back from the highlights in PP, assuming they are not too blown. This is the method that Guy Gowan demonstrates in some of his talks.

If the Dynamic Range is too much for the above then you can bracket shots & use some HDR techniques to blend the images. This of course relies on the scene being fairly static in all the exposures. I would still shoot RAW.

AnCatDubh

Two good suggestions. If i understand it correctly, the CPL will also provide a stop or so of neutral density which will help tone down the scene. So i'm gathering from the points raised that the in camera controls are going to be struggling with such a scene, and without additional gadgets (filters) you will be needing to take a number of exposures and do a bit of PS blending.

EDIT: Three excellent suggestions (my post crossed with CabanSail's )

CabanSail

The CPL will drop the exposure by about a stop, but that will be across the whole frame & so will noy help with the dynamic range. Having said that it will give you more contrast in the sky. You can use a CPL along with a GND.

0utpost31

would a CP filter and a ND filter not degrade image quality? that's like two layers of glass over the lens.

YogiBear

Good question.. I have two grad nd filters that I was going to use at the same time on the cokin system..

CabanSail

As long as you have good quality filters it should be fine. Remember the lens is a lot of layers of glass too.

Hugh_C

Just underexpose or bracket? I personally feel grads belong to the 80s and can be achieved digitally with more room for tweaking.

0utpost31

Just underexpose or bracket? I personally feel grads belong to the 80s and can be achieved digitally with more room for tweaking.

The less time spent hunched over the pc the better I say! If you tweak & tinker with the photos to bring out the dynamic range it ends up looking fake and plasticy. HDR photos personally make me puke!

AnimalRights

Bought my 1st widescreen lens yesterday the 17-40L and I've got to say Landscape shots are quite hard after experiencing my 1st foray this morning.
Example 1 is I don't really use PP and hence have no clue about blown skies or natural skies, also when I try something like that I lose detail in the building.
Lots of learning ahead!

YogiBear

I used a 2 & a 4 grad-nd filter together today & really noticed the difference in the sky detail. Personally I'd prefer to have the sky in the photo rather than trying to Photoshop it afterwards. Recommended!

AnCatDubh

0utpost31 wrote: »

would a CP filter and a ND filter not degrade image quality? that's like two layers of glass over the lens.

If i've understood correctly what i've read on the subject the CPL filter should be the outer most filter used (furthest away from the lens) and while it will apply a neutral density of about a full stop, it is an optical filter which will do its job reducing the haze, and positively enhancing colour. I don't think it would be degrading the quality but will have the optical effect that would be expected through the use of the filter.

ThOnda

Or just wait for a cloud :pac:

democrates

I've been using bracketing and hdr software (qtpfsgui) in situations like that with very mixed results.

Even with a tripod and using mirror lock-up to avoid shake, if it's windy and the clouds are booting and/or you've got the motion of the ocean wide angle yields more keepers. There is the possibility of compositing but that's a labour of love, the shot would want to be worth the time denied to other activities.

I was under the illusion that cpl's wouldn't help because they "increase contrast" which seems counter to the hdr scene problem, but reading testimony here and looking at wikipedia comparisons I now intend to experiment since I have shamefully unused cpl's .

I'm still confused though, wiki shows how a cpl will filter out reflected light, reducing the brightness of blue sky but leaving white clouds largely unaffected, hence increased contrast. But if the exposure is now increased to 18% grey to compensate for reduced light and great you gain shadow detail, won't this blow out the white clouds?

The case for GND seems open-shut, sky above filtered more, definitely investing.

Ricky91t

AnimalRights wrote: »

Bought my 1st widescreen lens yesterday the 17-40L and I've got to say Landscape shots are quite hard after experiencing my 1st foray this morning.
Example 1 is I don't really use PP and hence have no clue about blown skies or natural skies, also when I try something like that I lose detail in the building.
Lots of learning ahead!
http://pix.ie/punkrock/727170

Wideangle!!Not wide screen:p

Still cool shoot though

Fajitas!

Well, I gotta say, I don't bring around filters with me... And I've never successfully put together a HDR (That I'm happy with)... But careful metering, some bracketing (Digital is great, after all... gets a bit harder with 120, never mind 4x5 ) and some intelligent, minimal graduated levels & curves in PS can work wonders...

YogiBear

Quick noobie question about bracketing actually.. I can figure out how to bracket for White balance but not how to bracket for 3 exposures on my cam (40D).. is that possible or do you have to manually take 3 shots?

Fajitas!

Generally, I'll take three shots, but in your menu, there should be a bracketing option, where you define on the meter where you want it to meter for, then when you're shooting, hold the shutter down for the three photos.

YogiBear

Fajitas! wrote: »

Generally, I'll take three shots, but in your menu, there should be a bracketing option, where you define on the meter where you want it to meter for, then when you're shooting, hold the shutter down for the three photos.

Thanks a mill, I think I'd figured it out except not about holding the shutter down. I'll try it out later.

ThOnda

My camera, when set to exposure bracketing, takes three pictures with set offset of the EV (0.3 or 0.5) when I press shutter once.

RTFM would be my response if you were talking about my work, but because photography is my hobby and cheated love, I would recommend you politely go through the one chapter in manual - that should give you information how to set the EV steps of you bracketing and what other possibilities are offered to you by (i)can.on.

Shiny

Here is on from outside the castle where the sky isn't completely blown
and probably could have been darkened a bit. The use of the filter meant
I didn't have to waste time with it in photoshop/lightroom.


I am not completely happy with it and am considering getting another ND4
hard edge filter to double up with my current one.

The reason the clouds don't match as it took me a few minute to attach
the holder, rings etc...:o

Earlier in the year I made the HDR below in the Wicklow mountains. The differences
between the overexposed shot and the final shot are very small but it
recovered the detail in the distance that was blown out. There were 3
exposures but the underexposed one was too dark and would have looked
weird if I had have used portions from it.

DutchGuy

If you shoot RAW you can also take just one shot, then adjust the exposure in post processing. That way you can be sure that both images are exactly the same without the hassle of bringing a tripod or worrying about slight camera movements.

You can then take one copy of your image exposed for the sky and one copy exposed for the foreground and, using layers in PhotoShop, put the two together. It only takes a few minutes, so unless you are processing a lot of pictures the time spent hunched over a PC isn't that bad.

Having said that - if I had filters (I do have a CP filter which is helpful in some situations) I would probably use those as much as possible as they're just more interesting than PhotoShop...

amcinroy

AnCatDubh,

This is a problem in many landscape situations where the foreground is in shade with a brighter sky behind. The problem is that shade has a cool whitebalance and any attempt to balance exposure using any method (HDR, filters etc) can create an odd and un-natural looking result. The most effective method to deal with this is actually to wait for the light to illuminate the foreground the way you want it. In essence, patience rather than technique.

Here are some suggestions,

Just as the sun emerges or hides behind the clouds, shoot like crazy in the rapidly changing light. Somewhere between the shade and direct sunlight you will get a patch of diffuse, brighter light which will help control the contrast without need of filters or HDR. This is perhaps the most natural way of controlling exposure between sky and land, by using changes in the sun's naturally filtered light. Thonda's reply is actually very close to the mark. You have to be patient and wait for the light to work in your favor. Don't rush the job with filters/HDR and go home with a half baked set of braketted exposures.

If the weather just isn't co-operating, you may have to use contrast control techniques, I would favor grad filters. These are far from redundant as one poster stated and are a quick and effective way to balance exposure across the frame. Beware of using 3 or more stops as the results can sometimes look overdone. Also beware of objects poking up through the layers of the grad filter (cliffs for instance can be a problem).

If all else fails, try HDR or blending. I personally avoid resorting to this even if it means some parts of my image are compromised by silhouettes or minor specular blowout. My experience of HDR has shown that B+W HDR treatments can work well but colour versions usually look plain odd.

Shiny

Shiny wrote: »

Earlier in the year I made the HDR below in the Wicklow mountains. The differences
between the overexposed shot and the final shot are very small but it
recovered the detail in the distance that was blown out. There were 3
exposures but the underexposed one was too dark and would have looked
weird if I had have used portions from it.

how did you put them together? Photoshop?
great thread V.helpful.

Shiny

Deleted User wrote: »

how did you put them together? Photoshop?
great thread V.helpful.

Yeah I put the two of them in a separate layers.
I then just masked out the brighter bits from the overexposed photo
with darker parts form the normally exposed photo. This is mainly
noticeable with the distant hill in the centre of the photos and the clouds.

I metered for the bright part of the frame in both cases.