Rookie Errors shooting landscapes

ellieswellies

So last weekend I was shooting some snow capped mountains on a sunny day and it was hard to get the exposure right without having the white tops of the mountains all blown out. If you got the snowy part of the mountain exposed right the rest of the scene would be underexposed. If I got it right it would be completely by chance I'd love any advice on getting the right exposure for landscapes with lots of different areas of light and dark in general so I can get it right first time in the future!
Thanks!

DaireQuinlan

You've probably got a few options ...

You could bracket a couple of shots and then blend in post,

You could use some sort of ND grad (which would work in this situation because the mountain tops are more or less in the same place as the sky)

You could shoot at a different time or in different weather conditions when the contrast between the mountain tops and valley might not be so great

Shoot film. Admittedly loads of people used to have this same problem when shooting landscapes because people used to go out and shoot landscapes on contrasty over saturated Velvia, but using some of the low contrast fuji or kodak negative films and exposing for the valley would probably get you a lovely shot out of this.

CabanSail

Did you shoot this in Jpeg or RAW?

DaireQuinlan

Just as an aside, did you know that Mount Rainier could apparently erupt at any moment and wipe out downtown seattle :eek:

Ah wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Rainier Something for the alarmist in all of us.

magicbastarder

also, they pronounce it wrong. they pronounce it 'raineer', when any educated european would know it should be 'rainy-ay'.

ellieswellies

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

Shoot film.

I shot some 120 velvia so we'll see how it turns out.

I will try blending some shots in the future in photoshop and see what happens. I've been considering investing in a ND filter also so these will all be some fun things to try out.

I nearly had a heart attack when I found out it was a very dangerous volcano that could wipe out a large part of the area up here if it went off!!! Luckily I'm moving back to the motherland soon where the ground is still and we don't need to fear lava flows or mudslides!

I shot it in JPEG btw but I think I edited it...I don't know an awful lot about PP so I just do my edits with analogcolor or shoot film.

Heebie

uhm... more like reh-nyay if we're going to pick linguistic nits.

magicbastarder wrote: »

also, they pronounce it wrong. they pronounce it 'raineer', when any educated european would know it should be 'rainy-ay'.