exposure (outdoors)

[peterpro]

I took a bunch of shots outdoors in a desert (zion national park) My problem was that as it got later and later in the day.. and th fstops got lower and lower
I found it really hard to expose for both the blue sky and the rock cliffs (wow what cliffs).

if i exposed for the blue sky.. the cliffs were to dark.
if i exposed for the rock.. theh sky was white and blown out.

i understand that some sort of filter might of helped..
i'm not sure if it's the lensmate one thats been recommended alot..

so the question is.
How do I expose properly for the sky and the cliff rock aside from setting up a tripod, and taking two different pictures with 2 differnt exposures and masterfully blend the two in photoshop.

peter

[Mind Socket]

You could do masterful blending with just one photo in photoshop.

Take a photo where nothing is overexposed (in your case, the rock face would be too dark, but the sky would be ok). Do some initial levels processing in Photoshop, then add an adjustment layer on top of the image (this can be levels, brightness/contrast or another manipulation that will brighten for you, YMMV).

Tweak this adjustment layer such that the rock face is now exposed as you would like (the sky will become too bright in the process). Now, apply a black to white gradient on the adjustment layer so that the adjustment is applied only to the rock face. This will take some trial and error to get the transition right.

Hope that makes sense :)

As for filters, you can get half ND filters, but post-processing gives far better flexibility IMHO (at the expense of losing a little depth in part of the image). The Lensmate is just the adapter to allow you to attach such filters.