Shooting landscapes with markII

[Miranda1]

Hi Everyone

First post on this site !!

I was recently on vacation in the Canadian Rockies and had an opportunity to shoot some spectacular landscapes in that area. The area is known for towering majestic snow covered mountainscapes. On the particular day we were there the sky was filled with large expanses of very white clouds and in general the mountain sides with the exception of the peaks are all dark conifer forest. The question I have for the group is how do you manage the very large dynamic range of a scene like this. Do you expose for the clouds so they do not blown out or do you expose for the mountains so they are not underexposed ? If I shot in evaluative metering or centre weighted I generally underexposed the mountains or the clouds would be blown out.


Thanks

[KrisForsberg]

if the scene you are trying to capture has got a wider dynamic range than the camera can manage, there is no way you can avoid (a)underexposure or (b)blown highlights. Your best shot is to shoot raw, expose to avoid blown out highlights, make two conversions from raw converter (one for highlights and one for shadows) and then merge them in f.ex PS.
A technique I've found to be very good is this one: http://studio.adobe.com/us/tips/tip.jsp?p=1&id=408&xml=phs8contrast

Kris

[robekert]

This link to the article touches on the traditional method.....Graduated Neutral Density filters and details the Photoshop digital blending technique.

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/digital-blending.shtml

It is a good place to start.
Cheers,
Rob

[ssim]

The rockies certainly do provide for some spectacular photo opportunities along with the challenges of getting the shots exposed right. I have had good luck with a circular polarizer when doing this. The following is an example of one.

http://www.pbase.com/ssim/image/32708973.jpg

What Kris has suggested above is a great way of doing this but I personally struggle with this blending process in photoshop.

[ctgoldwing]

Hi Everyone

First post on this site !!

I was recently on vacation in the Canadian Rockies and had an opportunity to shoot some spectacular landscapes in that area. The area is known for towering majestic snow covered mountainscapes. On the particular day we were there the sky was filled with large expanses of very white clouds and in general the mountain sides with the exception of the peaks are all dark conifer forest. The question I have for the group is how do you manage the very large dynamic range of a scene like this. Do you expose for the clouds so they do not blown out or do you expose for the mountains so they are not underexposed ? If I shot in evaluative metering or centre weighted I generally underexposed the mountains or the clouds would be blown out.


Thanks


I used a circular polarizer for this one, shot on my motorcycle trip through the Canadian Rockies. This was on Icefields Parkway north of Banff.

http://molaver.org/photos/mc03/img_1742mod3.jpg

[Lesmac]

ND grads are the way to go, some examples with grads in landscapes (1DS MKII) in my gallery.
http://lesmclean.photoblink.com/

[Moses]

ND grads are the way to go, some examples with grads in landscapes (1DS MKII) in my gallery.
http://lesmclean.photoblink.com/Lesmac: You have many extraordinarily beautiful photos in your gallery - simply incredible!

[redbutt]

if the scene you are trying to capture has got a wider dynamic range than the camera can manage, there is no way you can avoid (a)underexposure or (b)blown highlights. Your best shot is to shoot raw, expose to avoid blown out highlights, make two conversions from raw converter (one for highlights and one for shadows) and then merge them in f.ex PS.
A technique I've found to be very good is this one: http://studio.adobe.com/us/tips/tip.jsp?p=1&id=408&xml=phs8contrast

Kris

Fred Miranda has a plugin that does this. You take two photos and it merges them for you ....I just can't remember the name of it.

[KrisForsberg]

In my opinion a plugin with standard parameters can't replace the manual method, as you'll have to fine-tune curves etc. to get the perfect result...

[Mike H]

ND grads are the way to go, some examples with grads in landscapes (1DS MKII) in my gallery.
http://lesmclean.photoblink.com/

That sounds like the best solution, but how do you keep a line from showing up where the filter shifts from higher to lower density? I realize that they are graduated, but it seems like the positioning of the filter would have to be done very carefully. Are you using screw-in filters, or something like the old (and possibly current?) Cokin system where a square filter is put into a holder and can be slid up or down as desired? Thanks.

Mike H

[Lesmac]

I currently use Lee filters which are similar to cokin, but are bigger (I was getting vignetting on my 17-40 on 1DS MKII with cokin).
If you buy soft grads the line is well diffused, so you never notice it , saying that, you still need to be careful how you position the grad to get the correct exposure , but is easy to do through the lens.
Les

[Mike H]

I currently use Lee filters which are similar to cokin, but are bigger (I was getting vignetting on my 17-40 on 1DS MKII with cokin).
If you buy soft grads the line is well diffused, so you never notice it , saying that, you still need to be careful how you position the grad to get the correct exposure , but is easy to do through the lens.
Les

Thanks for the response. For those that do a lot of landscape work that system sounds like a good investment.

[BigRed450]

With PSCS or CS2 there is the shadow/highlight tool that will decrease highlight brightness and increase shadow darkness.

The 1DmkII has amazing latitude ( 11+ stops), your monitor is simply not capable of portraying that latitude and so you will find that it is not the camera that blocks up shadows or blows out highlights but merely your monitors inability to show the full range. The shadow/highlight tool will compress this range or if you shoot RAW, as mentioned, you can expose one copy for the shadows then one copy for the highlights and blend the two. To do a "Quick Check" just bring your image into your photo editor, bring up the Brightness/Contrast dialogue box, and slide the brightness slider back and forth to see the hidden highlight and shadow detail.

[Lesmac]

With PSCS or CS2 there is the shadow/highlight tool that will decrease highlight brightness and increase shadow darkness.

The 1DmkII has amazing latitude ( 11+ stops), your monitor is simply not capable of portraying that latitude and so you will find that it is not the camera that blocks up shadows or blows out highlights but merely your monitors inability to show the full range. The shadow/highlight tool will compress this range or if you shoot RAW, as mentioned, you can expose one copy for the shadows then one copy for the highlights and blend the two. To do a "Quick Check" just bring your image into your photo editor, bring up the Brightness/Contrast dialogue box, and slide the brightness slider back and forth to see the hidden highlight and shadow detail.

Agree to a point, the ID and 1DS does have an amazing latitude, but particularly highlights, you can't put back whats not there, so controlling highlights (for example a bright sky), is a lot more difficult than bringing back shadow detail. I agree you can merge two different shots, one exposed for the sky and the other for the ground, but it takes some time to complete in PS, much rather pop in a grad, it's a lot simpler and generally more effective.

Les

[BigRed450]

Lesmac, will agree with the ND grads, definitely much easier. However once the images are already taken the next option is PS.
I have found that there is an amazing amount of detail in the highlight areas that look blown out and in some cases only the shadow/highlight tool in PSCS will bring it out.

[Miranda1]

Hi Everyone

Thank you for all the feedback, alot of really good info here. I think the the way to go is with the grads, although it is possible to do with PS using blended images I found that it is very tedious, especially if there is a lot of fine detail in the transition area between the sky and foreground (ex. tree tops etc), the blending plugins really do not do a good job in these cases. In the end I used the shadow tool to bring out some detail in the shadow areas and the results were pretty good. The only problem with the shadow tool is that depending on the level of of shadow adjustment you can easily washout the highlight areas and induce secondary colour casts.

For those who use the drop-in type filters do you find these more useful than the screw-ins ? Also how does the quality of thes drop-ins ( I assume they are resin or poly) compare to the glass filters. My only concern with the glass filters would be trying to line up the horizon line with the transition line on the filter since these cannot be moved up or down in the frame.


Thanks