I would appreciate some advise as to what I could have done better with these shots I took yesterday. I had real trouble highlighting the mountain & sky. It was 5am, could I have used a polorizer? What about PP?

Any assistance would be much appreciated.......................Thanks

K10d & Sigma 75 - 300mm

#1 - 1/1000 @ F8
#2 - 1/1500 @F6.7

[J.Scott]

Neither is horrible. If you used a polarizing filter it might not help in a low light situation.

I probably would have chosen a much slower shutter speed and stopped the aperture down a bit.

I save those blinding fast speeds for action shots, not landscapes in dim light.

[Peter Zack]

Hi when I'm faced with a tough exposure where I have a dark foreground and a bright sky I do 2 things (this may not be what others do but it works for me). The cameras sensor and metering system just can't expose all the areas of a dark and bright shot.

1st I set the camera to multi point exposure and see what the camera will do and take a frame. It can give me a decent shot sometimes and a baseline to look at for adjusting later.

2nd I will shoot a couple of bracketed shots using center point exposure but exposing for the sky and locking that exposure so the sky is exposed correctly. I don't worry about the foreground that much. Then I'll have a look at the various exposure and choose one for adjusting. Then it cpmes to the computer for enhancement. You can leave the sky alone by 'masking' it and work on shadow recovery in the darker areas. I find I can get 3-5Ev recovery from the shot in post processing. That way the colours in the foreground are nice and deep and the sky looks normal.

I did the same in the film days but film has a greater dynamic range. I had a darkroom and did a lot of dodging and burning to get the same effect. It's not 'cheating' to take 5-10 shots. I remember reading an interview 20 some years ago with a National Geographic photographer and he said he go on his shoots for the mag and take 2000-3000 images to get 100 that he could work with and it was rare to have one that wasn't adjusted in some way.

If the light allowed it I would have used a polarizer here as well. But to get the best results and sharpest picture these types of shots should be taken with a tripod as well.

below is a shot that is adjusted the way I described. Not a great shot but you get the idea.

[little laker]

They look fine to me, and have that OLD photo look to them which works with them.

My guess from looking at them is that you had the ISO on 400 or 800, if you drop it down next time it'll help.
I know this from experience

[little laker]

In hope that you don't mind Peter, I wanted to see what I could do with your bottom picture by just removing the shadows, then bumping the contrast a little.

Here's the picture I started with.

after my mods.

your top picture

I like the shot, it's a really nice scene that you captured there
If you ever have a chance a pano would probably be incredible.

[Peter Zack]

No issue with that at all Stu. I just wanted to give chookfarmer some idea of the possibilities. There are many ways to adjust after the shot has been taken and I just took this from my old files as an extreme example. But the message remains that you can do a lot after the fact to get the image you wanted and still stay true to what you saw. remember that the camera can't adjust like your eyes/brain can. We can make thousands of exposures with our eyes and the camera has only one sensor. So it needs some help.
The other option would be the process in this thread:

https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/everything-else/12140-i-like-process-reco...tures-hdr.html

many have used HDR and achieved great results.

Stu, this place is in my "photo file" for places to revisit. I will often find a great shooting spot and maybe the weather sucks or I don't have the time or light to get what I want. So it goes in a file for the future. I want to come back here during the spring runoff and again next fall. I found this covered bridge in the woods. The road to it is over grown and not used any more. No signs anything was ahead on the path. It was a cool discovery. Just a poor day for shooting.

[SpecialK]

Not sure a polarizer works well in overcast conditions. I might have bumped the contrast a bit, though.

[chookfarmer]

Thankyou all for your feedback. I was programmed in AV mode and let the camera set the shutter itself. Little Laker I would be thrilled if I was after the "old style", however I was trying to just get a shot that was within a bulls raw of what some of you guys produce.....

I was at ISO 800, what would you have used?

Hey Peter thanks heaps for your time, I think I follow what you are saying. I will give it a go and see how I fare!!

LL, I love what you did with Peters shot. If you dont mind can you explain the process for us beginners?

Many thanks

CF...

[Peter Zack]

Thankyou all for your feedback. I was programmed in AV mode and let the camera set the shutter itself. Little Laker I would be thrilled if I was after the "old style", however I was trying to just get a shot that was within a bulls raw of what some of you guys produce.....

I was at ISO 800, what would you have used?

Hey Peter thanks heaps for your time, I think I follow what you are saying. I will give it a go and see how I fare!!

LL, I love what you did with Peters shot. If you dont mind can you explain the process for us beginners?

Many thanks

CF...

chookfarmer, I'm not sure if you are using as post processing program and there are several different freeware versions that many use here. I use Paint.net which can be found here:
Paint.NET - Free Software for Digital Photo Editing I like Paint.net because it has a good forum and tutorials to learn the program. But it is very intuitive.

This will allow a lot of the things that both I and Stu did to the shot. The top of the line program is Photoshop CS3 but it's expensive and for a hobbiest, most of these freeware programs will do many of the same things for little or no cost.

As for the ISO to shoot. use the lowest possible setting you can get away with.

Now there is a solid rule of thumb that you should follow as much as you can. "Shoot for the focal length of the lens". Now Shake reduction and good shooting technique can give you 3-4 stops extra (lower shutter speeds). So that means if you are using a 300mm lens you need to shoot at 1/250th or above. More than that for landscape work is not necessary. Higher shutter speeds would be used mostly if you were trying to capture a fast moving subject.

So now that would have given you much more flexibility to adjust the camera. You can get a smaller (larger number) aperture setting which will give a greater depth of field (more of the scene in focus). Then you can use a lower ISO setting which will give a much sharper image. ISO is the sensitivity of the recording medium (film or digital sensor).
The higher the ISO the more noise that is added to the image. The lower the ISO of course the less noise.

[Peter Zack]

Oh and i should also mention to shoot in RAW if you can. It gives you a true capture of the scene with much more latitude or room to adjust the picture later.

[chookfarmer]

Thanks Peter, I will follow up on all our suggestions and head out for another morning shoot and see if I can do better. Thanks so much for all your advice.........

Regards

CF.....

[Peter Zack]

So Stu, I showed the 2 versions to my wife who is a neophyte when it comes to this stuff and she's never afraid to tell me when my shots suck. Anyway she liked your version quite a bit better.

That has me a little perplexed as I have another version where the covered bridge and water are properly exposed and the sky is blown out. The adjusted version I did here is much closer to that exposure. The water isn't blue (the sky was very dark and grey) and the wood was heavily weathered to a darker grey. Maybe I need to go for the surreal effect. That's what I've been doing wrong all these years....

As for a pano, I have another one of these bridges in mind that is 6 or 7 times longer (the longest covered bridge in the world) that crosses the Saint John river in northern New Brunswick.

[vievetrick]

No one mentioned the one I think is obvious. How about an ND filter. I wish I had one but sure this would have helped both of the shots posted above with a little less pc work. Just a thought

[Peter Zack]

I agree Pat anf a Graduatd ND would help but it's best IMO with a fairly straight horizon and a mountain peak would still have some of the mountain too dark. But they do a great job in many situations and a good suggestion.

[jshurak]

I would appreciate some advise as to what I could have done better with these shots I took yesterday. I had real trouble highlighting the mountain & sky. It was 5am, could I have used a polorizer? What about PP?

Any assistance would be much appreciated.......................Thanks

K10d & Sigma 75 - 300mm

#1 - 1/1000 @ F8
#2 - 1/1500 @F6.7

It looks like there was decent light. The exposure looks alright. If it was 5:00 am, then the sun would be low, and a polarizer would have helped a good deal, provided the 90 degree angle to the sun.....that being said, I think your best bet aside from HDR'ing it up would be a gradual ND Filter. That would help a lot.