sky tutorial???

Boon

Boon

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do we have any sky tutorials anywhere in this forum, i really need some help with them.
Whilst taking pictures today (thursday) i used a polarising filter on my camera, and was always told to shoot 1 stop under exposed when using Raw, i do this and all my bloody photo's come out dark, and when trying to lighten them up, it blows out the sky.:shrug:
I need to learn how to read exposures better i know, but for now, learning skies is quicker.
 
1 stop under might be a bit extreme, no wonder they all came out dark. You may be better looking at the histogram after you've taken the shot. What you're trying to achieve is to have no clipping to the right of the histogram. If your image review in the camera has a highlight warning that flashes the areas with blown highlights, then use that too.

Then in your raw editor, you need to use the shadow recovery to pull back the detail out of the shadow areas only, not use the exposure slider as this will lighten the whole image.

More often than not the levels of brightness between sky and foreground will be too different for the camera to capture, hence why we use graduated neutral density filters when we want to hold back the detail in the sky sometimes.


hth and doesnt just confuse?
 
thanks Gandhi
does a neutral density filter cover the whole front of the lens like a polarizer does, who do you have to fit a plastic holder and use half a filter?
 
Plastic holder
Screw on ring to lens thread that plastic holder clips to.
ND filter (square)
ND Grad (rectangular so you can slide it up or down to where you need it)

filters.jpg


Picture and 1000 words etc. :)

edit: and as pointed out above a polariser only works when the sun is to the left or right of the way you are facing the camera, Sun overhead, in front or behind the shot and it won't do much. You do of course need to rotate it until you see the best effect darkening the sky or killing reflections on water.
 
thanks for the pics robert, i can see the ND grad ect, but i used something similar on an ordinary SLR way back, and when focusing it used to spin around with the lens and end up upside down, is this the same ??
 
does a neutral density filter cover the whole front of the lens like a polarizer does, who do you have to fit a plastic holder and use half a filter?
Click to expand...

just getting the hang of a +8 ND filter. Its screw on and 77mm to fit the sigma and i must say i love it! Its not graduated, but that doesn't seem to have posed me a problem so far!!!
 
Boon said:
thanks for the pics robert, i can see the ND grad ect, but i used something similar on an ordinary SLR way back, and when focusing it used to spin around with the lens and end up upside down, is this the same ??
Click to expand...

That depends on the lens .... lots of the more expensive ones state specifically that the front element doesn't rotate when focussing, so that you can use filters properly.
 
dakid said:
That depends on the lens .... lots of the more expensive ones state specifically that the front element doesn't rotate when focussing, so that you can use filters properly.
Click to expand...

thank you, i will definatley look into purchasing a filter and holder, do you know of anywhere i might start to look for one, and any other filters worth buying.
 
I bought the Cokin ND grad kit H250A here but plenty of places sell it. You will still need to buy a mounting ring for your lens thread size.
 
You can get the Cokin kits from your local camera shop for almost the same price as the net.

I have a couple of them in my bag and can recommend the cokin series.
 
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