Common mistakes for Beginner landscape photographers

GlennW said:
I'm not doing that? I was pointing out that I don't agree that the ONLY times to take are early/late. I think that highlighting this belief to newcomers might assure them that they don't all have to approach landscape photography in the same way. There are personal/artistic choices to make, suggesting people only work within one set of constraints isn't particualrly good advice for beginners, in my opinion!
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I have to say, I agree. I'm getting a bit bored of every landscape picture I see have an orange cast from sunrise/set. Especially this time of year where even at midday the shadows are long. I want to see blue skies, and white clouds!
 
Yeah but newbies should still rush out and do the cheesy sunsets and get it out of their system. Get a bit of easy exposure practice and a rewarding result before they get sick of it.
 
markmullen said:
I find over the top HDR painful to look at, and plenty of people seem to think it is a valid alternative to using grads. .
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There's a lot of good advice in this thread, but I can't agree with this one. Most of the time it's the other way around. Stop getting distracted by horrible overuse of microcontrast, which has nothing to do with HDR, learn how to use HDR properly to capture the dynamic range that's actually there, and you won't need to go messing around with grads, which are rough, indiscriminate bodging tools at best :)
 
I didn't see how "over the top" was relevant to the "a valid alternative to using grads". It seemed as though the writer must mean "all HDR". If I was mistaken, then sorry for the pointless disagreement.
 
dave.hallett said:
There's a lot of good advice in this thread, but I can't agree with this one. Most of the time it's the other way around. Stop getting distracted by horrible overuse of microcontrast, which has nothing to do with HDR, learn how to use HDR properly to capture the dynamic range that's actually there, and you won't need to go messing around with grads, which are rough, indiscriminate bodging tools at best :)
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+1, and absolutely correct. try to use a filter in a cityscapes with spires of buildings going up as your subject...how is you ND grads gonna handle that...without software blending you will end up with underexposed buildings or overexposed sky or worse with grad ND you have dark Roof tips gradually brighter bottom bits... Digital cameras came with bracketing option from day 1 so why did they add that feature in if it was a complete waste of time. The lack of understanding of how to achieve good HDR photo doesn't mean the technique is fundamentally flawed.
 
I'm hoping to start out on some landscape photography later this year so this thread has given me some great pointers - thanks guys (y)
 
dave.hallett said:
There's a lot of good advice in this thread, but I can't agree with this one. Most of the time it's the other way around. Stop getting distracted by horrible overuse of microcontrast, which has nothing to do with HDR, learn how to use HDR properly to capture the dynamic range that's actually there, and you won't need to go messing around with grads, which are rough, indiscriminate bodging tools at best :)
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Grads are rough bodging tools? Lol what a load of tripe!
 
Get it right SOOC and don't become a digital artist!
 
Yeah I did didn't i..... Along with most of the landscape photographers in the world! 99% can't be wrong.....
 
I have picked up on two issues in these posts
The first is the necessity of having a defined point of view.
If you look at Great paintings of landscapes, while they may have a defined "subject" they almost all lead the eye on a journey through the painting. creating an interest far beyond the single subject. Photographers for one reason or another find this difficult to achieve.

The second issue is peoples understanding of Diffraction.

Diffraction occurs when light passes an edge, in this case the aperture. It has nothing to do with the lens itself. A pin hole displays the same diffraction as a similar sized aperture in a lens.
When a small aperture is set, the proportion of light being bent by passing the edge, compared to the light passing straight through and focussed by the lens, become far greater than that produced at a wide aperture.... Some, if not most, of the light... not passing the edge, in both cases continues to be accurately focussed.

The secondary effect of using a small aperture is to increase the depth of field this continues to the point when a lens is said to be diffraction limited.
This is where the "veil" produced by Diffraction overwhelms the finest detail of the focussed image.
At this point Closing down the aperture any further, shows no apparent increase in sharpness anywhere in the image. An increase in Depth of field will show no further increase in detail.
But it will still be acceptably sharp
 
It's taken you a long time to get there, some time to decide how to do the shot, and the light may not be easily repeatable. So don't hurry.

Take a few exposures with exposures above and below your favoured one with aperture similarly bracketed. It's so annoying to realise after you've spent a long time trying to optimise your image in the computer that you really should have lowered the exposure or used a different aperture. So take the variations while you're there.

If you want cloud detail and cloud shadowed landscape detail on a sunny day and you don't have the appropriate grad filter then do some varied shots for the sky and some for the shadowed land. If your camera was on a good tripod with a remote shutter release the shots will all easily line up for a blending, or even a good HDR, if your distaste for bad HDR hasn't put you off good HDR :)
 
Mark twiglet said:
Yeah I did didn't i..... Along with most of the landscape photographers in the world! 99% can't be wrong.....
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I doubt 99% of landscape photographers in the world have ugly burned out detail in one particular cloud which looks to have been inxepertly cut out in photoshop by a chimp
 
big soft moose said:
well if you did you really stuffed up your exposure ;)
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Its a scene that greatly tests the dynamic range of the camera. A common mistake is to shoot into the direction of the sun when it is high in the sky. The camera cannot resolve this range of brightness and darkness. To only blow out part of the sky, the rest of the scene is chrontically underexposed and the shadow recovery has robbed it of contrast and vibrance. Shooting when the sun is behind you, or side lighting would yield better results
 
big soft moose said:
I doubt 99% of landscape photographers in the world have ugly burned out detail in one particular cloud which looks to have been inxepertly cut out in photoshop by a chimp
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No photoshop was used in fooking up this image and my scissors were blunt and I'd run out of banana's so I was agitated!
 
ST4 said:
Its a scene that greatly tests the dynamic range of the camera. A common mistake is to shoot into the direction of the sun when it is high in the sky. The camera cannot resolve this range of brightness and darkness. To only blow out part of the sky, the rest of the scene is chrontically underexposed and the shadow recovery has robbed it of contrast and vibrance. Shooting when the sun is behind you, or side lighting would yield better results
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surely shooting several bracketed exposures and merging them in post process would be the answer to that
 
big soft moose said:
surely shooting several bracketed exposures and merging them in post process would be the answer to that
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It can, but shooting in that direction will wash colours out anyway, and HDR processing can be a bit hit and miss. A proper blend could work but its simpler just to shoot when the light flatters the location - which in this case it does not.
 
ST4 said:
Its a scene that greatly tests the dynamic range of the camera. A common mistake is to shoot into the direction of the sun when it is high in the sky. The camera cannot resolve this range of brightness and darkness. To only blow out part of the sky, the rest of the scene is chrontically underexposed and the shadow recovery has robbed it of contrast and vibrance. Shooting when the sun is behind you, or side lighting would yield better results
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Chronically underexposed ????? Really
 
The vignetting was put on in Lightroom
 
well big rock in the foreground is a tired composiotional device and is to landscape photography what 'bride in a wineglass' is to weddings , also the distance is soft suggesting that you didnt focus properly

more pertinently you've got burnt out refflection in the middle ground but not a burnt sky suggesting cack handed use of a hard edged grad
 
big soft moose said:
well big rock in the foreground is a tired composiotional device and is to landscape photography what 'bride in a wineglass' is to weddings , also the distance is soft suggesting that you didnt focus properly

more pertinently you've got burnt out refflection in the middle ground but not a burnt sky suggesting cack handed use of a hard edged grad
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But apart from that????

Before my gear goes on eBay........
 
Fiver it is th
 
Haha great thread, dunno how I missed it before

Mind you I have nothing constructive to add to it, but enjoyed reading it an learn't a thing or two along the way.
 
Like don't get people on here to critique you're work
 
Mark twiglet said:
Like don't get people on here to critique you're work
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or don't post your work for critique if you don't want to be told honestly when its not very good
 
I welcome constructive critique and all comments are sinking in the dark matter!
 
Mark twiglet said:
I welcome constructive critique and all comments are sinking in the dark matter!
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A confrontational disagreement with what is obviously true and then deliberately posting (presumably) flawed images like some kind of gauntlet may not have helped produce friendly CC. Never the less, the critique here seems genuinely useful if you can be less defensive.

Grads are a bodge - they're unselective, uncontrollable and insensitive to the subject. They were the best we had when most people couldn't print and the only way you could bring a bit of control over dynamic range to your images. Now careful PP and HDR are superior replacements because they can be subject sensitive and controllable. They can't fix a bad picture, but they can help make an otherwise impossible scene manageable.
 
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Thanks ancient_mariner, I have been looking at the pros and cons of HDR (because of the type of photos I like to take) and what you say makes a really good point. I had been wondering about grads but then couldn't see how they would perform with a mountainous horizon or when shooting trees for example. I'm sure grads have their place and may even get a set at some point but subtle HDR seems the better option for me for now.
 
sirch said:
Thanks ancient_mariner, I have been looking at the pros and cons of HDR (because of the type of photos I like to take) and what you say makes a really good point. I had been wondering about grads but then couldn't see how they would perform with a mountainous horizon or when shooting trees for example. I'm sure grads have their place and may even get a set at some point but subtle HDR seems the better option for me for now.
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the emphasis should be on subtle - HDR done well is great , as the human eye/brain can perceive a wider dynamic range than the camera sensor so good HDR / scene blending can help create a view similar to what the percieved view

However HDR gets a bad reputation because some people tear the arse out of it and create the maximum possible dynamic range which looks unatural and false (this is nothing new - in the pre digital era the equivalent was coloured grads and effects filters)
 
usually exposure fusion gives more natural looking results than HDR.
Fusion done manually in PS from two or more exposures tends to be best of all for static subjects.
Moving subjects can also be fused by processing two versions from the raw file. One to enhance the overall tones, and one to get the most out of the highlights.
 
I have read bit about about exposure fusion and yes, OK, it's another image blending (for want of a better word) algorithm, I guess it's a case horses-for-courses and I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't suite of these tools/techniques in a few years time with some collective term. BSDS (brightening the shadows, darkening the highlights maybe?
 
ChrisHeathcote said:
Hi everyone I'm after a little clarification on this one, because I've heard it a few times. My belief was that the Grad tool in PS/LR , can only restore info that is there but not visible because of the limited dynamic range, however surely if the detail in the highlights has been completely blown out, it's gone forever?
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I think there is a greater range in the shadows for pulling back detail than in the highlights im sure i will be corrected. the trick it to make your high lights around 2.5 stops above middle greay and make sure your darkest point is no more than 5 stops lower than your highlights. This will make sure you have detail at both ends of the scale for lR/PS to recover if needed. If your exposure is greater than 5 stops then you have to start thinking ND filters, HDR or bracketing.

Most modern day cameras are able to do a bit better than the 5 stops but 5 stops will leave you safe.

Hope this helps :)

Richie
 
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