Shooting into the sun

L

lionofjudah

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Edit My Images
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Hi guys,
Quick question- what's best way to shoot into the sun?
I was on tower bridge the other day taking photos of the river with the sun facing me. I was using a ND filter and shutter speeds were about 30secs, with apertures of f8-f12 I think.
Photos seem slightly dark-where buildings are/sun rays have few dots on them-maybe dust speckles on filter? How would I meter accurately/ any tips to improve these?
I salvaged a few through processing but am looking at how I can get more keepers without too much editing if possible.
Thanks
 
I think you may get some better help if you posted one of the pictures on here for people to look at with the EXIF data ;)
 
Lenses and filters must be ultra clean, even then you can expect a bit of flare. Try taking spot meter readings from a range of dark and light areas in the image, then use manual and set for the average exposure. Some people make use of 2 or 3 exposures and blend them together later on the computer.
 
I'll try post some Images when I get home. I was trying to take them without going down HDR route if possible but...
 
For me the only thing you need to do here is improve the conrtast a tad, maybe lift the shadows if you can. I suspect the flare is down to quality of lens, but to be honest I don't have a big problem with flare if the light makes up for it and here it does just that.
 
The sun is way to bright so there a large exposure difference between the sky and foreground. you could try to combine 2 exposures or use some grads, but also shooting into the sun is always gonna give you problems with lens flare and dust spots can show up like bubbles.

In any case you would need a meter reading from the foreground and the sky, Probably to the side of the sunlight.
 
I agree with Al. What software are you using? I have been playing around with lightroom 4 graduated filter a bit and using it from the bottom up to bring out the shaded part of the my pic without defecting the top part. I'm not sure if this is a good practice but its an idea. In some cases I was putting the filter in place and raising the exposure.
 
I was using cs5. Posted shots are largely unedited. I've managed to fill light etc on cs5 and improved on them but was looking at tips on taking a better picture to start off with. I'm still a complete novice in photography.
 
An HDR setup is probably the only way you'll get a good exposure for both the sky/sun and the foreground subjects as the dynamic range of your camera (any camera) won't be enough to do it with a single shot I reckon. Unless you use a gradient filter or something like that.
 
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