What will help with this?

[powdork]

was a nice sunset tonight. 3 pictures, the first two were handheld and the last is a composite
400 f/4 iso800


125 f/4 iso800


composite of the two plus a little pp (curves). everything not sky was taken form the 125, while everything sky was from the 400


even in the composite, the foreground doesn't match what my eyes see, which is much ore colr and detail. i want a camera that sees what my eyes see. What do i need? Faster glass (this was Tokina 12-24 f/4). better camera (this was t2i with probably approaching 300,000 actuations or more), different settings (i know I could have gotten much more out of the foreground with slower speed and a tripod, but i'm looking to do it in one image).

I don't want to be able to shoot stars and a full moon in the same image, I know we can't do that. i just want to know what steps I should take to inch a little in that direction.

[Supermoon]

Landscape photogs use graduated neutral density filters. They have hard or soft transitions and go from 2-4 stops difference generally. The other option would be to do an HDR with a bunch of photos that would expose both the foreground and the sky correctly. You end up with the HDR look that you may or may not like tho.

[bfree]

Gotta do it with filters as mentioned (though that's tough with an uneven skyline) or in post with different frames. Do you have anything more exposed than the second shot? If not, it's probably too late. The human eye is pretty amazing with how much dynamic range we have - camera sensors simply can't replicate that. Cameras only have about 6 stops of range, which can even be difficult to nail both ends during the day with snow and evergreens, let alone a sunset. A lot of the killer sunset pictures out there aren't actually shot into the sun, but rather at the opposite side of the sky.

If you want to do it all in one shot, use your histogram when shooting. If any bars are slammed against the far left or far right side, you've lost all data/detail and you'll never get it back in post.

Regardless, that first photo is great - sometimes you just have to accept a silhouette in those situations.

[powdork]

^not really.
i just want to know if there are cameras or image processors or glass that does a better job of capturing the dynamic range than my current equipment, or different settings that will do a better job with my current equipment?

[Chainsaw_Willie]

What you're after is maximum dynamic range.
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tut...amic-range.htm

The below is somewhat stream-of-consciousness:

Equipment can help - every new generation of sensor (speaking in broad terms) has seen improvements in dynamic range and noise control. I'm only familiar with Nikon DSLRs but I can tell you that the difference between something like my old D200 and my newer D7000 is quite dramatic, and the D600/D800 are better yet. In short, newer sensors can preserve more detail in both highlights and shadows in a high contrast scene like that, allowing you to come up with something that more closely resembles what your eyes see.

Technique is the second element, and the right technique can trump equipment limitations. For example, if you know that your camera tends to be noisy in the shadows or tends to blow highlights, you'll need to take more incremental exposures for blending in post so that you get good shadow exposure in one frame, good higlight exposure in another and one or more frames somewhere in between for good midtones. It is entirely possible to do HDR processing without getting that goofy "HDR Look."

First off, shoot RAW if your camera can do it. Jpegs are seriously limited in what you can do with them.

Second, use spot metering and meter the brightest part of the scene and over-expose it by about 1-1/2 to 2 stops. Next, meter the darkest shadows and over expose them by about a stop. (It's way easier to bring shadows and highlights down than to bring them up, and produces much less noise.) Then, take one or more exposures incrementally in between your highlight and shadow exposures.

Now you need the software - Photoshop is what you need for this unless I've missed a feature in Lightroom that allows you to composite multiple frames.

Another thing that will help is shoot at your lowest ISO. Lower ISO=greater dynamic range and less noise. Most cameras start clipping highlights and losing midrange detail by ISO400 and even the difference between ISO 100 and 200 is noticeable on most cameras.

With my D7000 and shooting in 14-bit RAW I *might* have been able to get good results in that scene with one exposure. I'd meter the brightest part of the sky and over-expose by 2 stops. I've found that I can recover highlight detail in Lightroom when exposure is pushed that far and overexposing the sky gives the best chance of capturing enough shadow detail for it to come out in post without too much noise. If it wasn't possible with one exposure, two would get the job done for sure.

Hope that helps.

[systemoverblow'd]

If you want it in one shot like you said, you need a graduated ND filter. For sunset/sunrises you need a reverse grad when the darkest part of the gradient is in the middle and gets less pronounced towards the edge of the filter. When the sun is above you want a standard grad ND filter. I like 3-stop soft gradients. You can get hard gradients too (in normal grads). A quiver would be ideal, but for a single use, 3-stop is pretty decent.

Don't buy circular ones because they only fit on a lens that has that mm screw on and you are limited by the placement of the gradient.

For this shot you would want a reverse grad. I use this one, 3-stop in a 100x150mm. If you're not doing a long exposure you can hand hold it in front of your glass. I bought a filter holder personally but you don't need one.

If you shoot RAW you can further adjust this in post. But a filter will get you closer to what you see in dynamic range

[Chainsaw_Willie]

The problem with using a grad filter in that shot is that the horizon isn't flat and it *will* produce an unnatural looking dark line in the trees at the sides of the frame if it's brought down low enough to damp down the brightest part of the sky.

compositing may be more work, but would produce better results *if* there isn't enough latitude in a single 14-bit RAW to make it look good.

[powdork]

thanks for both of those. raw I can do. i generally just shoot jpegs cause most of my shots are burst/action and i bump up against the buffer pretty quickly, but its an easy switch obviously when i'm doing landscapes. i'll have to learn more about processing raw images because the ones i've worked with so far i wasn't able to get much of a difference as compared to just editing the jpegs.
i always try to shoot at the lowest ISO but without a tripod i couldn't go much slower and the aperture was already maxed out for this pic.
metering and exposure is a giant wall i'm going to have to climb it seems.

would faster glass help with this? at the least it would allow me to shoot at a lower ISO, but then so would a tripod and I already have one of those.

[systemoverblow'd]

IMO, It's easier to fix a little blending of background trees and mountains than all that compositing work. Also, while the latitude will be there in a raw file, pulling out info from blacks will add a ton of noise if you plan on printing. It's amazing the detail you can recover from a file, but it doesn't come without seriously degrading the image.

[systemoverblow'd]

would faster glass help with this? at the least it would allow me to shoot at a lower ISO, but then so would a tripod and I already have one of those.

Yes and no. You would be able to shoot a faster shutter speed with a wider aperture but f/4 was probably too wide to begin with for a landscape. You usually want to stop down your lens when doing landscape to increase the depth of field so more of your image is in focus.

[Lonnie]

I know it sounds counter intuitive, but drop your ISO to your cameras base iso (which in this case we'll assume to be 200). Most cameras loses about 1 stop of Dynamic Range each time you double your ISO. Going from 200 to 400 to 800 iso gives you about 1/4 the tonal range than if you would have shot it at ISO 200.

I'll stop now, because I just saw/read Chainsaw Willie's post and he nailed it...

[powdork]

so tonight i'll try to get to the same place with the tripod and use a longer exposure at the exact same time, although the amount of available light will also depend on cloud cover or lack thereof. the sun was already behind the horizon so i am guessing the reflection from the clouds was actually adding light. Is that true?
I do have ISO100.

[Lonnie]

I do have ISO100.

FYI: Iso 100 and Iso 200 on the t2i score basically the same for Dynamic range.

[powdork]

couldn't make it out tonight, the car is in the shop and the tripod is in the car.

[powdork]

two images squished together from tonight's sunset. i gave my good tripod to my daughter, and having a really crappy (the $25 kind) makes stitching them together a real bitch with the trees. i gave up before i could get the mountain section the way i wanted it, and it looked. still, better than last time although not quite as nice a sunset

[Supermoon]

Foreground detail is awesome on that one.

[powdork]

thanks, and it should be even a little better now as after stitching i forgot to play with the curves a little

[bfree]

Nice work, that's money.

[wra]

GD in lightroom-acr.

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