just another sunset

jopapeca

Sunset at the beach near Oporto



Notice that area above the sun that is kinda blown out, what could i have done to prevent this? (without darkning whole picture...):dunno

mercphoto

jopapeca wrote:

Notice that area above the sun that is kinda blown out, what could i have done to prevent this? (without darkning whole picture...)

Or notice that the dark rocks are nearly completely black shadows with little detail. You have a scene with a very large range from dark to bright. Too much range, actually.

One way to do this is to take two pictures, one exposed for the sky, one exposed for the rock, and blend the two together. A tripod helps immensely with this. You don't want to dilly dally around when changing exposures though, as you know how rapidly a sun moves and a scene changes near sunset, and you want both pictures to be as close as possible to each other to make the merge easier. (hint: use the auto-exposure bracketing feature of the camera and rip off 2 or 3 shots quickly).

Another way to do this is to use a graduated neutral density filter. This is a filter whose bottom half is clear and top half is tinted, thus blocking some light. Therefore that bright sky gets knocked down some. You then put your horizon on that middle line between the clear and dark parts of the filter.

jopapeca

mercphoto wrote:

Or notice that the dark rocks are nearly completely black shadows with little detail...

Another way to do this is to use a graduated neutral density filter...

Thanks for your input, Bill.

Thats right, i choose to darken so the rocks was almost a silhoute...
I guess that the graduated neutral density filter should have the way to go, because of the waves, merging two or more shots, maybe would spoil the 'splash efect'.

I must get one of these ...

By the way, these is more then one type of graduated neutral density filter, or are all the same?

coscorrosa

jopapeca wrote:

Thanks for your input, Bill.

Thats right, i choose to darken so the rocks was almost a silhoute...
I guess that the graduated neutral density filter should have the way to go, because of the waves, merging two or more shots, maybe would spoil the 'splash efect'.

I must get one of these ...

By the way, these is more then one type of graduated neutral density filter, or are all the same?

I actually don't mind the rocks being silhouetted, but a GND would have brought up the brightness of the water which I think is more important than the rocks.

There are several brands and types of GND filters, I have 3-stop hard and 2-stop soft Singh-Ray GND filters (they're rectangular Cokin P style filters). The stops are how much darker the dark part of the filter is relative to the light part, and the hard/soft is how abrubt the dark part fades into the light part (hard is abrupt, soft is more gradual). I generally hand hold them in front of the lens, you can also get a mounting ring/adapter.

jopapeca

Thanks, Ron

I'll look for it. What do you guys use more often the soft or hard in this situation?

coscorrosa

jopapeca wrote:

Thanks, Ron

I'll look for it. What do you guys use more often the soft or hard in this situation?

For situations when there's an obvious unobstructed horizon, I use a hard GND filter. If there are trees, or mountains, or other things that intersect the horizon and make it non-even then I'll almost always use a soft GND filter.

If the horizon is not at all straight, then you should consider blending multiple bracketed exposures together (either using HDR, or just sticking each exposure in its own layer and masking). If you shoot in RAW, you can often recover enough detail in a single exposure and stick an overexposed version of that raw file in one layer and an underexposed version of that same raw file in another layer and then mask as appropriate. If you can use a single exposure, it's almost always prefered as there can be obvious artificats when merging separate exposures together, especially when the subject is dynamic like waves.

Also, for sunsets like this, there are also "reverse" GND filters:

http://www.singh-ray.com/reversegrads.html

The filters start dark in the middle and go soft at the edge (which is the opposite of normal). This helps when the brightest objects are in the middle of the frame, like the sun.

I don't actually own a reverse GND, but it's on my list

jopapeca

coscorrosa wrote:

... If you shoot in RAW, you can often recover enough detail in a single exposure and stick an overexposed version of that raw file in one layer and an underexposed version of that same raw file in another layer and then mask as appropriate....

Yep, i shoot in RAW most of the time, I'll try merging two exposures in CS3. I just am not sure if I have the skill to do it, but I'll give a try .

Thanks for your tips, Ron.

Mean while I'll look for a GND filter as soon as possible .