Metal, Glass, and Sky

BradfordBenn

Thanks to some of the tips I have learned here, as well as RTFM for the camera again, I am starting to see the pictures and understand them a little better before I snap the picture. Not sure I am getting it right yet, but I am getting it closer. So tonight while walking out of a project I am working on, I saw a great blue sky against the building and tried to capture it.

I made two attempts with two different settings to see if I could get it right. Like I said, I RTFM'ed but that doesn't mean I fully understand it and am fluent enough in all the settings. I was not sure which would work better a shorter shutter or longer shutter with more of a chance of shaking. (I also messed up with the flash, but trying to not do a shotgun approach of trying everything and not knowing what worked and didn't)

Enough with the story,

So the faster shutter was too dark:


The longer shutter did pretty well, but I blew out the building a little


I tried to compensate for the imbalances it some what and came up with this....


Comments, criticism, cliches... etc. are welcome. I figure I got a few more days to try and get it at the right time and lighting.

Thanks for looking

Nikolai

Brad,
it looks like you dealt with that very delicate and fleeting period of time when sky changes from being rather bridht to being very dark very quickly.
Of course, the complicating matter was that you had an illuminated building as your primary subject and you wanted to get a good balance wetheeen the two.
As much as I would want to lay out (or even know myself) an iron clad recipe how to take these pictures, it's almost always game of chance, time and patience.
The source of the issue is that building lights stay the same while the sky brightness/color changes by the minute. And of course your total exposure (a combination of ISO, aperture and shutter speed altogether) dictates how much light would your sensor get from each source.

I would say: try to expose for the sky initially, make sure you get that deep blue you want, and then see how the building lights would play with those settings. I seriously doubt you can get a perfect frame from a single shot, but this is not the situation when anybody would be overly critical of you spending 20-30 min and 40-60 frames to get the one you really like.

Just IMHO...

Richard

Nikolai wrote:

I seriously doubt you can get a perfect frame from a single shot, but this is not the situation when anybody would be overly critical of you spending 20-30 min and 40-60 frames to get the one you really like.

It might be easier to shoot multiple exposures and combine them, either using HDR software or manually using layer masks. We have quite a ways to go before dSLRs have the dynamic range to capture the magic of this kind of scene in a single frame.

BradfordBenn

Thanks. Just looked out the window and it is cloudy/grey. The building disappears into it, so got to wait later for better sky color. Good thing I have more days.

I am beginning to wish I had brought my tripod, not just my Gorillapod.

I am still fairly happy with it. The wife thought it was great, being that she purchased the camera for me as a gift that is also great