Help with new ND Filter

Dogdots

I need some help ..

Received my ND Grad Filter. Bought the Singh Ray 2-stop soft grad filter. I'm having a heck of a time figuring it out. I know .. should be easy I would think, but I can't seem to get my foreground lighter without blowing out my sky. When one sets their settings .. do you set it for the foreground or the sky? When are settings set .. before the filter or after the filter is on the lens? Any hints or suggestions would be wonderful

JimKarczewski

Set it AFTER the filter is on..

Remember, the filter is to balance the top (sky) and bottom (land), so it needs to be on before you set the exposure... Or at least that's how I do it!

David_S85

Are you using live view and looking at a live histogram?

Dogdots

Thank you both for responding

I will do it after it's on my camera ... I don't do live view. Live View is something I've not tried yet on my camera, but probably should learn how to now. Didn't look at my histogram either. I did do my preview button to look

pathfinder

Sometimes 2 stops are not sufficient to balance the exposure for a deeply shadowed foreground and a bright sky ( which may even appear cloudy ), Mary.

You could then try two exposures, one for foreground and one for sky, and then blend them in PS.

Dogdots

pathfinder wrote: »

Sometimes 2 stops are not sufficient to balance the exposure for a deeply shadowed foreground and a bright sky ( which may even appear cloudy ), Mary.

You could then try two exposures, one for foreground and one for sky, and then blend them in PS.

Crap .. I thought that might be the case .. the 2 stops not being enough. I'll give the 2 photos a try this evening and hopefully it will work.

JimKarczewski

oops.. I forgot to mention the 2 stop problem, but Pathfinder did. I typically on a sunset will use my Cokin ND8 (3 stop) + ND4 (2 Stop) combined in the holder.. Sometimes, if it's really bad I even throw the ND2 on (1 stop) for 6 stops.. It helps to have a variety of GND's... 1, 2, & 3 give you a lot of flexibility...

If you have access to a spot meter, or set your camera on spot meter (if you have it on your body, I forget which cameras do and don't) Take a reading of the sky without and foreground without so you can get an idea of what the difference is.... I find if I need to do that, I just set the camera in either Av or Tv mode (depending on what I'm shooting) and let the camera tell me what it's seeing on the other end. So if I set it to f8 and the sky reads 1/1000 and the foreground reads 1/50 I'll either do 4 stops or even try 5 stops of filter.

Dogdots

JimKarczewski wrote: »

oops.. I forgot to mention the 2 stop problem, but Pathfinder did. I typically on a sunset will use my Cokin ND8 (3 stop) + ND4 (2 Stop) combined in the holder.. Sometimes, if it's really bad I even throw the ND2 on (1 stop) for 6 stops.. It helps to have a variety of GND's... 1, 2, & 3 give you a lot of flexibility...

If you have access to a spot meter, or set your camera on spot meter (if you have it on your body, I forget which cameras do and don't) Take a reading of the sky without and foreground without so you can get an idea of what the difference is.... I find if I need to do that, I just set the camera in either Av or Tv mode (depending on what I'm shooting) and let the camera tell me what it's seeing on the other end. So if I set it to f8 and the sky reads 1/1000 and the foreground reads 1/50 I'll either do 4 stops or even try 5 stops of filter.

Sounds like I'm having the 2-stop problem :cry

From what I understand then .. your metering for the foreground and using the filters to darken the sky. Am I correct? Granted your finding the middle point needed, but still your concentrating more so on the foreground???

JimKarczewski

Dogdots wrote: »

Sounds like I'm having the 2-stop problem :cry

From what I understand then .. your metering for the foreground and using the filters to darken the sky. Am I correct? Granted your finding the middle point needed, but still your concentrating more so on the foreground???

I'm using the ND to bring the sky down to the foreground level... So in my example, if the foreground is 1/50, I want to bring the sky down to that as well. If the sky hits 1/40 - 1/60 I'm ok with that, those can be easily fixed in post.

That is, unless I want to focus on something in the foreground, then I'll try to underexpose the sky anywhere from 2/3 to 1-1/2 stops.

So it all depends.

Dogdots

JimKarczewski wrote: »

I'm using the ND to bring the sky down to the foreground level... So in my example, if the foreground is 1/50, I want to bring the sky down to that as well. If the sky hits 1/40 - 1/60 I'm ok with that, those can be easily fixed in post.

That is, unless I want to focus on something in the foreground, then I'll try to underexpose the sky anywhere from 2/3 to 1-1/2 stops.

So it all depends.

Understand what your saying I'll keep working on it.