Sunsets from Maui (first attemps with Cokin Filters)

Zerodog

I am not much of a landscape guy. But every time I am shooting them I feel the need to control the light from the sky. And I almost always use graduated filters in LR. So I figured I should do the graduated filters first and this will leave more room for adjustment later.

Both of these were shot with a combination of a Sing-Ray Reverse grad and a Cokin graduated filter.
What do you guys think? The biggest issue I see is the flare I got while using these. Is there a good approach to limiting lens flare when stacking filters?

Our first sunset of the trip


Our last sunset of the trip. I love the dogs playing on the beach here.

kdog

Great shots! Even with the filters, the sun is blown out. However, the gradient looks smooth with no banding and the shots still look good. It's not totally unlike what your eye would see. I'm not particularly filter-savvy myself, so I'm not sure it's even feasible to stack enough filters to have properly exposed that sun and not have the rest of the sky look weird. So perhaps manual blend of another frame that was exposed for the sun may have worked better. Or not, hard to say. Personally I'm surprised at how little flare you got shooting into the sun like that. It kind of goes with the territory. Did you try any shots with the sun lower?

Zerodog

Thanks Kdog. Yeah it might be possible to darken the sun more. With more reverse graduated filters. They are darkest in the middle. I don't want to do HDR if possible. I sort of think it is cheating. And the results I have gotten in the past with it I have not been really happy with them. This was a fun test. I found myself using them for almost every picture I took on the trip. I can't wait to try these for snowboarding. It will be a pain, but I think the results will be worth it. I just need more filters now!

Yes I tried lower shots too. And they were ok. But what I liked on these ones was that golden light on the foreground. It just looks magic. Just a few minutes later and it is flat. You loose that bang on the green and the rocks. But that has another appeal too. I was just grooving on this look while I was on the trip. The green of this stuff on the beach couldn't be wasted by being black or muted.

jsrucci

I like them...
Zerodog, I think your shots came out nice. As Kdog pointed out, the sun is still blown out, but I don't think it takes away from the shots too much. Sometimes I expect that look when taking these kinds of photos. Flare isn't too bad, and I'm not any expert on filters yet. Actually, I'm going to be doing my first work with some Cokin neutral grads this summer when we're on a vacation out west, going to Yosemite, etc. One last tidbit - I noticed your horizons seem to be off a bit. So might just want to do a bit of rotation/crop to fix that.

wizardry

Stacking the filters will work but you have to be careful of possible color shifting when you add too many pieces of resin together. What i sometimes do to bring the light down is start out with a glass ND filter and then add the GND's. The glass and resin mix seem to work better as far as controlling the color shift. Still, good results for your first time using GND's.

Zerodog

Thanks guys.
jsrucci: I will straiten these up a bit. I need to get in the habit of looking at this more with landscapes. You will dig the filters for out west. I just want more now.

wizardry: That is a great idea about using a glass filter first to slow stuff down a bit more without as many weird effects.