First attempt with an ND Grad filter.

thebigsky

I got some Cokin filters and went out and thought, let's shoot straight into the sun, just for fun. I couldn't for the life of me tell where the graduation of the filter was, I slid it up and down endlessly. Anyway this picture seems to turn out averagely well.

Charlie.

Dixie

Charlie, what was the value on the ND grad? If you were only doing like a +1 and looking almost directly into the sun, it would be difficult to see. In a scene such as this you should need at least a +3 to +5 to bring down the blown area above the sun and still bring out some detail in the foreground.

thebigsky

Yes, I definitely needed a stronger filter or a combination of filters, live and learn as they say. It was still quite nice to actually have what looked like a round sun for a change, instead of just a big blob of white sky

One thing I did notice is how noisy many of the pictures I took were, despite using an ISO of 50. Is this an inherent issue with digitial when shooting lower light scenes or just my incompetence?

Dixie

What camera?

What was the exposure time?

Digital does tend to introduce noise if exposure times are too long. I start seeing noise at very long shutter speeds shot at 100 ISO, but not a problem until I get up around 30 seconds.

thebigsky

I took this with a Canon 5D, at ISO 50, F36 and an exposure of 5 seconds.

Charlie

Dixie

Charlie, I don't think that the 5-second exposure with the Canon 5D is the problem. I also use a 5D and haven't had any such problems at over 10-second exposures at ISOs as high as 200.

After looking closer at your photo, I think the problem in this case is in not going higher with the graduated NDs. Any shadowed area is going to break up (noise) if the information just isn't there and you try to force it to bring out the detail in the shadow area.

If you had used a higher ND grad, I think you would have been able to go even longer on your exposure and capture more detail in the foreground area. Then you shouldn't have had the noise problem while showing the detail in the foreground area.

If a +3 grad ND caused your exposure time to go over about 20 seconds you could have easily have increased your ISO to either 100-200 without having the same noise problems caused by trying to bring out more detail in an underexposed area in the photograph.

In short, I don't believe your noise problem is because of the equipment in this case, but rather with trying to get more out of an underexposed area of the photo than was there. Increasing the grad ND values will definitely help in this case.

I hope this information helps some.

devbobo

Also, Singh-Ray have a reverse ND-Grad filter, which has the darkest portion at the horizon...which is great for shooting sunrise/sunsets.

Cheers,

David

NHBubba

Grad ND alternative
There is an alternative to using Graduated Neutral Density filters, especially for static landscapes. You can shoot bracketed shots (or shoot a RAW and 'develop' over and under exposed frames) and then use a layer mask to blend the layers, effectively doing the same as a grad ND. The cool part is you can tweak the mask for horizons w/ odd shapes and such.

I tried to demonstrate it here: http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=27922

Andy has a better written HowTo somewhere..

devbobo

NHBubba wrote:

There is an alternative to using Graduated Neutral Density filters, especially for static landscapes. You can shoot bracketed shots (or shoot a RAW and 'develop' over and under exposed frames) and then use a layer mask to blend the layers, effectively doing the same as a grad ND. The cool part is you can tweak the mask for horizons w/ odd shapes and such.

I tried to demonstrate it here: http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=27922

Andy has a better written HowTo somewhere..

fwiw, i have used both methods. I started out using the PP method...but now i have invested in some good quality GND filters, there is no way i would go back to the other method.

I would prefer to get the shot as close to being right in the field....than screwing around too much in post. But each to their own i get.

Cheers,

David