Five Minute Photography Tips

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morfe M
morfe Jul 18, 2006 14:13:11
Replying to CianMcLiam

Rule no. 4

Use a neutral grad filter. Sky and ground are often two greatly contrasted subjects and no film or sensor to my knowledge can be exposed correctly for both at once.

In Photoshop I use quick mask/select/feather and then levels or curves to remedy this. Sometimes quite succesfully if you exposed somwhere between the two ideals. But one day I'll be able to buy a grad filter and huazzah!

D doktoratomik
doktoratomik Jul 18, 2006 14:23:05
Replying to morfe

morfe wrote:
Rule no. 4

Use a neutral grad filter.

Ideally. But grads are a bugger to carry around and mount/remove. Not quite as simple as a nice little polariser. I keep considering adding grads to my kit, but I just know they'll get left at home. Hauling round my current gear is a big enough pain as it is.

C CianMcLiam
CianMcLiam Jul 18, 2006 15:50:44
Replying to morfe

If I forget to pack a ND grad filter or if its gotten scratched I sometimes resort to exposing for the sky, with RAW files you can pull one and even two stops out of the dark parts of the image with little loss of quality so I then process the same raw file twice, once for the sky and then a second time as a new layer with exposure compensation added with Adobe Bridge. Carefully using the eraser to remove the sky in the second file can give pretty good results.

I haven't resorted to using two photographs in the one image, mostly for PR reasons so I can say that anything visible in my photos was present when the photograph was taken.