Don't want blah-looking blown-out sky! Filters/clever exposure for LF landscape?

Holly · Dec 16, 2010

Hey guys
How would I make sure that the sky in a landscape scene of green trees, overcast sky/even light grey colour sky doesn't blow out, and the greens stay at the right value and don't go murky?
I'm using a Toyo View, 135mm lens, Ektar 100.
So far I've been thinking: a soft grad ND filter, exposing for the greens using incident.
Trouble with that picture is, I can't afford an ND filter at present.
So are there any genius ways I can expose/use my polarizing filter to balance the white/grey sky with very dense greens, and NOT end up with a white, blown-out sky, or dull murky foliage?
Am I always going to have to compromise between the sky exposure and the foliage exposure? I want the sky to be the true mid-grey that it is, and not a blah field of white!
Is this kind of exposure always going to call for filters?

Sirius Glass · Dec 16, 2010

Polarizor filter
Red filter
Orange filter
Yellow filter

domaz · Dec 16, 2010

Sirius Glass said:
Polarizor filter
Red filter
Orange filter
Yellow filter

Colored filter with Color film? Err.. Polarizor would help some though.

Maris · Dec 16, 2010

Holly said:
Holly said:

Hey guys
How would I make sure that the sky in a landscape scene of green trees, overcast sky/even light grey colour sky doesn't blow out, and the greens stay at the right value and don't go murky?

Click to expand...

There is a big brightness range between green trees and a high bright overcast sky so there is no film exposure, no film development strategy that will deliver approximate mid-tone gradation in both.

I'm using a Toyo View, 135mm lens, Ektar 100.
So far I've been thinking: a soft grad ND filter, exposing for the greens using incident.

Click to expand...

This will work because the grad ND filter effectively becomes part of the subject matter. It just doesn't look like it because it is so close to the lens.

Trouble with that picture is, I can't afford an ND filter at present.

Click to expand...

Grad ND filters, filter holders, and lens adapters are buyable off Ebay at low prices. They come from China and offer useful quality.

So are there any genius ways I can expose/use my polarizing filter to balance the white/grey sky with very dense greens, and NOT end up with a white, blown-out sky, or dull murky foliage?

Click to expand...

I think no. An overcast sky is essentially unpolarised so a polarising filter can't do much to it.

Am I always going to have to compromise between the sky exposure and the foliage exposure? I want the sky to be the true mid-grey that it is, and not a blah field of white!

Click to expand...

The sky is a blah field of white if you look at the foliage. The foliage is murky if you look at the sky. The only place where both have nice tonal values simultaneously is in the mind. The brain collects images from the eyes, stitches them, gives them the HDR treatment and then presents the results to the consciousness. This happens to every one of us and no one can turn this off by effort of will.

Is this kind of exposure always going to call for filters?

Click to expand...

To make the picture in the camera look like the picture in the mind an additional piece of subject matter, the grad ND filter, needs to be present in front of the lens in addition to the sky and the trees.

An alternative to ND filtration at the camera-work stage is mask the sky area of the transparency when using it as a source for further picture production.

tomalophicon · Dec 16, 2010

I know of someone who masks the the lens and exposes for some parts of the scene, then masks that part and exposes for the other part of the scene.

Maris · Dec 16, 2010

Pardon my error about transparency masking. I'd forgotten that Ektar is a colour negative film. As such it offers three darkroom procedures for getting sky tone, burning-in during projection on to photographic paper, pre-flashing, and positive masking.

Holly · Dec 17, 2010

Thankyou Maris, that was good advice. I do get annoyed with my camera's inability to see the world the way my brain does
As my lecturers tell me, the camera is a very blunt instrument.
Cheap Ebay filters work ok do they? I'm always a bit wary of the cheap ones, fear they are inferior and dunno whether to take the risk. I've seen countless ones on Ebay though, will investigate further.
What's pre-flashing, I don't know if I'm familiar with that..?

And thanks guys for the masking tip - if I can find a point in the scene which a join line wouldn't show up in too much, I can play around with doing separate exposures for sky and land on the same neg. Or could I just even layer the second sky exposure over the first, kind of burning-in that area? Hmmm

Yamaotoko · Dec 17, 2010

Holly said:
I'm always a bit wary of the cheap ones, fear they are inferior...

The way I see it, 'inferior' to what? Inferior to using no filter? Personally, if there was a shot that was not possible to photograph without a certain filter, a cheap screw thread filter on hand at the time would be worth much more than a full Lee system sitting in a shop window in town.

...a bird in the hand...?

Maris · Dec 17, 2010

Holly said:
Thankyou Maris, that was good advice. I do get annoyed with my camera's inability to see the world the way my brain does
As my lecturers tell me, the camera is a very blunt instrument.
Cheap Ebay filters work ok do they? I'm always a bit wary of the cheap ones, fear they are inferior and dunno whether to take the risk. I've seen countless ones on Ebay though, will investigate further.

Click to expand...

The biggest problem with cheap grad ND's is lack of exact colour neutrality. If you are exposing colour negative material this doesn't matter much because there is a valuable opportunity for colour correction when making the positive. Even for colour transparencies the need for exact neutrality is overblown since only rarely is the in-camera material the final product. Usually the transparency is a stepping stone to somewhere else and again there are colour correction opportunities.

The world of grad ND filters is rather deep: soft grad, hard grad, 1stop, 2 stop, 3 stop, and so on...; wilful study required.

What's pre-flashing, I don't know if I'm familiar with that..?

Click to expand...

Preflashing is giving photographic paper a tiny all-over exposure to use up the "inertia" of the paper but without (just) generating discernable density. Now any additional exposure, even from the dense parts of the negative corresponding to the sky, will produce discernable tone. The resulting tone is very light and acknowledges the presence of the sky but doesn't deliver rivers of detail. Accumulated knowledge about preflashing is a mini encyclopedia in its own right; wilful study required.

And thanks guys for the masking tip - if I can find a point in the scene which a join line wouldn't show up in too much, I can play around with doing separate exposures for sky and land on the same neg. Or could I just even layer the second sky exposure over the first, kind of burning-in that area? Hmmm

Click to expand...

Contrast control of negatives usually proceeds via unsharp positive masking. The techniques are supremely exacting and precise. Special equipment such as masking film and precision register punches and pins is part of the deal. Those who excell at this have generally done an extended apprenticeship. Again, there is a lot of deep knowledge here.

lxdude · Dec 17, 2010

Maris said:
Contrast control of negatives usually proceeds via unsharp positive masking. The techniques are supremely exacting and precise. Special equipment such as masking film and precision register punches and pins is part of the deal. Those who excell at this have generally done an extended apprenticeship. Again, there is a lot of deep knowledge here.

Is wilful study required?
Excellent answers, BTW.

2F/2F · Dec 17, 2010

If you shoot this sort of thing in that sort of light all the time, and especially with that film, I would learn how to mask your negatives for printing.

For now, just make sure you are always exposing the foliage properly, and work very hard on your printing.

Also, keep in mind that overcast days are "blah," and there is not a lot you can do about the quality of natural light. It will be flat. An overcast day with the sky in the shot is one of the hardest photographic situations to print. You need enough exposure on the neg to get the color and density of the things on the ground right. However, with the sky also in the shot, you are facing a composition with a very high luminance range as well. You need enough contrast and saturation on the Earth-bound subjects, so any underexposure for those areas will generally work against you in that way. So, in this situation, you are double fracked. You have a very flat quality of light and a very wide luminance range. Either one on its own is relatively easy to deal with, but combined, things are very difficult, and you must rely primarily on your printing skills.

Graduated filters are fine if your subject has a perfectly straight dividing line between the dark parts and the light parts. (I think I may have taken only a handful of pictures in which this is the case and I did not want a great difference between the two to be evident, ever.) Otherwise, it can easily look like a bad burning/dodging job. If I was going to to a bad burning/dodging job, I'd rather do it on the print than do it directly on the irreplaceable film.

As i said before, I'd learn to mask. It'll be a great way to get the contrast, density, and saturation you want on the Earth-bound objects, while dramatizing the skies.

You can also do a dual scan HDR type thing. Try Hybrid Photo dot com to talk about that, though.

Polarizing filters will not help you here. They are about the farthest from what you should use in your case. They will either make the "blahness" worse, or do nothing at all.

P.S. If you are not using color correction filters in camera on overcast days (or in any color temperature significantly distant from the area of 5500 K), it can help to give negs extra exposure to make color balancing easier. With color film, you are actually exposing multiple images at once, stacked in layers; each one is sensitive to a certain part of the spectrum. You want to expose so that the least sensitive of the color layers in that light is not underexposed. If you don't, you can lose detail and texture, and make color balancing difficult if not impossible in the low tones of the image.

SilverGlow · Dec 22, 2010

Using filters to save the sky is a really bad idea because the filter will lower the sky light by 1,2 or more stops but guess what? The shadows are lowered those number of stops too so what is the use of that? No use at all.

What you can do is use a GRADUATED ND filter however...now that makes sense...but to use a non graduating filter is silly at best because it buys you nothing.

And contrary to this belief that a grad filter is only good if the horizon is straight, this is wrong, and millions have proven this to be wrong information. We're talking landscapes here, right? There are few landscapes where a Grad ND will not work.

SMBooth · Dec 22, 2010

Most the time is this situation I have found that the sky is more than a few stop difference to the trees and a grad ND still doesn't help because the filter is still place across the trees as well, assuming the trees go to top of frame. I try to re-frame the shot the crop out the sky.

Markster · Dec 31, 2010

I have a similar problem with hiking/ski trips. People are often standing up against white snow, or a bright blue sky 10,000 feet or more in altitude (Mt. Bierstadt was 14k and a rich bright blue sky), and when you take pictures like that you either have to pick a middle ground or meter the person.

I'm still trying to get it right, but I tend to take the meter reading from my AE-1 Program then open her up 1 full stop (it will say 16, then I'll open up to 11, for example) to try to get better definition on the human aspect of it.

Personally, I'd say this: What's your point? Why are you taking the photo? Is it for the foliage? Or the sky? What is your main focus? Meter for that, and deal with the rest. Personal taste, though, and there is no wrong answer.

hpulley · Dec 31, 2010

Always meter for the shadows. A shadowy silhouette against the sky is rarely recoverable while a blown out sky can at least be recovered.

Another technique not mentioned so far is to take two shots, one metered for the shadows and another metered for the sky. Using masks, print the subject and the sky onto the same paper. Registration may be difficult but I find you can use landmarks to line them up pretty close.

Finally, consider shooting black and white film where you CAN use red, orange and yellow filters to darken the sky without darkening the foreground as much. Either bring two bodies or two backs so you can shoot both.

2F/2F · Dec 31, 2010

Markster said:
I have a similar problem with hiking/ski trips. People are often standing up against white snow, or a bright blue sky 10,000 feet or more in altitude (Mt. Bierstadt was 14k and a rich bright blue sky), and when you take pictures like that you either have to pick a middle ground or meter the person.

I'm still trying to get it right, but I tend to take the meter reading from my AE-1 Program then open her up 1 full stop (it will say 16, then I'll open up to 11, for example) to try to get better definition on the human aspect of it.

Personally, I'd say this: What's your point? Why are you taking the photo? Is it for the foliage? Or the sky? What is your main focus? Meter for that, and deal with the rest. Personal taste, though, and there is no wrong answer.

Your "problem" is not rare, and has a fairly easy solution. It is a classic case in which the use of fill light is the solution. Bring a variable-power speedlight and a diffuser with you. Use the shutter and aperture to properly expose the environment, and use flash power to properly expose the people once you have set your shutter and aperture. Remember not to exceed maximum synch. speed on the shutter.

Markster · Dec 31, 2010

That's very interesting. I hadn't thought of that. I guessed/figured that all the snow and the bright sky would be a natural fill. Only problem is the AE-1P limits flash synch to 1/60. I'd have to start using MUCH slower film!

(but, truth be told, after reading up on it lately I may try moving to slower film...)

Thanks!

2F/2F · Dec 31, 2010

Yes, the slower flash synch speeds of older cameras require that you use broad depth of field and/or slower films and/or that you overexpose. (If using negative film, a little overexposure will not destroy your pictures as it does with positive film.) They also require that you use a steady hand to minimize the effects of camera shake at '60. Also, you are limited to lenses that you can hand hold at '60. The general rule of thumb about hand holdable shutter speeds states that this would be a 50 mm lens or shorter. I agree that the AE-1, or any older FP shutter camera, is not ideal for fill flash, but it can be done.

You are correct that all of the natural elements do provide reflected light. If this was not the case, any subject would be pitch black unless it was directly lit. Yet we see things that are not directly lit quite easily with a camera (and even better with our eyeballs). All light but direct light must be reflected light. However, I would personally not call natural reflected light "fill" light. The term "fill" implies to me that the reflected light was intentionally introduced for the photograph, by means of a reflector or a self-contained light source such as a speedlight. So, you are always getting light bounced in from the surroundings, but if you are needing to overexpose the environment, then it is not enough fill to give you a 1:1 ratio of the people to the background. The fill flash lets you do this.

If you try this out and like it, but do not like working around the synch. limitations of the AE-1, try the T-90, which has a '250 max. synch. speed. They are also much more rugged and full featured than the AE-1's, and they are not expensive.

blockend · Jan 2, 2011

I agree on the blah is blah analysis. In the UK, especially northern latitudes, the sky is close to white for a large part of the year. The best way to represent it is to separate the sky from base white with a black mask. Burning in a bright white sky usually leaves an artificial, grainy looking weird dull grey and for my money, grad filters provide an equally apocalyptic look.

Don't want blah-looking blown-out sky! Filters/clever exposure for LF landscape?

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