Battling with the light

[leek]

Greetings from Sunny Old South Wales!!!

We've been in the UK for a few days now (only 1259 posts to read in the meantime ) and finally I'm staying somewhere with a broadband connection. I've taken lots of interesting images, but I find that I'm having to adjust my technique substantially as the light is very, very different up here at the moment... Only 8 hours of daylight (8-4) and the winter sun is very difficult to assess... If there's any sky in my shot, I'm getting lots of blown highlights, or if I use matrix metering - lots of underexposed shadows... A CPL seems to help a little, but not enough...

I'm trying to bracket exposure as much as I can - hopefully I can rescue some of the nicer shots in PP later...

Any advice on how to meter in these conditions would be very welcome...

I'll post some more images soon, but here's one to be going on with...

As we came into land at Heathrow I saw what looked like a peculiar cloud formation - Later, we found out that it was black smoke from the oil terminal explosion at Hemel Hempstead (just North of London)...

[LostDingo]

Hmm, nothing like the ole man made cloud formations eh?

Leek, if you don't have any Netral Density filters now may be the time to try. Maybe start with a 2 stop soft grad?

Problem with ND filters is how the horizon may be in your composition such as tall buildings or hills. Works "easier" with coastal or flat horizons.

Paul

[Killakoala]

That's an extraordinary photo John. What a way to start the holiday.

I was going to suggest a graduated ND filter but it seems paul beat me to it. It will help reduce PP time if you would otherwise bracket your shots.

Enjoy your hols mate.

[sirhc55]

John - enjoy your holiday and happy seasons greetings to mini and Mrs Leek

My suggestion on exposure would be to send Charlie Chalk (CC) a pm and ask the question. When I first came to Australia I had the same problem with the lighting here.

The flat light of the northern hemisphere winter lighting is superb and will make for some memorable shots.

[Glen]

John, that is one tremendous shot. Hope you enjoy your holiday, no idea how to meter better with a D70 in the UK

[the foto fanatic]

Hi John
I've just come back from the northern winter, Chicago in fact.

I found that almost all of my shots were underexposed by about 1 stop. I tried to exclude sky, unless it was blue. I was shooting RAW, so PP was able to assist.

As a result of this experience, I would say that shooting RAW is good insurance, and maybe you might want to think about dialling up +1 stop exposure compensation. You would probably need to experiment to confirm the optimal setting.

Have a great holiday - I'm looking forward to some more pix.

[KerryPierce]

to adjust my technique substantially as the light is very, very different up here at the moment... Only 8 hours of daylight (8-4) and the winter sun is very difficult to assess... If there's any sky in my shot, I'm getting lots of blown highlights, or if I use matrix metering - lots of underexposed shadows... A CPL seems to help a little, but not enough...

I'm trying to bracket exposure as much as I can - hopefully I can rescue some of the nicer shots in PP later...

Any advice on how to meter in these conditions would be very welcome...

Sounds like a typical high dynamic range scene that exceeds the capability of the sensor.

Bracketing will be your savior, so you're wise in doing so.

Try using the spot meter on different areas of your scene, highlight, middle and deep shadows. That will give you the dynamic range of the scene. Most likely, a graduated neutral density filter would reduce or eliminate the problem for a single shot, if you knew how many stops of exposure reduction you'd need for the sky/highlights.

[Matt. K]

An unusual, dramatic and historic image. It needs more PP to make it sing, but I'm not quite sure where you would start with it.

[Nnnnsic]

Whoa. One of the more interesting "cloud" formations I've ever seen.

It only gets beaten by a massive ID4 cloud that rolled in in Dallas once before a big storm.