NYC Post Office

[KevinB]

Got this shot the other morning walking to work in NY City. Sun was really intense as you can see on the leftmost column, but I didn't want to underexpose and lose the foreground...any suggestions while shooting to balance this a bit? Thanks! -kb



Exposure 1/2500 sec
Aperture f/5.0
Focal Length 16 mm
ISO Speed 800
Exposure Bias 0 EV
Flash Off, Did not fire

[Doug Sundseth]

Hard-edged ND grad and careful shooting is probably your best chance to nail the shot in camera. You might be able to shoot down about a stop and recover highlights and shadows in post if you don't want to go the filter route.

I'd recommend shooting in RAW for this if you aren't already, since that will give you better chances to recover the top and bottom of the dynamic range.

[KevinB]

Thanks Doug. Haven't yet dug into ND filters yet, but yes, I do shoot in RAW. Will have to experiment further with the Canon tools and eventually Photoshop.

[NilsRagnar]

I like the composition. An ND filter, as said above, would be appropriate. In bright sunlight with strong contrasts like this I'd go for an HDR shooting, either by bracketing, or by shooting with low enough EV so that nothing is blown out and then using the RAW file for the HDR processing. Why did you set ISO to 800?

[KevinB]

Thanks Nils, agreed (in hindsight!) that bracketing this or dialing down the EV would have been the wise thing to do. HDR is my next frontier it appears

On the ISO, frankly I was experimenting with settings while going in and out of deep morning shadows between buildings. Still, I easily should have been under 400. Since I brought this into B/W, I don't mind it though...Did the high ISO contribute to the blow out though?

Thanks again, great to get feedback from you guys, every bit helps