Over exposed sky

[azzajay77]

Hi all. Yesterday was my first attempt of a 'smokey water' picture at the beach. Obviously it didn't work. We have daylight savings here in Australia so the picture was taken around 7pm. This was never going to be a keeper photo due to the water being murky from a lot of bad weather/storms, i was merely attempting to test out the settings on my new camera.

I think i had the settings set as good as could possibly be to achieve this picture yet failed to come close to getting a good result.

Shot using a EOS Kiss x4
EF-S 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS
f/22
1/2sec
ISO 100
Exp bias 0
focal length 18mm
Metering mode Pattern
No flash

Obviously i wanted to get the efffect of the water coming in and over the rocks as smokey. Unfortunately i'm not skilled enough? to try a hdr image so i thought i'd use shutter speed to get that effect however it was too light to be able to slow it down enough to capture the water like that.

The sky had some nice blue and orange highlights in the clouds which i failed to capture also due to it being over exposed from having a shutter speed that was too slow.

Do i need to look into how to process a hdr image or would a ND filter or a Graduated ND filter be better in this instance?

[NgaiHill]

Yes, definitely a ND filter would work here. I don't have much experience with Grad filters so can't comment on them but if this was me shooting I would definitely put on a ND filter or two depending on what I had.
This looks a lovely spot and one with potential for more photography, definitely worth another visit.

[azzajay77]

Thanks heaps for the feedback. It is an awesome spot for photography, i've seen many a beautiful photo taken down there. I couldn't stay long because the tide was coming in and there was all the chance in the world that i could get trapped down there lol.

Cheers for the advice. Will look into getting a set of ND's indeed. Was hoping someone would say that they'd help as i have no idea where to start with taking a HDR.

[RichardTaylor]

An ND grad would have done the trick in controlling the sky whilst a ND filter would have helped with a longer exposure.

I sometimes have used both, but havn't found the need to use them both at the same time but have seen it done.

[Doug Sundseth]

I generally prefer my water shots with apparent motion for which the 1/2 second exposure you used works pretty well. But to get "smoky" water, you'll need a much longer exposure ... on the order of 20 seconds. To get that, you'll need a fairly dense ND filter, probably on the order of 6 stops. (HDR with moving water is pretty subject to some difficult issues of ghosting.)

I'd also consider either reducing the exposure on the foreground by a stop or two, or else using a circular polarizer to cut the reflection down and recover the colors of the sand and rocks. A polarizer would also help to intensify the colors of the sky.

That said, I suspect that the skyu would still be a bit faded, even with a polarizer, so you might want an ND grad to selectively drop the exposure of the sky.

The problem with all of this is that stacking three filters is a recipe for very poor image quality, and quite possibly a nasty vignette.

So, a practical recommendation:

Shoot when there is much less light, especially in the sky (15-45 min after sunset often works well). This is reduce or eliminate the need for an ND filter and may eliminate the need for an ND Grad as well. I'd probably still recommend using a circular polarizer unless you want shiny wet sand in the foreground.

HTH

[azzajay77]

Thanks heaps for those suggestions and the feedback. Will look into getting some ND and some Grad filters and head out there again and post the results. )

[Preeb]

Originally Posted by azzajay77

Thanks heaps for those suggestions and the feedback. Will look into getting some ND and some Grad filters and head out there again and post the results. )

Here's the result of a little bit of adjustment in Photoshop Elements 10. There is certainly more that can be done, but there was still quite a bit of detail in the sky. It just took copying the sky selection to separate layer and making some lighting adjustments to it. Someone who understands adjustment layers better than I do might do more yet. There is some funky stuff in the clouds on the left, mostly because I was working with a small jpeg. Could have done worlds better with a RAW file.

[azzajay77]

Hey Rick. That surely isn't the same picture

It looks 100% better than the one i uploaded. Think a course in PS or similar is in order aswell.

Do most people shoot in raw on here also, does it make that much difference to how you can manipulate the picture in PP ?

[RichardTaylor]

If you want to have maximum control over your final image then shoot RAW.
I almost always shoot RAW.

[edbayani]

I think you need to do both, get ND filters and get it right on camera and learn processing. Easier to process if you get it right on camera.
For this image, it still has details in the sky. You can press Ctrl/J to duplicate the image in another layer. set the blending mode to multiply. This will show a marked inprovement. If you still want to dramatize the sky, use a soft brush and press Q to enter quickmask and paint the sky portion. Press Q again to exit quickmask and press Ctrl/J again to copy the sky to another layer. This will darken the sky some more and if you want to darken it more press Ctrl/J again and then you can merge just the sky layers and do some tweaking with hue and saturation since the skay will be a bit saturated. Flatten.