Opposing lighting

[GadgetVirtuoso]

One environment I frequently find myself photographing in is lighting situations where one aspect is much brighter or much darker than another. I have a number of shots that extremely overexposed and underexposed. The ones that do come out tend to be either washed out (overexposed) or grainy (underexposed). I can't seem to get right mix.

In this shot I don't care so much that the ground is as black as it appears even if it wasn't this dark in person. The blackness in this case I think enhances the rays of the sun. I'm making a lot of progress with the triangle with photos needing few and few adjustments when converting from RAW but this kind of lighting seems to escape me. I used a 50mm prime here.



Camera: Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi
Exposure: 0.008 sec (1/125)
Aperture: f/1.8
Focal Length: 50 mm
Exposure: 0.00
ISO Speed: 200
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: Off, Did not fire

[RexK_Cozumel]

ok there are a couple different ways to take a picture like the one you have displayed and maintain some foreground detail. The incamera method would be to get a graduated ND filter. This is a filter that is tinted on one side and gradually fades to clear on the other side. So for the shot above you would put the tinted side over the sky and clear side on the ground. This will balance the exposure of the scene more and hopefully enough that the camera can capture the entire dynamic range in one shot.

Another way to do what you are asking is to take several different photos of different exposure and then merge them together as an HDR (high dynamic range) photograph. This requires some special software to merge the photos together and also ideally you have a good tripod to keep the camera in the same spot.

[GadgetVirtuoso]

What about the graininess of the image? With such a bright subject in a relatively dark environment a long exposure inevitably leads to overexposure.

[RexK_Cozumel]

adjust the noise reduction when you are working with raw files. Again when shooting in raw the camera does not do any noise reduction like it would with a jpeg.

Using a long exposure do not necessarliy mean over exposure. It just depends on the scene. In this scene if you use a ND grad filter to darken up the sky you will be able to expose the ground more.

[Austin_HXC]

Composition-wise, I would've placed the horizon on the lower third instead of almost at the bottom.

[navcom]

Gadget...What you are dealing with is high contrast imagery....that is, you have a very bright sky and a very dark foreground. Unfortunately a camera cannot read the entire dynamic range of lights and darks that our eyes can. This means that without some sort of enhancement, such as a filter or combining bracketed shots (HDR techniques), you will not be able to get both sky and foreground in correct exposure.

Understanding this limitation, here are a couple comments.

Long shutter speeds will not result in over-exposure if you have the proper aperture and ISO settings for "that" exposure. Actually it can be said that longer shutter speeds can result in better sky colors for your type of shot.

I see you used ISO 200, f/1.8, and 1/125th shutter. First, I would use the lowest ISO possible, such as ISO 100. That will give you the least amount of grain and the best image quality. Next, I would also never shoot without a tripod. It's a necessity.

On shutter and aperture...I would definitely use a smaller aperture, such as f/11 or f/13...for two reasons. First, it will give you better depth of field and thus a sharper image. Don't go overboard...f/16 is about as high as I go unless you know your lens and it's diffraction qualities. Second, a wide-open aperture, such as f/1.8 as you've used, will give you harsher color rendition and saturation and will exaggerate your over/under exposure predicament. I would not use a wide-open aperture for any circumstance unless you have no choice, such as a really low-light indoor event where flash is not possible.

Finally, I would use your "shade" white balance setting which will give warmer results...or custom set to the scene. Of course with RAW, this isn't as important, but it will give you the preview to know while you are there.