Fresh from the card

[yakfisher]

Took this one while I was out for a walk this morning. Let me know what you think. I would like to figure out how to get better exposures of moving water. I find it hard to photoshop the pictures and trying to make the white look right and get the browns and greens as well. Thanks for the input.

[Steve Foss]

It's nice, yakfisher.

When you say "get better exposures" I assume you mean get the image exposed properly for the water and for the darker areas.

That's a tough exercise. You've got the bright whites here and the blacks, and that's quite a range of exposure.

Here's how I do it. I take one shot and look at the histogram. If the water is not blown out (right side of the histogram is not cut off and there are no "blinkies") I use exposure compensation to overexpose just short of the point of cutting off the right side of the 'gram and getting blinkies. If there are blinkies, I use EC to underexpose just to the point of the blinkies going away. This ensures you've got the longest possible exposure so you have as much detail as possible in the shadows but still have not blown out the whites in the water.

Then, for an image like this (I'm generally shooting RAW), I'll open one version of the image exposed for the water and another, much lighter version exposed for the shadows and will blend them in photoshop. That technique in photoshop is listed on the luminous landscape web site under "blending images."

You can do it if you've shot jpeg, too, with no real differences.

If I have time later I'll post a tutorial on the technique.

[MN Shutterbug]

Steve, am I correct in assuming that with a dslr, you don't get a view of the histogram until after you've taken the shot?

Yakfisher, that's a real nice shot. High contrast can be a real pain, even with 35mm. The worst case I ever experienced was photographing brown bears at the top of a falls in Alaska. The sun was shining bright on the water. All I could do was underexpose by 2 stops and hope for the best. If I wouldn't have, my brown bears would have been black bears. They all turned out well, except for some of the water still a bit bright. Of course, the bears were a little more important to me.

[Steve Foss]

That's right, XT, although there are some "live preview" models out there now. Unless you have one of those, you've got to take at least one experimental shot to check the histogram, and often more than one before it's dialed in just right. Doesn't help you during a grab shot situation or when things are moving too fast for you to take that much time. In those cases, you've just got to depend on experience to know when and how much to over or underexpose.

By the way, I did post a blending tutorial and stickied it to the top of the board.