slowly, very, my picture taking is improving although it has a long way to go yet.
i'm coming to the conclusion that i should invest in some neutral density graduated filters, but do i really need them.
i have a nikon d80, with the 18-70 lens it came with and a 70-200 lens - the cheap nikon one.
i go on pictures outings with a tripod and have been using photoshop to blend differing exposures.
however, whilst the filters will obviate the fiddling in photoshop, will they enable me to go out without the tripod, assuming good enough light conditions, to allow me to damp the sky/bright bits down?
what type of filters? what f value? what sort of price/brand?
i'm all in a bit of a quandary over this so any help would be appreciated. especially, do i really need them!
i'm asking this question on this forum as i've had/gleaned some extremely valuable advice on the past and i take pictures opf the outdoor.
Using graduated filters you would still need a tripod for general landscape photography due to needing a very small aperture to get depth of field (therefore slow shutter speed required). Although I've heard the D80 is quite good with high ISO shooting so may not be as big a problem as with other cameras.
I would post these sorts of questions on a photography website to get some good answers.
Hi Parky, I haven't posted for a while but I'm usually lurking in the background.
My answer to this would be yes, definitely. Blending exposure is achievable as long as the two images are identical. I do a lot of coastal shots where blending is nigh on impossible because of the motion of the waves constantly changing.
I recommend the Hitech 85 filters by Formatt Filters. I've heard a lot about colour cast with the Cokin filters. You could pick up a pack of 1,2 and 3 stop filters. Get the soft edge ones by the way. I then slot them into a Cokin P filter holder which is a lot chaeaper than the formatt one.
My advice would be if you are serious about your photography, which you are, and you really enjoy improving your skills, which you sound clearly like you do, then use graduation filters in the field...
I use cokin filters and the cokin holder that Kevin uses and they are great, and a Kood Pro Seried dark grey graduation filter. I can;t remember how much they cost, the Kood is a cheaper option and has worked well. My polariser is a top quality job that cost about £60 I think...
I am by no means a professional or an expert but I do love taking photographs in the mountains and I do try my hardest to get them as right as possible in the field. The graduation filters really help.
When I am trekking I take my Nikon D80, a Manfrotto tripod and three filters... Polariser, dark grey gradient and a red filter for B&W.... Its a heavy burden to carry when I have all my camping gear too but I get a lot of satisfaction from knowing I got my photos (however good or bad they are) through effort!
I try to do as little post-photograph manipulation as possible. I have only just switched over to a DSLR and haven't got to grips with what I can do in Photoshop yet anyway but I want to try and stick by that maxim of doing most of the work in the field... and your filters will help.
I find a graduated ND grey filter indispensible, particularly for landscape photography. Very often when exposing a landscape the sky can be burned-out or contain very unattractive totally white areas, this is because the camera has exposed for the foreground and over-exposed bright areas of sky (exposing for the sky could make the foreground very dark, as you probably know). A graduated filter will reduce the different exposure values between the ground and the sky as well as the added advantage of bringing out any cloud detail.
Get the darkest you can find as the 1/2, 1 stop grads are all but pointless.
I have found Cokin to be one of the best makes but there is very little in it really - even shop own brand (like J@$$ops) should be fine.
Use the 'p' series. (only a pound or two more and well worth it).
When the sky is blue, try a Circular Poleriser instead. - But watch out for one side of the sky being darker than the other if you are on the 'wide end' of the lens.
Digital has less dynamic range than film, so I would say that ND grads are a definite for decent landscape work. Cokin don't do a ND filter - the grey grad is just that - grey, so not neutral. You'll also find a soft edge filter more usable than a hard edge one.
Polarisers will work as a neutral density filter (not graduated obviously), which can be useful (my DSLR has a minimum ISO of 100, compared to film where I could go as low as 50 with Fujichrome or even 25 with Kodachrome). Polarisers are less useful with really wide angle lenses, though your 18 - 70 will be fine.
thanks all. i think you've just sold me the idea.....
i'm starting to get fed up with the amount of time in front of the pooter tweaking and blending and other general shenanigens. means i should have more time for actually being out!
i have a uv round filter that lives on the lens permanently and a circular polariser (which i really like).
i had completely forgotten about cokin. i used to have a wide selection of these square beauties (?!) many years ago in my slr black and white days.
mm. a red filter. now there's a thought andrew. general view question - is a red filter worth it in view of what photoshop will quickly acheive?
kevin, i think it was you who recommended a tripod and head to me. an excellent recommendation too if i may say.
i'm coming to the conclusion that i should invest in some neutral density graduated filters, but do i really need them.
Shooting with a dslr, as you are, you do not need nd grads. You are aware of the technique of combining exposures, so to some extent you have answered your own question. However, there are times when an nd grad will help you to control unveven lighting, particularly with the 3:2 aspect ratio and the aps-c chip in your D80. A couple of nd grads are invaluable. I would reccomend .6 and .9 Lee hard grads. Lee are the best filters on the market. That's why we use them. Little sense in investing in top quality lenses if you're going to stick a piece of crap plastic resin in front of it. Whilst on the subject of polarising filters, I very rarely use one. If I do, it is only when there are specular highlights appearing in the image that need to be removed, such as sunlight on water. Far better to work out your location timings and look for the polarised light if you are concerned about the depth of "blue" in the sky. Pola filters can work against you if you don't fully understand them.
i have a nikon d80, with the 18-70 lens it came with and a 70-200 lens - the cheap nikon one.
In your position, I would be looking to replace the lenses first. There is no way I would use a zoom lens with a variable aperture for any kind of photography, let alone landscape work. Now before I am accused of being 'elitist', I know of course my needs are different, but you are wanting to improve and you are taking your photography seriously. Leave that 18-70 lens at home and buy a couple of fixed focals, you don't need autofocus for landscape photography and there a tons of pro-quality Nikon prime lenses on the second-hand market at good prices. Try Ffordes and Mifsud for starters. Taking the 1.5-ish crop factor of you D80 into acount, lenses around 16-20mm and 50mm are ideal for shooting landscapes digitally. Maximum apertures are much more useful, typically f2.8 for the wider focal lengths and f1.4 for the 50mm is ideal.
however, whilst the filters will obviate the fiddling in photoshop, will they enable me to go out without the tripod, assuming good enough light conditions, to allow me to damp the sky/bright bits down?
Fiddling in PS goes with the territory, Parky. 30% of my working life is spent pressing the shutter release, the other 70% is spent editing on our Mac system. You want to be a photographer, you shoot digitally, you fiddle in PS. That's the way it is.
You can shoot without a tripod anytime you like, but there is little sense in going to all the trouble of learning sound photographic technique, learning to use your equipment, refining your worklow and striving to produce great images if they all end up soft and shaky because you simply couldn't be arsed to use a tripod. Use your tripod. It will make the difference between a saleable image and garbage.
i'm asking this question on this forum as i've had/gleaned some extremely valuable advice on the past and i take pictures opf the outdoor.
thanks all
OM is a good place to ask.
With due respect to whoever mentioned it in their post above, Dpreview and similar photo forums are for geeks who can talk expertly about equipment but wouldn't know a good image if it bit them in the arse.
OM has some competent 'togs who contribute and who actually get outdoors and use their cameras. Listen to them.
mm. a red filter. now there's a thought andrew. general view question - is a red filter worth it in view of what photoshop will quickly acheive?
Why on earth would you want to use a red filter?
You capture in "colour" on your D80 and convert to monochrome via your editing software.
For landscape work ,using the channel mixer palette in PS will give a rapid and finely controllable conversion. As you become more competent at editing your images, you can go on to use layer masks for more control.
If you want to employ differential focus techniques, yes. If a fast aperture is available, why not have it anyway? The other advantage of primes is that they are often lighter than zooms.
Julie & I will be speaking on the Ephotozine stand, Johnson's Photopia stand and Epson (on the Master Photographers Association stand) at Focus On Imaging on Monday and Tuesday.
thanks very much lotc. some good food for thought there.
i guess that good filters only means a one off investment rather than having to replace them at some point. i've been experiemnting a lot with the polariser and now know what it can and can't do. i don't have the luxury of going somewhere when the light may be best at present, the Angel would not be a happy bunny at all.
unfortunately, new lenses are out of the equation at present until i decide that my ability to get a photo even vaguely right will warrant the spend.
i don't mind the ps fiddling too much but i have found a lot of photos lately to be a bit of a chore. blend two layers into one. then blend the blended one into the sky of another whilst deleting the ground to try and make it look more balanced. it still doesn't look quite right. and blending 6 photos for a landscape is well....not a lot of fun. so hence the interest in ND filters. i use ps elements but i also have cs3 which i currently just use for the channel access. (don't have the time to get too serious with cs3 yet).
a low f number for landscapes? i would have thought around f11 or upwards would have ben best. i'll do some research methinks.
not using a tripod. well, sometimes it isn't pratical to lug one around. e.g. i'm off skiing next week and i don't have room for a tripod in my luggage (i've tried fitting it in) and i would more than likely kill myself with it with my awful skiing. i can put up with a few "shaky" ones while i'm still learning.
btw, i always use the camera in manual mode so i know what it's doing and for making comparisons of pics against a known baseline.
Re f stop - usually f8 to the smallest aperature available is used for landscapes but the best quality will usually be achieved by f8 or f11.
I found that its worth learing about Hyperfocal Focusing.
Using film still, shooting at 28mm at f11. If you focus at 2 meters (if you can, do this on your lens - otherwise focus on something 2 metres away) will give a sharp image from 1 metre to infinity.
Using 28mm at f22 focusing at 1 metre will give a sharp image from 0.5 metre to infinity .
As you use DX apply the crop factor to the focal length used eg if 18mm is about 28mm in 35mm terms try the above to see how they come out. The scene will look out of focus in your viewfinder but use the depth of field preview to check the what will be in focus in the photo
You can see from this therefore that it best to see how close the nearest object in your photo is that you want to be in sharp focus before deciding what aperature to use. I think Iam right in saying that the pro's use the smallest aperatures to get very near things in focus.
If it is a general scene you are shooting try focusing a third into the scene at f8 or f11 and experiment.
Hope this makes sense.
I've used Cokin P filters for a while and find them fine for my hobbyist use.
The important thing is to decide whether the photography is going to be the reason for going outdoors, or whether the walk, climb or skiing, etc, are more important. A tripod and filters would not always be practical, I agree.
Not all landscape images need to be sharp from foreground to horizon, hence the usefulness of wider apertures on prime lenses when you want to separate the subject from the background, foreground or both. Not all lenses perform very well at small apertures, especially small format lenses, beyond about f8, image quality degrades noticeably unless the lens has been designed to be used at very small apertures (such as a macro lens). Large format lenses are a good example of lens designs that are intended for small aperture working, my panoramic camera takes lenses that produce an image circle that will cover 5x7" film and are formulated to produce good quality images at apertures of f16-f32.
Using your camera in manual mode is a the way to go for landscapes, even better if you can get hold of a hand-held spot meter. Although your camera has a built-in spot metering mode, a hand-held meter is more convenient and more accurate. Once you get to grips with spot-metering, your perception of an image will improve because you will have cracked the key to handling the highlights & shadows well enough to retain detail in both, especially when you want to use those nd grads. Bear in mind, though, you will be caught out by variable aperture zoom lenses , which is one reason I dislike them so much.
It sounds as though you're well on your way, Parky.
I know what you mean........but as a former keen amateur snapper.....I like the look of the GR-D11 more (those write times...pretend to know what he is talking about)....
Annoyingly you are getting me interested in photography again
The polarizer can be be indispensable for landscapes but they're a different kettle of fish to ND grads which are used to cut down the dynamic range of light in a shot.
