Your Advice, Please

By sball
•1
written 4/18/05 9:11 AM, published 4/18/05 9:11 AM
Tags:

More pictures from the cabin in NC. The first is a view up the Popup Linksteps to the porch. And then the view Popup Linkpast the cabin. Here's where I need some advice: How do I get my beautiful NC skies to actually look blue in my photos? They keep "whiting out". (I'm using an Olympus 4megapixel digital). Any advice would be greatly appreciated

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  • Peteyboy
    •2
    4/18/05 9:42 AM
    The problem is your subject itself. There is too much of a difference is value from the darkest to the lightest aprts of the photo. The camera (Correctly) adjusted for the Shadows of your photo but of course it washed out the sky. If you had metered for the sky the shadow area would have been much too dark. I tried correcting it in Paint Shop Pro and PS with "Curves" but there is just not enough to work with. If you really wanted to spend a lot of time in PS you could just select the sky area and either try to correct it with brightness/contast and saturation but I am still not sure there is enough information in the photo to get a "Natural" look (Or you coud just paint them in Blue:^)  ). The best thing is to try to shoot in situations where there is nt as much dyanmic range in the shot itself. This is a tough thing that photographers have been fighting for ages.
    Good Luck

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  • Peteyboy
    •2
    4/18/05 9:43 AM
    That should be Lightest "Parts"

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  • Subdude
    •2
    4/18/05 9:43 AM
    great pics. It looks really relaxing there, Im jealous. If there is any way to put a filter on your lens, you can use a polerizing filter to make the sky more blue.  You could also try playing with the exposure compensation setting. I believe you would set it to -1. You may end up with very dark areas with this approach though.  Past the cabin has quite a difference from light areas to dark areas, every camera (and film) has a limit on how much of this contrast it can capture, so it sets the exposure for either the light areas or the dark and you lose some of it.  Hope I helped.  

    - Woo Hoo!!

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  • throughtheeyesoflauramars
    •4
    4/18/05 10:01 AM
    I have also had great luck with a polarized lens. They are great for blues and greens and an added bonus is you can shoot through glare ie: glass and water.

    - www.niftyimages.com

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  • austinspace
    •4
    4/18/05 11:54 AM
    Despite that, I really like the light in the first shot. Yes, you could try to shoot with the emphasis on the sky as the foreground could be easier to bring out in Photoshop/Elements than the other way around.

    - here and there

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  • StevenWolf
    •5
    4/18/05 5:19 PM
    I have used a neutral grey polarized sunglass lens  for a filter in a pinch. Just hold it in front of the camera lens. I have even sometimes just used tape or rubber bands to affix a polarized filter to the front of my camera. It's a little cumbersome, but it works. In your "past the cabin" pic, you might consider just cropping out a good portion of the sky since there's not much going on there anyway. Maybe crop it to just above that hilltop in the background. :]

    - right brained...

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  • wilk
    •5
    4/18/05 7:42 PM
    A polarizer would work, but so would a neutral density filter.  A more extreme fix is to put the camera on a tripod and take one exposure for the sky and a second for shadow areas, layer the two on top of each other in photoshop and erase the part you do not want.

    -      Oh Shoot

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  • StevenWolf
    •5
    4/18/05 8:07 PM
    Good idea wilk, might work for a day shot of landscape with a night sky....

    - right brained...

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  • Kamaksi
    4/19/05 6:24 AM
    Another method that i found might make life a little easierand a little patience is wait for 2 conditions.  First, wait for a low humidity day.  and second wait towards the later part of the day.  The nice think about the atmosphere is the longer the suns light has to travel, the more reds get kicked out of the atmostphere and the more blues stick around.  that is why you have such a red sunset and the sky behind you is so blue.  between the two and balancing with light at the right time of day, you could possibly get a picture where the sky doesnt contrast so much with your subject.  again the biggest key is a day with little humidity.  It may not be in your cards to be patient, but you can do it without trying to figure out what lens, what do i have to do in PS how do i mask this or mask that.  Just trust your senses and be patient and the right picture will present it self.  Good luck.

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  • abargrill
    4/19/05 7:07 AM
    A two shot solution resolved in Photoshop.  Meter the porch and stairs for optimal exposure. Then meter the sky for optimal exposure.  Then place the camera on a tripod and make two photos, one at each exposure.  In Photoshop, take open both photos and import the one with sky optimized on top of the one with the porch optimized. This will give you two layers. The sky optimized layer can be made into a mask and then hidden. Then take the paintbrush and paint in the portions of the masked sky layer that you want to appear in the pic. Then flatten the layers and....voila.

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  • ROCKADEE
    •5
    4/19/05 12:55 PM
    What A Great Cabin, Beautiful Country!

    - NATURE RULES!!!

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  • Manzai
    4/27/05 11:51 PM
    Sorry to say it, but you guys are giving a lot of complicated advice about a simple solution - FILTERS.

    If you want the sky darker blue in the shots SBALL presents, use a UV filter. They are slightly yellowish, not the plain kind. It will pop out the greens of your shots and darken the sky. It will even make an overcast day seem brighter.

    If you are shooting beach, sun or the like, use a Sky 1-A filter. These are slightly magenta and will make your sky dark blue and pop out the clouds. Polarizing filters are also a good choice, depending on your subject matter.

    >Light yellow for greenery shots.
    >Light magenta for bright sun shots.
    >A polarizer alone or in combination with one of the above for certain tricky shots.

    Even the best pros are confused about filters in the early years of their careers. Alex Urba, former Chief Photographer of Playboy Magazine in the late '60s and early '70s, once told me he never used filters for years (he didn't understand the value) until someone showed him the difference. Then, he wouldn't shoot without one.

    Tiffen Filters has a good page on the use of filters. http://www.tiffen.com/camera_filters.htm#Fluorescent%20and%20Other

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