 Ujjwal Mukherjee |
Photography in an Overcast Situation I have an Canon SLR. Please suggest the aperture and speed I should select while taking a snap of a landscape or some building or any subject in the open. If I use the meter which my camera suggests I get very dull pictures; is there any way to bring more brightness and color to a subject in an overcast situation. Thanks
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John A. Lind |
Ujjwal, From your description I assume you are using manual exposure control. You also don't mention any hint of over or under exposure of the film. This can significantly affect contrast if it's severe enough and an attempt to compensate for it is made during printing. The clues you give are "dull" pictures in an "overcast situation." The nature and quality of the lighting is probably what you are seeing in your photographs, not an exposure problem. Overcast diffuses and softens daylight, and it reduces contrast. Colors will seem less bright and more drab, even if the image is perfectly exposed. It's because there are no sharp contrast edges between direct light and shadow. Bright blue sky washes out to a gray. Find a decent landscape scene near you; one where you can see both close and very distant objects. Go there and take a good look around you on a cool day with bright, clear sky. Then go on overcast day to "see" the difference. Also look carefully at very distant objects and observe the haze. The human brain does a marvelous job of interpreting the information the eyes send it and performs more compensation than most people realize! If you have heard the phrase "learn to see," this is part of it . . . switching off the brain's compensation and interpretation. There's not much you can do outdoors for landscapes and architecturals to change this. You have to work with the nature of the daylight you have or come back at another time. I look for days that are low humidity, without ground fog and not overcast for most of my landscapes and architecturals. This includes watching local weather forecasts for cloud cover and ground fog predictions. If it is partly cloudy (sometimes desirable), I will often wait until the shadows from the clouds are not visible, or at least are not obscuring major elements in the image. This requires some patience and can be frustrating! If the weather isn't cooperating with what you envisioned, then try to find something the weather conditions can enhance with some aspect of the location. It may not be what you originally wanted, but can leave you less frustrated and produce some fine images. A super-saturated film can pull more color out of an overcast day. You might try one to see if it gets some of the effect you want. These are slow speed and mostly professional films. All are slide films except the Agfa, and all are professional except one of the Kodak films: I don't recommend any of these films for scenes with people prominent in the foreground (in the distance should be OK). They are not intended for it. Extreme saturation does not render skin tones very well. -- John
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Jeff S. Kennedy |
I have to disagree with John on a point. Under overcast conditions colors will actually appear more vibrant. Bright sun causes glare and reduces the apparent color of things. You should get more saturated colors on overcast days. I try to shoot most of my landscapes on overcast days. Generally to punch up colors, you may have heard, with slide film that you should underexpose. With print film just the opposite is true. Overexposure will saturate your colors more. Experiment with different films and exposure. It could be you are not metering correctly. Try to meter off of a middle tone.
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