 Bob Phillips |
What happened to my blue skies? I have a Hoya circular polarizer I use with my Nikon 8008s. I just got back from the Northern Cascades and shot 11 rolls of films while hiking in the mountains. I use my camera pretty much in the automatic mode and primarily shoot with a Nikon 20mm AF and a Tamron 100-300 AF zoom lens. Nearly all my blue skies were white and in most photos, it was mostly impossible to distinguish between the clouds or the what was blue skies. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.
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Stephen |
What were the lighting conditions you were shooting in? Film used?
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Jeff S. Kennedy |
Your meter is probably reading the foreground which is darker than the sunlit sky. The resulting exposure will wash out your sky. The only ways to get detail in the sky are to shoot only sunlit scenes (metering off of a midtone) or use a graduated neutral density filter to bring down the brightness of the sky.
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Bob Phillips |
It's Bob with the Nikon 8008s, again. Stephen, I used Kodak 100 and 200 Gold print film. Skies were partly cloudly. You can see some of my results at: http://www.tropicdiver.com/cascades.htm Am I better off not using the polarizer? Jeff or anyone, are all graduated neutral density filters the same? I'm sorry, but I don't know much about filters. Thanks, again.
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Jeff S. Kennedy |
First of all I don't think the polarizer is your problem. It can help darken skies, remove glare, and consequently saturate colors. Your problem is more in metering. There are several books on the market dealing with exposure and metering. I would suggest picking one up and ween yourself from Auto mode. As far as GNDF's go, no they are not all the same. Some are not neutral meaning they will give you a color cast. Cokin filters are often guilty of this. My advice is to buy a Cokin P-series filter holder and use filters made by Singh Ray or Hi Tech that are designed to fit it. But I think your first step should be to improve your metering technique. Many times the best exposure isn't the correct exposure.
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John A. Lind |
Stephen, I agree with Jeff's assessment about the brightness difference between foreground and sky. I went to your page and looked at some of the images for sun angles in them. Not always evident, but it looks as if your sun angle was not always the best in a few of them for a closer match between foreground and background. Sky tends to be darker where the sun is not, and in most locations it pales near the horizon. On a partly cloudy day, the view of the clouds stacks them one behind another nearer the horizon because you see them on edge, and if they're a thinner high altitude type, it may not be that obvious. A warm to hot day with high humidity will also wash the sky out with haze. I had some of the same questions until I started looking at the sky in different directions very carefully under various conditions (weather, cloud cover, time of day, etc.). Not mentioned by Stephen or Jeff about a polarizer: -- John
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