Technology & Social Media Camera help needed

A hell of a lot easier to bring out details in the shadows than it is with blown out highlights which is near impossible. Better to underexpose a stop or so than to over expose.

Or like you mention, if you've got a tripod aim for a HDR (high dynamic range) pic where you do an exposure for the shadows, one for the highlights and a medium range one. But Sackie doesn't have any photo editing software atm so won't be able to merge them

 

HI @Kinnon

With that stary shot was it with a telephoto lens on a long exposure? Also what editing software do you recommend? Alot of ppl seem to like Lightroom?

 

Do you use any ND filters during the day when its sometimes just too bright? If not then when would you use them. Thanks!

 

Nope, wide angle lens - the milky way spans from one horizon to the other. And yes, long exposure but not too long as you start to get star trails which I didn't want.

That photo, from memory, is a stitch of about 30 different photos and the final photo size is about 2.3 gig and if you printed it actual photo size is 2.33m.

I use the Adobe suite of products - Lightroom, Photoshop + the others not related to photography. Monthly sub for the products which I'm not overly keen on but don't really have a choice. I remember someone in this thread earlier recommending a similar product that you can buy outright but no personal experience with that one

I have some ND filters but I can count the times I've used them on one hand.... They certainly have their place but I've never gotten into the habit of using them. If I'm going to do a beach shot it will be either sunrise or sunset so I get the colours in the sky as well rather than a 5 second exposure at midday where I will get the smooth water but bright blue skies which, IMO, looks odd. Good for waterfalls in rainforrests but generally you can get away with needing one. I use my CPL (polariser - think sunglasses) more than my ND filters but even then I don't use it a great deal.

 

Some more snaps this afternoon.

 

still learning my camera and playing around with it.

 

Regarding exposure, there’s a Youtube video of a guy explaining his approach of upping exposure to the point right before being overexposed on any part of the image. As @Kinnon mentioned, there’s still detail in darkness to recover while overblown pixels are gone for good. Shooting RAW keeps some data that with editing you can bring out details in the lowlights

 

Yeh I am understanding this more and more now.

 

Was on my way home...kinda boring shot but i thought what the hell give it a snap.

f16, 1/125, ISO 100, 18mm using 15-55mm lens.

 

Wanna bring out the detail in that shadowy lower half of this shot?

A graduated filter, more so, a Lee grad filter and most likely a hard grad for that shot.
Bring it down to the city line with all the orange being filtered and increase your exposure time and voila, more detail in the lower half but retain the beautiful sunset!

 

So put the darker end of the graduated filter over the city line and the less graduated part over the water. Then with the extra exposure time it will allow more light to the whole picture but the darker graduation over the city will not make it too bright while the water will pop better due to longer exposure.

Is that what you're saying @Phar Lap ? Do i understand it right?

 

If you're going to start taking architectural photos, then you'll want a 'tilt & shift' lens to stop the building shrinking away at the top.

 

Cool. There are so many tools in photography i had no idea. I am trying to work out what style of photography i like most and maybe spend more of my money on the tools more geared towards that specific style.

 

Yeah poor composure, I should have tried to frame it differently.

 

Haha dam i meant composition! Let me compose myself about using composure instead of composition.

 

I did some research and its quite a specialised lens...and costly due to more moving parts, a larger lens and economy of scale.