ND Filters

[glenafton]

Good morning,
My camera is the Panasonic DMC-FZ50. I live in Western Australia,where the light is usually described as "Harsh" I enjoy photographing the wonderful scernery here but even when I reduce the EV the photographs look "Blown Out".
(I think that is the correct term). My friend who is like me,a poor amateur suggested that I use a ND Filter. The problem is that on searching the internet I find so many different types. Can someone please advise me as to which filter to use.
Glenafton

[WesternGuy]

Glenafton, ND filters come in various "shades of grey" described variously as ND .3, ND .6 and ND .9 and give respectively 1,2, and 3 stops of light., e.g., with a ND .6 filter you have to open up the lens by two stops to compensate for the "darkness" of the filter, or change the shutter speed to account for this. You may have to experiment with the filters to get rid of the "blown out" effect you describe - post an example here to show us what you mean, as there may be other alternatives than investing in ND filters to solve your problem.

You may be able to go to a higher ISO, faster shutter speed, or a smaller aperture to get rid of this effect. Having looked at the specs for your camera, I doubt whether you really need ND filters except for very special effects that ND filter swill bring to your images, e.g., "fuzzy" waterfalls.

If you decide that ND filters are the way to go and I am not convinced they are, you should buy the best ones you can afford - Hoya, Tiffen, B+H all make great filters, because remember, you are putting anothe layer of glass between your image world and your sensor and lower quality filters will compromise the IQ of your final image.

Please post back if you have any other questions, but first try and post a couple of examples of your "blown out" images for us to review. HTH.

Cheers,

WesternGuy

[glenafton]

Western Guy,
Thank you for your help. I can certainly post examples of what I mean if you can explain how I do that. If it is possible can you keep the language to terms that I can understand. I am in my seventies and my computer work is even worse than my photographic abilities.
Glenafton

[Frog]

Hello Glen.
I'll try to help some. I'm only about a decade behind you but know what you mean about computer language.
Do you have a photo editing program? Never mind, I see by looking at your other posts that you have cs3. First you will want to resize your pics to 800 on the longest side. In ps elements I go to the image tab on top. click it and then re-size image in the drop down box.
Click that and a window will pop up giving the current size of your image. Go to the longest side, whether the horizontal or the vertical and replace the length with 800. The other length will automatically adjust.
Also when you save it, you may need to adjust the quality. Click 'save as' under file.
A window pops up which gives you options of what format to save it as. Usually you'll want to use jpeg. Also the file name can be changed. Change the name so you will have two copies..one original and one re-sized. This will leave the original jpeg without degrading it.
After adjusting the name and making sure it is saved as a jpeg and clicking save in that window, another window will come up which will give you quality options.
Use the slider to lower the quality to 8, about 1.4M. It will be too large a file to load here, otherwise.
Now you want to load the file here. Go to the reply box and click 'go advanced'
This will give you a reply box with more options and you can even use the funny faces and stuff. Others do it differently but the way I do it is to click the paper clip thing at the top. This will open another window. Click one of the browse tabs and the pics on your computer should show up. Find the pic you want to load and double click it or use select.
You can load up to 5.
After selecting the pic(s), click the 'upload' tab at the bottom right. Then when they are uploaded,(its fast). close that window.
Then hit the submit reply button and "voila", the pic will come up in your post. I believe that elements is the same as cs3 in this regard. Other people do it in different ways, but this is how I learned to do it and don't want to change my habits.
Hoping this will get you posting some pics and brings help with the ND filters.

[freygr]

Filters check out this site: http://www.geocities.com/cokinfiltersystem/theguide.htm

[glenafton]

Good morning Frog
Attached (I hope) are a couple of photos' that show the "Blown out" effect on the trees. Advice on how to correct this either via the camera or filters would be most welcome.
Glenafton

[BlueRob]

Hi there...sorry I have no clue about ND filters. What I can see from the pics above is that the exposure is wrong and that is why the highlights are blown. I´m almost sure that even with a ND filter you will get a similar result if the exposure is bad.
I might suggest... try to get a good exposure first rather than getting a filter. The metering mode selected on the camera deals much on the result of exposure, the EV is just to tweak the final outcome. Other aspects like ISO, metering, etc. will do the trick to get a more balanced exposure IMO.

[Frog]

I don't think an ND filter would help in that first shot, especially. Usually they are graduated neutral density, darker at top, so you can darken the sky or turn to darken some other bright area. In that first shot, you have bright spots scattered throughout. Using a graduated would give you certain areas of darkening but not all and a nd filter that was solid would darken the bright spots but then the darker areas would be very under exposed.
I agree with Rob that the main problem is that they are just overexposed. It is very difficult to get good exposure at this time of day.

[glenafton]

Gentlemen all,
It would seem that my hope for a quick fix is not to be. It appears that the answer to my problem is to get a lot more practice with my camera under differing conditions and just experiment till I get it right. I was so hoping that screwing a filter to the front of the camera would transform me into a budding Lord Litchfield. Still being out and about cannot be a bad thing. My thanks for all the valuable advice.
Glenafton

[Frog]

Well said, sir!
Do keep in mid, though, that a well heeled photographer would be more likely than not, to have a neutral density or two or three in his kit.

p.s. Meter for the bright areas. It is easier to bring out the shadow areas in post processing than to retrieve detail in blown out areas.
Something I frequently need to remind myself of.

[glenafton]

Good morning Frog,
Unfortunately for me I am not in the catagory of the well heeled although I am not quite fighting to keep the wolf from my door. Mayhap that a/some neutral density filter(s) will become part of my kit,when I have much more experience with my camera. However I do not have a light meter. I have just been using the inbuilt camera meter. Would you recommend that I purchase a meter and adjust my camera manually?
Glenafton

[Frog]

Not being a Panasonic owner/user, I do not know how good the metering is with the FZ50.
You may want to ask in the forum for digital cameras general.

I believe I used the wrong term by saying "well healed". They are pretty much a standard equipment necessity for landscape photography.













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[glenafton]

Frog,
I will do as you suggest and check out the metering effectiveness of the FZ50. Being a Scot I have a natural aversion to spending money,except in the case of certain liquids. However if an item helps me improve my abilities then it is money well spent. Unless of course I can persuade my wife to buy it for me
Glenafton.

[PWhite214]

There are many articles online covering the subject of exposure. a couple that might help are:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tu...stograms.shtml

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tu...exposure.shtml

If your camera provides a histogram, the first will tell you what all that information means. The second is a history of light metering for photography with some clues why meters often provide the wrong information.

I hope this helps,

Phil

[drg]

Glenafton welcome to Photography Review!

The lighting conditions you experience need a Circular Polarizer(CP).

A CP also acts as a Neutral Density element in your optic chain to reduce the light coming into your camera. The Polarizing 'effect' has some added pluses (and without going in to all the detail about what it does and how) in shooting in this type of lighting condition. For many users it has the immediate plus of capturing more detail in both color and contrast in the sky and you will get a blue sky with the proper rotation/orientation of the CP.

The two photos you posted are not over exposed or even that far from being properly exposed, they just appear to need some adjustment and if they were originally recorded as RAW there is lots of latitude for proper adjustment. There are no blown highlights or underexposure (well a little in the shadow area of one photo). The histogram of both images is well within the range of your camera. It looks like the images just need some adjustment and even a bit of modification to cut down on that 'harsh' light. The closer to the horizon the sun is, the better most results are photographically. There are ways to shoot at high noon but that's for another post later.

Here at Photography Review there are both a

Photography Exposure Guide

and

Histogram Guide

You might also wish to look through the various forums for commentary on Exposure and techniques. With a digital Camera such as you have the two most important tools/techniques to wringing the out the maximum performance for the minimum cost are learning to use the camera's Histogram and to shoot in RAW.

Also visit the Photography Software & Post Processing Forum

Oh, there is also a guide to Why to Shoot RAW that you may find helpful too!

Let us know what else we can do to help you make better photos!

[glenafton]

Good morning all,
First let me thank everyone for taking the time and effort to help me. It is greatly appeciated.
I have saved all the recommended articles and will read them at my leisure.

I have a Hoya Pro1circular polariser but to be quite honest I have never used it as until recently I was unsure as to what it was for. I have bought some books by Scott Kelby and have learned a fair amount from them but I did think that a polariser filter was just to give a "Silky" effect on flowing water.
My camera does have a histogram but again I was/am unsure as how to correctly read it though I will probably get a lot of information from the suggested articles.
When I first bought my camera (The first I have ever owned) I just set everything on Auto. Now I want to try and take "Wow" photographs so am getting a bit more daring and try experimenting though until now I have never tried using Raw. I have just started attending a school to learn PS3 so now may be the time to try.
Glenafton.

[BlueRob]

The best way to learn is shoot and shoot some more...learn the basics, study the results from your shots.
Oh! and keep shooting!

[Frog]

I thought a circular polarizer might help but wasn't sure.
If you want to know what the circular polarizer does, just look through some polarized sunglasses.
I think the examples shown at the bottom of this page are good ones with the middle one being for digital. http://www.offrench.net/photos/artic...ing_filter.php

[Singletracklovr]

Hello Glenafton,
In the EXIF data on the pictures you posted the white balance set to manual and cloudy.
I would recommend you set it to auto.
The exposure is also set to +1.33 This is probably why the picts are overexposed.
I would suggest you set it back to 0.0

There are many other camera setting that do not show up in the EXIF file. You might want to look thru all of them and if you are unsure of what they do set them to auto or default.
Some cameras' have a reset on the photo settings. That might be an option to try just to get the camera back to a good starting position. Then go out and take a few test picts.

hth and welcome

[glenafton]

Singletracklovr,
I checked the camera settings and you are correct. I was sitting the previous evening with the camera instruction manual trying to learn how to set the camera correctly and I must have put the camera away without resetting it. Consequential result is bad photographs. A good lesson to remember to check everything first.
Glenafton

[freygr]

From the two photos posted, the exposure needed to be adjusted as the camera exposed for the shaded areas.