I want to get into landscape photography and I just spent $800 on lee products. Now I\'m starting to feel a little bit of buyer\'s remorse. After all, I get the impression that with a little extra work I could probably do most things with HDR. I have done some reading about HDR, so I am aware of the pitfalls regarding ghosting, etc--but for the most part, it seems like a good technique.
Ok, I just wanted to get that out of the way. I was wondering about using GNDs for landscape. Let\'s say you have a straight line and a large tree. How can you prevent the tree from looking darker at the top? Would you do post-processing to deal with it?
Thanks,
Dan
There is a third option, and it is the one that I generally favor for landscape work. Rather than going the HDR route, I prefer to manually blend two (or occasionally more) exposures in post.
GND filters were realistically the best and perhaps only option when working with film, and especially when shooting slides. Really wonderful work has been and still can be done with then. However, \"the ante has been upped\" since more precise and varied results have become possible with exposure blending. Certain classic photographs by well -known and respected photographers relied upon GNDs, and for the most part we weren\'t bothered by the linear divisions between areas of the frame. But now that \"better\" results are possible, I find myself more aware of the GND artifacts in both these fie older photographs and in newer photos using the technique.
GNDs are great in some situations - especially those in which the frame can be divided along a line between bright and dark sections. The classic bright sky above dark horizon images come to mind. But using them in more complex situations is not so swell. Think of shooting out the end of a steep v-shaped canyon, a scene with a shadowed peak or perhaps a silhouetted tree projecting into bright sky, an image in which the bright/dark division falls along a curve, Or one in which the bright and dark areas are distributed throughout the frame (as in sunlight filtering through a forest canopy). Here, either HDR or exposure blending provide much better options.
My approach is to use manual exposure blending, but I know of people who have mastered the subtle use of HDR (alone or combined with blending) to produce wonderful photographs.
I want to get into landscape photography and I just spent $800 on lee products. Now I\'m starting to feel a little bit of buyer\'s remorse. After all, I get the impression that with a little extra work I could probably do most things with HDR. I have done some reading about HDR, so I am aware of the pitfalls regarding ghosting, etc--but for the most part, it seems like a good technique.
Ok, I just wanted to get that out of the way. I was wondering about using GNDs for landscape. Let\'s say you have a straight line and a large tree. How can you prevent the tree from looking darker at the top? Would you do post-processing to deal with it?
Thanks,
Dan
There is a third option, and it is the one that I generally favor for landscape work. Rather than going the HDR route, I prefer to manually blend two (or occasionally more) exposures in post.
Dan
May 01, 2011 at 01:00 PM
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