Hot answers tagged landscape
31
The Black Card Technique is a workaround for the problem of the limited dynamic range of digital cameras. The dynamic range of a camera describes the difference in light levels it can record.
The limits of dynamic range are often seen in landscape photography - you will often see photos where the sky is nicely exposed, but the ground is underexposed, or ...
13
If anything, the longer the exposure, the less detail you will get, because it gives things more time to move. Even when you're looking at a "still" landscape scene, the tree branches may be moving a bit, water will be rippling, clouds will be slowly scudding across the sky...
A few of my all-time favorite photos are technically marred because of this. ...
10
Portfolio. Build it. Make it better. Repeat. Don't worry about all this other stuff you mentioned.
Seriously, no one will take a second look past your portfolio if it isn't excellent. Specifically you asked "how does one start out to become a landscape photographer". The basics are not websites, social media, marketing, etc. The basics are great photos ...
10
Here's a few methods I'm aware of:
Circular Polariser filter
A lot of the light from the sky is polarised during the day, so a simple CP filter can drastically cut down the amount of light you get, so that it doesn't blow out. You also get a lot of polarised reflections from vegetation and water, so this can cut glare and improve contrast throughout the ...
10
Yes, manual focusing is more accurate than phase detect AF (except for the combination of very recent Canon camera + lens). Over at LensRentals blog Roger performed AF tests back in July / August 2012. For almost any combination of camera and lens, manual focus can (given enough time) be better than phase detect AF. Read the whole blog series if you want to ...
9
No.
Nikon and Canon are both great options and it doesn't make sense to switch because today one of them has small advantage - what would you do if the next generation Canons will have a similar advantage? switch brands every 5 years?.
There is a good reason why so many landscape photographer use HDR techniques, even the best camera today has limited ...
9
It's a matter of file size and transmission time. As you pointed out, these are the first photos from a mission that has just landed (and which had a huge potential for failure, given the complicated and completely automated landing procedure necessary to land such a large robot).
Mars is a very long way away, and even with a very powerful transmitter and a ...
8
Because the effect of the haze gets stronger as objects get more distant, it really adds depth to an image, as long as you have nearby objects which are less affected, midrange objects and distant objects. The further objects will get more and more faded.
This can work to your advantage if you can find situations where there are a series of mountains ...
8
This is difficult to answer because each one of us has different shooting styles, goals, and preferences.
Here is my big tip: Less is more
Hiking is much more enjoyable when your pack is as light as possible. Five extra pounds of unnecessary gear can turn a fun trip into a chore. You might consider 1-2 lenses that aren't that heavy, or you might even be a ...
6
You can either change the aperture to a smaller value, but this might not be enough, so you would need to use a ND filter which will reduce the intensity of the light, thus allowing you to use a longer shutter speed and still achieve a good picture.
6
While there are a lot of technical tips and tricks we can talk about, there really is no substitute for being in the right place at the right time (or "f/8 and be there" as the photojournalists used to say). There will be times when you just sort of stumble across the perfect landscape picture, but most of the time it's about getting to the place and waiting ...
6
Whenever you see a truly breathtaking image, you can be sure that it's the culmination of doing a whole lot of things really, really well. In the examples you indicated, we're looking at images scaled to a size much smaller than the files produced by your camera, which suggests that at least some of the impact you're perceiving in the photos you're trying ...
6
Your issue is related to the dynamic range of your camera. The sensor of a camera cannot capture such as wide variety of tones as your eyes, the range between absolutely white and absolutely black is much more reduced than the one you can see when you look at the waterfall scene.
There is not much you can do about this, as it depends on your camera and in ...
5
I think the answer here is that your picture frame is stretching the image to fill the frame, regardless of aspect ratio. This is obviously terrible behavior and hopefully there is an option to turn it off.
It probably does this in order to prevent complaints about black bars on the sides of the image. One sees the same thing at bars — a fancy wide-screen ...
5
agreed. The first step is to be able to make consistently great photos, and then display them where potential buyers can see them. but there's no shortcut to the technical quality and vision within the images.
My second thought on this is simple: don't. Just enjoy taking photos.
Why? Because there are a zillion other people trying to get into the same ...
5
As @Elendi commented, this sort of thing isn't that common.
What we do see a lot where someone wants to place a portrait photo in a landscape frame is associating it with a comment, a piece of poetry, some background etc.
The most common seems to be having text to one side of the photo, either left or right, but I have on occasion seen text placed on both ...
5
Are you familiar with The Photographer's Ephemeris?
http://photoephemeris.com/
That will help decide where the sun and moon will be at a given time at a specific location. I use that to help me during an initial scouting session.
Truly stunning landscapes are usually created with a mixture of knowledge, preparedness, and patience. The best weather ...
5
There are 17 cameras on the rover. The primary camera system, the MastCam, hasn't even been deployed yet. The mast will be raised and the cameras brought online within the next few days or weeks.
The images you've seen are from the hazard avoidance and navigation cameras. Those are small cameras meant primarily for machine vision to support the autonomous ...
5
You say your photos are too tourist-like. So, try avoiding taking pictures the way tourists usually do:
using a wide-angle focal length around 28mm (35mm equivalent)
with small aperture and/or sensor
from eye height
trying to frame as much of the view as possible
not trying out different views
at a place where tourists usually go
single frames wherever it ...
5
This tutorial may help. http://photographylife.com/how-to-photograph-waterfall
Besides the two ways described above on handling the extreme light levels, the use of a neutral density filter will also work. The tutorial touches on the subject of neutral density filters.
Summary of tutorial:
Create photos of waterfalls where the water looks silky smooth. ...
5
Here are some possible ideas.
Shoot at different times of day!
The middle of the day, with the sun high in the sky, is often not a good time to get landscapes, because you get virtually no shadows. Your example image has no depth. Try taking pictures late or early in the day to get more shadows.
If you take a shot really late in the day when shadows ...
5
For camera equipment on a day hike, I take one body and two lenses (18-55mm and 55-250mm) a tripod, wired shutter release, a waterproof case with my memory cards inside, spare battery and polarizing filter. You can see more in my blog post at http://www.thecreativescorner.com/2012/08/21/my-new-ultra-adaptable-and-inexpensive-camera-daypack/
Some of my ...
4
If somebody were to ask 'I'm primarily interested in landscape photography, I don't have a DSLR preference yet and I'm looking at buying a full frame camera, should I consider Nikon or Canon?' My answer would be 100%, without a doubt: look at the Nikon D600 or D800 depending on what you want to spend. For the landscape photographer you're primarily ...
4
Try a 3-shot HDR if your camera supports Auto Exposure Bracketing... It's easiest if you are able to carry a tripod, but otherwise if you can learn to hold your camera steady you can still get usable shots. I have succeeded in a 7-shot HDR handheld. (Software that combines them like Photomatix have an option to auto-align). A common misconception with HDR ...
4
In principal the HDR methodology can be applied to exposures of any length. However longer exposures are more likely to contain motion which can cause problems for automatic exposure blending programs.
One commonly used solution is to manually blend the exposures by masking. Whether or not this counts as "HDR" since it doesn't involve creation of a high ...
4
Obviously the two filters have totally different uses so you can't say one is strictly better than the other, but if you only buy one filter I'd say a polarizer is more useful as it cuts through the haze, enhances skies etc. it will also act as a 1 stop ND.
Provided your camera goes up to 1/8000s you should be absolutely fine without an ND. The only use for ...
4
A landscape photograph simply has so much of such data that you are wanting to see. Going from low resolution to high gives you the detail level you would accept and say "this is enough". Low res gives you only tree trunks and a mass of green on the tree. Step up the resolution and you'll distinguish branches of the tree. But you know you should be able to ...
3
A wider aperture would help a bit (stopping the lens down beyond its "sweet spot", usually about two stops down from wide-open, allows the effects of diffraction to reduce resolution), as would a better lens, especially if couple with a higher-resolution camera (you stated in a previous question that you are using a Canon 1100D). Image stitching also ...
3
This problem is caused by the shot having too much dynamic range; too much difference between the darkest and lightest parts of the image.
If you want to get the shot right in-camera, then you need a set of graduated neutral density filters. These limit the amount of light coming from a selected part of the image, so you essentially have two exposures in ...
3
Your "business/entrepreneurial point of view" is the right place to focus. Being a professional is about marketing and sales, and customer service. As others have said, taking "great photos" is not enough. Its necessary, but not sufficient. Lots of folks can take great photos.
To be a business, you need to find clients who will pay for your photos, or pay ...
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