Hi, this is my first try to shoot with a ND Filter. It's a view on the southernmost point of Lanzarote (Canary Islands) with a lighthouse in the distance.
This is edited from camera jpeg in Snapseed on the smartphone. Don't have my laptop with me here... Will develop from raw when I'm back home.
First try with ND Filter
I think we need to see the finished article with this to judge how you went with your ND filter Christian. I would expect more detail in the shadows in a shot like this if you were using a graduated ND filter.
Geoff, thank you very much for your comment. Will definitely post the result I get from Lightroom next week. Also I still have to learn how to edit landscapes. I'm coming from nude art (also a beginner there)...
in this instance you would have wanted to use a graduated nd filter so the foreground darks aren't super dark
Hey Joseph, thanks for this hint. I didn't know about graduated filters, to be honest ;-). Will try to fix this with Lightroom if possible. But will check out graduated filters for my next try.
What was your original goal with the ND filter? Was the idea to manage dynamic range or to get alonger exposure?
Hi Thorsten, my original goal was to get this steamy looking water that I had seen in other shots, so it was mainly to get longer exposures.
That would have been my guess. In that case either add a GND (= graduated neutral density filter) or bracket the shot, reason being that your camera will have trouble recording details in the lights and shadows at the same time. You'll inevitably clip on one end (either black or white) and the shadows will show considerable noise. Try a bracket -2EV (sky) and 0EV (foreground) or even -2EV (sky), 0EV (water) and +2EV (rocks). You can then make an HDR in Lightroom to blend these exposures, just don't go overboard with adjustments on the result, try to stick as close to reality as possible.
Here is a version developed from raw in lightroom.
Much better, because there's lots of detail in the shadows now. Is it a bracketed shot?
It's just one single shot, so no bracketing or HDR.
If your scene has a high dynamic range, you will rarely get away with a single shot. Watch the histogram before and after the shot to make sure that neither the blacks nor the whites clip. Here's a heavily bracketed (5 or even more exposures, I'm not 100% sure anymore) shot of mine.
This is Rydal Cave in the Lake District, UK and it's pitch dark in there. Nevertheless, the detail in the walls is breathtaking, yet at the same time you can make out a tree at the entrance of the cave.