[HN Gopher] Shooting at midday (2019)
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Shooting at midday (2019)
Author : Kaibeezy
Score : 25 points
Date : 2022-08-22 10:51 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (scottkelby.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (scottkelby.com)
| [deleted]
| armadsen wrote:
| I've really only ever thought of Sunny 16 as a rule to use when
| shooting with a camera that doesn't have a light meter. Another
| trick you can use is to enable center weighted or spot metering
| on your camera, then take more control over which part of the
| scene the meter is using to calculate exposure. ie. If you're
| trying to expose for detail in the shadows, point the center of
| the frame at the shadows and lock the exposure.
| scubakid wrote:
| Is my intuition right that this is not achievable on a smartphone
| due to the limited/fixed apertures?
| bombcar wrote:
| Some of what this does is what the fancy software on the phones
| tries to do in software.
| hug wrote:
| _Kinda._
|
| The values are all reciprocal. While you can't stop down to
| f/16 because of the fixed aperture, you _can_ increase the
| shutter speed to compensate.
|
| Assuming ISO 100, so an initial starting shutter speed of 1/100
| and a phone with a fixed aperture of f/2, then you need to
| calculate the difference in exposure between f/16 and f/2,
| which is six stops. If you compensate by setting your shutter
| speed to 1/6400 (i.e.: six stops over 1/100) you'll be in line
| with Sunny 16.
|
| This depends on having manual control of your exposure and a
| phone with a shutter speed that goes that high, but I think
| most do.
| munificent wrote:
| This will correct one fairly minor problem with shooting in
| bright sunlight: incorrect metering. But it doesn't fix many of
| the other problems that lead to not-great midday landscape
| photos:
|
| _Stronger highlights suck out color._ Highlights on leaves are
| white when the leaf itself is green, so when you have more bright
| highlights and strong shadows, the result is the foliage becomes
| desaturated. Instead of invited greenery, you get a harsh
| staticky jumble of white and black.
|
| _Direct light sucks detail out of shadows._ When the lighting is
| diffuse because of cloud cover or a low sun angle going through a
| lot more atmosphere which then reflects it around, you have beams
| of light coming in from all different directions. This means more
| light is able to work its way into shadows. That in turn
| preserves imagery in there and gives you more to look at. In
| direct overhead sunlight, shadows are inky black and featureless.
|
| _The color is less interesting._ Overhead sunlight is going
| through less atmosphere, so it hits the ground mostly white. That
| leads to a neutral color cast to the image. Angled sunlight goes
| through a much greater volume of atmosphere. Air doesn 't scatter
| sunlight uniformly and the effect on light depends on its
| frequency/color (Rayleigh scattering). The sky appears blue and
| the sun a warm yellow or orange. That in turn means that directly
| illuminated parts of the photo get a warm cast and the indirect
| illumination gets cooler. In other words, beautiful warm
| highlights and blue shadows.
|
| _It just looks harsh and unappealing._ Photos aren 't just
| collections of pixels. We recognize what we're looking at. And
| humans generally find the angled indirect light of gentle morning
| on the heath more inviting than the boiling overhead glare of a
| desert sun.
|
| You can take beautiful, striking landscape photos in midday, of
| course. But you can't _nullify_ its effect. The light you choose
| will determine the photo. Sunlight is as fundamental to
| photography as the human subject is to portraiture.
| [deleted]
| rrauenza wrote:
| This must explain why I always feel like I need to crank up the
| exposure in lightroom on sunny day photos. I'll have to set it to
| full manual to sunny 16 and see what difference it makes.
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| The line that caught my eye: _your camera is being tricked into
| metering reflected light which, in bright sunlight, causes it
| to read the scene incorrectly because of harsh highlights and
| shadows..._
|
| Effectively: Try to override clashing inputs by using a
| reasonable average setting. Seems like I could (and probably
| do) apply that in other venues: cooking, music, personnel
| management, etc.
| uniqueuid wrote:
| Sure it's possible to get nice shots at noon, but you're awfully
| limited when your f-stop begins at 16. Depth of field is
| important, and some cameras don't even have a 1/8000 second
| shutter. That's why it makes a lot of sense to go for sunrise and
| sundown by default.
| _HMCB_ wrote:
| I just started shooting bracketed exposures last week trying to
| captures exterior of homes better. I'm going to try this.
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