[Blunk]

Most of my photos are taken in harsh light conditions, the climber is usually in shadow with a very bright background. Curse of a sunny region I guess. My question is will a graduated neutral density filter be useful for these shots? It seems like it should be but I haven't used one and am loath to spend unnecessarily.

For example:


Original image


Photoshopped to darken highlights, but bright area on left is too blown out to be saved.

Also, polarizing filters, are they useful for climbing shots generally?

Thanks in advance.

[Obi-Wan is lost...]

Pol filters are mainly effective at making blue skies darker and reducing reflections on water or glass. ND grads would be tricky to use in this example, the whole left side would darken depending on how you angled it. A decent powerful flash and something to soften it eg. stofen etc can help in high contrast situations. Otherwise stick to photoshop and experiment with HDR type stuff.

[dave]

grads are great for situations where you've got time to fuck around with them, i.e. landscapes on a tripod. not great for the type of shot above unless you're willing to spend 30 mins setting it up. like Obi says you're better using flash (off camera) in the above example, and indeed in most climbing shots where you've got contrast issues.

polarisers are great to darken skies, kills haze and intensify colours (i.e. removes the specular highlight reflection from leaves, grass etc so you see their colour as stronger), but theres no such thing as a free lunch, you'll lose about 2 stops of light, and you need the sun on your shoulder to see an effect. if you go nuts on wide lenses then you'll get uneven sky colour which generally looks gash.

here is a climbing shot using a polariser:

[Johnny Brown]

Like that wierd border Dave, do you add that in Photoshop?

Most of my photos are taken in harsh light conditions, the climber is usually in shadow with a very bright background. Curse of a sunny region I guess.

Blunk, when I've been stateside I've found contrast to be a massive problem. As the others have said, ND grads are unlikely to help.
First choice is to shoot when the light is more even, ie when a cloud is diffusing the sunlight or at the ends of the day when it is less harsh.
Second is to base your composition on eliminating the extreme highlights are shadows.
Flash (you and Cofe call them 'strobes') is useful but requires a fair amount of skill and gumption to not look crap.

[cofe]

in those examples blunk you can get rid of the burnt out stuff by not including them. simplify the composition; stand closer or zoom in. just go int tighter on the subject.

[Blunk]

Thanks for the input guys. Being self-taught makes it harder, good advice helps immensely. 

I guess I'll have to start looking at flash devices since contrast is almost always an issue. Any suggestions as to ways to soften that flash?

[SA Chris]

Loads of ways. Get a flashgun you can vary the power on, or various assorted diffusers you can fit to the flash. I have one of the little cloth cap types, but don't find it to be very good. Most decent onces have a built in slave facility, which is pretty handy.

[Obi-Wan is lost...]

as to ways to soften that flash?

A bit softer than normal flashguns...
http://www.stofen.com/
You don't lose too much power

Much softer than normal flashguns...
http://www.lumiquest.com/
But you do lose a lot of power so mainly good for indoor/dusk/close up situations. One of my favourite accessories, combine one of these with an off camera flash cord and you've nearly a portable studio!

[dave]

Loads of ways. Get a flashgun you can vary the power on

varying the power won't do anything to soften the light.

as obi says, there are those type of products, or people often knock up diffusers/softboxes themselves from cardboard and paper for no money. you can attach a sheet of white paper to a flash with a rubber band to give a larger and imprompu bounce card effect for example.

other than that you can go with umbrellas etc but you're than looking at stands to stick it on, getting cumbersome.

But you don't necessarily need to soften offcamera flash anyway for it to look fly.

[Johnny Brown]

I don't want to piss on your chips but I don't think flash is the answer here.

That photo at the top would not have been saved by flash, what would have saved it is stepping left, going tighter and getting that sunlit earth out of the shot. As I said, I've shot in similar conditions and have likewise struggled. Accept that in the middle of the day the contrast is going to be basically unmanageable, so the options are: shoot in the shade, shoot in the sun, wait for the light to improve (a cloud crossing the sun is enough).

I think we're all mostly self taught and have been through this stage ourselves, its tempting to throw gear and technology at the problem particularly as most magazines seem to know no other approach, but the answer is nearly always to exhaust all compositional options before reaching for the flash.

[cofe]

That photo at the top would not have been saved by flash, what would have saved it is stepping left, going tighter and getting that sunlit earth out of the shot.

bingo

[dave]

flash isn't the answer, but it is an answer, to more than just the specific example above. I'm assuming he wants to shoot more than just that same problem.

i had the same problem in ambarracin, uberstrong sunlight with dark shadows, and often the added problem of dappled light coming through the trees. a combination of recomposing and flash will work quite often. sometimes theres only so much you can do by recomposing, and if you've got a flash you've got the option to use it or not use it, if you havent got one you have no such option (this isn't the mags trying to sell you gear, bearing in mind i don't and have never read photo mags).

[Blunk]

sometimes theres only so much you can do by recomposing, and if you've got a flash you've got the option to use it or not use it, if you havent got one you have no such option

I agree that recomposing that shot above would have solved the blown-out highlights nicely but the result would be a rather uninteresting shot of someone's back. Here is the best shot of that day (my first with the new camera):




I think flash would have really helped with this shot:



As you can see my Photoshop efforts left the climbers face rather pasty, it was either that or a mass of shadows.

As Dave points out sometimes you've just got to add some light. This was shot with me crouched in a chimney craning around the lip for the only good angle to show the crimps. I could have easily used the pop-up flash on the camera had I thought of it, typical rookie mistake.

At any rate I did get a Canon flash this week and am looking forward to using it this weekend. Except of course it will be snowing and I'll be fuming indoors instead.   

[SA Chris]

Are first snows really forecast already? Significant amounts?

[slackline]

You could go to the other end of the spectrum and use your flash indoors 

[Blunk]

Are first snows really forecast already? Significant amounts?

Yeah, yesterday they were predicting rain with chance of snow, today it looks like rain and cold. Deffo snow in the mountains.

As Slackers says shooting indoors is likely. Might be able to add a gym girl to the Dead Fit Birds thread...