A little help please, how could I capture this image correctly?

[RickyN29]

It was beginning to get dark, but you could still see everything clearly, the sky looked amazing, yet I could not seem to capture both the foreground and the sky. The sky one is too dark in the foreground, and the foreground one has burned out the sky.

What would be your recommendations?

ISO50

1/60sec F8.0 aperture


and

1/15sec F2.8 aperture

This is not a great picture, but this is something I find myself running into. As a beginner, some tips would really help for future, similar, situations.

Many thanks!

 

[Meysha]

There is just simply too much light in the background and too little light in the foreground. Your camera has exposed for the foreground meaning that it's all the correct brightness, but then because the background is lighter it gets blown out.

You could try metering somewhere in between the two (bright, and dark) areas. If you're using digital you could try and take two pictures one exposed for the sky and one exposed for the trees and then merge them in PS although it's tough to make it look "right".

Same goes for your first shot. Thee film/sensor just can't deal with the wide range of light conditions in the one frame.

You could try and use a flash to brighten up the foreground in both the shots.

 

[RickyN29]

Hum, okay, I guess I wasn't really doing something too terribly wrong then. I was just trying to capture it as my eye saw it.

Thanks for the info.

Edit: I just realized I might have posted this in the wrong forum. If an admin wants to move it, feel free. My apologies.

 

[steve817]

In the future when youu run into a situation like this. You could use a tripod and take an exposure for the foreground and one for the background and blend them.

 

[amoki]

I rather you stay with the first pic, it looks fantastic! I do notice a far amount of noise (am I mistaken?) in the first pic.

If you're using a digital camera, the best thing to do is this : you take every shot starting from 1/60, and shoot gradually towards 1/15... but with constant aperture! The two factors affecting a photo's lighting are apertures and shutter speed. Notice how much brighter your second photo is? It should have been less bright (in fact, should be able the right picture you want!) if you retained the Aperture to F8.0. Because my money is on that you're using a point-and-shoot camera, you should try using Av when doing this

Using the technique (although not a very profesional technique to be completely) you'll be able to get a gradual increase in your photograph's lighting. What you do after this is blending the two best photos that gets what you want

 

[ClarkKent]

Hmm...a tough one. I think that I would have metered on the sky, but then would have tried using a fill flash to get correct exposure on the foreground. Maybe it would have worked...maybe not. Cant hurt to try.