Best settings for mist ?

[vedran]

Hey guys, i find the photographs of mist the most beautiful, and the most intriguing. I just want to know what are your settings when you shoot fog/mist. Possibly with fair amount of clouds (low light conditions). What lense do you prefer to use ? How do you set your iso, aperture and shutter ? And what time of the day is best to do this ?

 

[Overread]

A few thoughts;

1) Best time of day = when there is mist. Mist is what you're after so the times of day that you can take photos of it will be defined by when the mist is around. Typically that is going to mean early mornings and late evenings.
Now if you go into this more different times of day will have different colours and amounts of light from the sun. The "golden hours" are often popular because both of the soft light and the golden colours that they give - and for landscape photography because they oft give a sky that is not just a blank sheet of white thick cloud.
That said with misty conditions you could shoot later into the day - when the light might be still soft, but colder and less warm. That depends really on what you as a photographer want to capture (heck you could shoot at night under moonlight if you wish).

2) Settings wise considering the low light and the fact that the mist itself is your subject I'd suspect that a tripod would be of great help. After that its up to you. Do you go for a slow shutter speed and let the rolling mist blurr in the shot - or a fast shutter speed getting a crisper edge to the mist banks and clouds.
Aperture wise you could go for a very small aperture (big f number) and thus have a wide depth of field into the scene; or you could go with a very big aperture (small f number) and have only a slither of the landscape in-focus - letting the rest blur into the mist.


The choices are really yours and only yours to make. Best advice is to go, shoot and experiment and see what you get and what you like.

 

[Derrel]

BACK-lighting, or very strong side-lighting, makes mist look its best. It helps if you can shoot it with sunlight streaming over the tops of a darker background, like deciduous trees. A good spot to shoot mist is at Horsetail Falls in the Columbia Gorge, where TONS of mist blows in the wind, from a waterfall and following the path of the creek to the northward direction, and in the afternoons in the springtime, sunlight streams over the tops of deciduous trees, or through the trees, which are dark, and the mist is brightly backlighted, and shows up well since the trees drop to basically almost-black.

Mist is basically colorless, so it shows up best against a strong colored background, as can be found near a lot of waterfalls, or ocean beach areas, where mist blows along with the wind currents. You do NOT want to under-expose mist or fog, or it looks bad.

FOG is different from mist, it really is. Fog almost always requires deliberate, substantial OVER-exposure from the light meter's suggested reading, and does not depend nearly so much for a darker background for it to show up well, because fog is so much bigger, and more all-enveloping a thing. In addition to over-exposing, it is often very helpful in fog to set the camera's tone curve to HARD, to make the degree of contrast very high.

In fog is a time when bracketed exposures, almost all "overs", can make the results look the right way more often than anything that is even remotely "under", exposure-wise. Fog is very sensitive as well to back-lighting or strong side-lighting conditions. When the sun is overhead, or high up, fog looks one way; when the sun i s low, and it is foggy, there can often be some interesting looks. As the fog LIFTS, the photo opportunities can just start appearing all over the place.

 

[hamlet]

I just bring my off camera speedlight. That way i can dictate where the light should go during mist shoots.

 

[4rum]

I think one of the most wonderful things about digital cameras is the ability to download, view and edit LOTS of photos almost immediately. That said, I guess I was 'bracketing' before I knew it was a recognized process. I try different settings then look them over closely once I have them loaded into my computer. I've has so wonderful surprises doing this ... a tint, a hue, filtering sunlight warming the shot and I didn't even see it until I looked over the photos. That may not speak so highly of my proficiency as a photographer but I suspect that I'm not the only newbie that hasn't had a bit of luck (good or bad). It is great to look back using your EXIF software though and make notes on what works. You will remember the day and conditions better than anyone seeing your photos.