Shooting sunset w/o grad nd. Is bracketing neccesary?

sixstringer · Jul 23, 2016

I don't use a graduated nd filter for sunsets, lately I have just been taking 2 exposures. 1 for the sky and 1 for the ground and then blending in ps. I was wondering if you could bypass this by shooting a single raw exposure. Exposed more for the sky then just bring out the foreground shadows in post processing. Anyone do this?

Thanks

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SquarePeg · Jul 23, 2016

With limited success:

Church at sunset - c&c please

WesternGuy · Jul 24, 2016

There are some folks who say that you can take your single raw and process it twice - once for the sky and once for the foreground. You can then blend these two images in PS. I am sure if you Google sunset processing, you can probably find a reference or two to this approach. Personally, I have never tried it as I find I can process the foreground of my raw image enough in Lightroom to produce an acceptable product.

WesternGuy

weepete · Jul 24, 2016

sixstringer said:
I don't use a graduated nd filter for sunsets, lately I have just been taking 2 exposures. 1 for the sky and 1 for the ground and then blending in ps. I was wondering if you could bypass this by shooting a single raw exposure. Exposed more for the sky then just bring out the foreground shadows in post processing. Anyone do this?

Thanks

Sent from my VS986 using Tapatalk

Yes, but it will depend on the dynamic range of the scene. If the DR is too much you'll blow out the highlights or the shadows and there won't be anything there to work with. Bringing shadows up significantly can cause problems with noise in post and other things. So normally I'll shoot bracketed exposures anyway to try and get the best quality images I can to start with. But yeah, some occasions I've just ditched the bracketed shots and worked on one exposure, it really just depends on the image and how it responds in post.