solutions to bad weather/pollution

[janetm1000]

ok, living in beijing, i have to deal with LOTS of air pollution, which means a nice clear day is hard to come by...

just looking for general input on what could be done to help it, both in terms of shooting techniques as well as post-processing...

keep in mind i dont have "fancy" camera equipment, and not much money to buy it....

ergh, it's just frustrating. with the olympics, there is SO much stuff going on, and yet, so far i've only had a 1.5 window of good weather to shoot in....

 

[tirediron]

I guess "move" would be considered a sarcastic answer?

There's two different questions: Pollution, there aren't a lot of easy solutions to. You can try colour-correcting filters, for instance if you're dealing with browny pollution, perhaps a tobacco filter, if it tends to be more blue, a light blue filter, but I think other than that, it will have to be done in post, mostly with levels adjustments.

Bad weather? If it's rain, easy. Buy/make a rain jacket for your camera and go out shooting. Heavy plastic shopping bags, duct tape and a pair of schissors will make you a dandy one or two use overcoat for your baby.

 

[janetm1000]

ha, rain? aparently not. earlier this summer i was going out of my mind with heavy rain every day (it sucks to have dogs in that kinda weather!!) but now that i have my camera, all i get is grey days...
i mean look at this:
(i just took this quickly through my window to show to a friend):

i think i will look into the filters and start heavily practicing editing my pics well...

 

[Overread14 2]

I have always found a levels edit (auto levels works fine most of the time) is great for removing a haze over a photo - great for behind glass work or pollution haze (at times - it depends on its thickness)

 

[janetm1000]

thanks... will give that a try! tomorrow is the start of the olympics, and i simply HAVE to go take some pics at least from outside the stadium!!!!

 

[Overread14 2]

just a point (I remembered as I tried to edit your shot to see if it would work on it) streeks like you get on glass tend to not be removable - since the levels edit is a fixed edit over the whole surface of the photo - selective areas editing (using the selection wizard and layers) might let you remove such - though its better to try and avoid

 

[janetm1000]

hehe, yeah i used that one to try it too, but i was actually quite happy with the results. the streaks are reflexions of mu curtains, but they're not really a concern to me, since i dont think i will be taking pictures through windows much

 

[Alex_B]

pushing contrast in postprocessing can help.

a polarizer, i doubt would be of much help.

you could always mount a blue sky in post processing, but unless you are really good at it, it will look fake usually. in particular if there are clouds in that blue sky, they often do not fit the perspective of the shot, and the size. Also the light on the foreground will be different on a clear sky day.

If you are really hardcore, you could try a gradient colour filter which you mount in front of your lens. but this is tricky as well.



It is funny, on TV you see now so many images of Peking with
apparently fake blue skies. in particualr of that main stadium.

 

[Flash Harry]

personally I'd try to do close up shots of people at this event keeping the sky out of frame as much as possible, this will also give you a much narrower DOF so that air pollution behind the subjects will not affect your shots so much. H

 

[Alpha]

Polarizer + Lab color editing.

 

[janetm1000]

ay... ok. i'm sick, so i couldnt go and camp out yesterday. i did take a few pics of people watching on a screen at the stadium close by. most of them suck of course, cause it was dark and i didnt have a tripod.. oh well. will post some later...
thanks guys!!