Would a filter help? which one?

[MitchStrp]

My camera is telling me I am exposed "properly" and If I drop a step or even a third of a step It looks awful. So my question is when the sun is at its highest point and really harsh lighting and blown out skies can a ND filter help keep it exposed. Pretty much all I shoot Is skateboarding and its not my call when a trick is going to go down I cant tell them to wait a couple hours. Not how it works. So would a filter help me? If so which one? I read about cinematographers of skateboarding using this one Genus ND fader Circular Filter System 77mm | Genustech to shoot video and pretty much described the same scenarios I shoot in. So what do you think?

 

[Josh66]

You don't need a filter. What you need is a flash. Maybe more than one of them.

In your situation, the ND filter won't do anything but make your exposure times longer.

You need fill light for the shadows.

 

[Derrel]

From your original post, it seems that something's kinda wonky. One, whole EV of exposure error is certainly noticeable, but 1/3 of an EV ought not to be so severe...

A Neutral Density filter, or a variable ND filter like the one you linked to, is not the answer. Perhaps you are thinking of a graduated ND filter, which is dark at the top, but absolutely clear in the lower parts of the filter. Graduated ND filters, commonly called "ND grads"< are often flat resin, rectangular in shape, and used with a slotted filter holder that allows the user to position the darker "ND" part of the filter so it filters the bright, light,"Sky" areas...kind of like the top strip of tinting found in most car front windshields.

Cinematographers NEED ND filters mostly to cut down on bright, bright sunshine, since cinema shutter speeds are very limited, and really quite "slow" (ie, quite long in time)compared to still photography.

When the noon-day sun is out, you need to expose for the BRIGHTEST objects in your camera's field of view. You can then recover the shadow areas later, in post processing software.

 

[Buckster]

Watch this:

 

[Josh66]

Neat video. "I-S-O 100" - spelling it out always bugs the **** out of me, lol. Pretentious *******s, lol.

 

[o hey tyler]

Neat video. "I-S-O 100" - spelling it out always bugs the **** out of me, lol. Pretentious *******s, lol.

It's an abbreviation though?

 

[Josh66]

Neat video. "I-S-O 100" - spelling it out always bugs the **** out of me, lol. Pretentious *******s, lol.

It's an abbreviation though?

Our name

Because 'International Organization for Standardization' would have different acronyms in different languages (IOS in English, OIN in French for Organisation internationale de normalisation), our founders decided to give it the short form ISO. ISO is derived from the Greek isos, meaning equal. Whatever the country, whatever the language, the short form of our name is always ISO.

It seems to me that it is meant to be pronounced as a word - iso.

It is not an acronym for anything, since - like they say, it would be different in different languages.

For example, NATO is OTAN in French. Most people just say 'NATO', not N-A-T-O.

 

[Josh66]

Also - funny how he calls it "high noon Sun", when the Sun is clearly visible in the frame, and it is anything but noon. Maybe like 5PM or so, depending on the time of the year that was filmed.

edit
The video appears to be cuts from a full day/afternoon of filming. The part where they show the photos is well after noon...



But, yeah, the techniques they described are useful for shooting in harsh light. If you watch the video though, only a scene or two was actually in harsh light. And the picture they show at the end was definitely not "high noon".

 

[480sparky]

Neat video. "I-S-O 100" - spelling it out always bugs the **** out of me, lol. Pretentious *******s, lol.

It's an abbreviation though?

Our name

Because 'International Organization for Standardization' would have different acronyms in different languages (IOS in English, OIN in French for Organisation internationale de normalisation), our founders decided to give it the short form ISO. ISO is derived from the Greek isos, meaning equal. Whatever the country, whatever the language, the short form of our name is always ISO.

It seems to me that it is meant to be pronounced as a word - iso.

It is not an acronym for anything, since - like they say, it would be different in different languages.

For example, NATO is OTAN in French. Most people just say 'NATO', not N-A-T-O.

Most people say JayPeg, not J P E G.

But electricians also use DIN rail, which is an acronym for Deutsches Institut für Normung.

 

[Buckster]

Also - funny how he calls it "high noon Sun", when the Sun is clearly visible in the frame, and it is anything but noon. Maybe like 5PM or so, depending on the time of the year that was filmed.

edit
The video appears to be cuts from a full day/afternoon of filming. The part where they show the photos is well after noon...



But, yeah, the techniques they described are useful for shooting in harsh light. If you watch the video though, only a scene or two was actually in harsh light. And the picture they show at the end was definitely not "high noon".

Posted November 28th, 2012 on Youtube, so probably shot within a few days before that. So, 3 weeks to a month before the winter solstice in Snowmass, CO. = the sun's going to be low in the sky all day, even at "high noon".

But it's good that we're focused on the really important stuff, like how to pronounce "ISO", reasoning out why it's completely appropriate to be pee'd off enough to bring it up when someone pronounces it in a way that we disagree with as though it's a religion, and whether the common phrase "high noon" is appropriate, given the sun's actual position in the sky and the fact that it was in point of fact more than 60 seconds of shooting, so it couldn't have been "high noon" for the entire 3 minutes and 44 seconds, no matter what, so they're like SO BUSTED!

Like good pedants, we recognize that those points make all the difference to the subject of this thread, and it's important that we chase after them. I bet if we look really hard, we'll find plenty more problems with it. Probably just the tip of the iceburg...

I'm thinking we should write some strongly-worded emails to some people to get that stuff all straightened out, maybe even start a thread petitioning the admins to implement software changes to the site to make sure it gets properly filtered or something.

 

[Josh66]

Most people say JayPeg, not J P E G.

But electricians also use DIN rail, which is an acronym for Deutsches Institut für Normung.

What's your point? Do you sound it out, or do you just say 'DIN'?

 

[o hey tyler]

What's your point? Do you sound it out, or do you just say 'DIN'?

I say ASA, not assa. I say I-S-O and not ice-o. L-O-L, not lawl.

 

[Gavjenks]

It seems to me that it is meant to be pronounced as a word - iso.

It is pronounced I-S-O as individual letters. If you need convincing, look up any video produced by professional photographers doing tutorial series, etc. or camera manufacturers on youtube, and every single one of them will pronounce it this way.

As for the OP's question: Since I assume you are taking photos of people doing tricks in mid air, with the sky all around them, a graduated neutral density filter will not work. The only really good solution is a flash. Flash will light up your subject more, but of course will not make the sky brighter. Thus, you can use it to control the relative brightness of a skateboarder and the sky behind him or her.

Otherwise, andother solution would be to get a high vantage point, and only photograph the skaters from above, so that the sky isn't IN your image. But this would almost certainly make for less artistically compelling images in some cases. And you probably can't make that sacrifice.

 

[tirediron]

Okay folks, let's get back to the topic at hand; the pronounciation of "ISO" is not helping the OP with this exposure issue.

 

[KmH]

+4 or +5 on - You need to use strobe (flash) lighting, not a ND filter.

I've mentioned in many threads that strobe light (flash) is routinely used by professionals when doing outside, daytime photography.

This is where many 'available' light photographers run into problems - they don't know how to use strobe lighting - and they only partly understand the mechanical aspects of how a camera (film or digital) makes an image with, or without, using strobe lighting.