Digital burning aka who needs grads

[jools-elliott]

Evening all

Here's a quick demo of that age old technique of burning. Now, instead of using a darkroom, I used my digital SLR and a Lee Filters pouch to hold back the sky.

In order to find the exposure for the ground, I took a spot meter reading from the tarmac and placed the tone where I wanted it.

Please note though, it's only for demo purposes to show what you can do with minimal kit.

http://www.photoradar.com/photos/121...ho-needs-grads

Any thoughts?

Jools

PS I did try inserting it as an image but couldn't it to work :s

[donoreo]

Broken link.

[jools-elliott]

I know. Try just clicking on the link. I couldn't get it to go in the image tags.

Scratch that. I found a way!

[thefonz78]

So what have you done?

[jools-elliott]

Well, ideally this type of scene would have needed a minimum of a 2 stop grad to hold back the sky in order to stop it burning out. In this though, I just used a filter pouch as a grad filter.

It's a bit of a hit and miss technique though.

[thefonz78]

What so held over the sky for have the exposure?

[jools-elliott]

Yep. The filter pouch was placed over the sky during part of the exposure to hold it back. You can even do it with your hand!

[James Blonde]

how long was the exposure?

[jools-elliott]

52 seconds in total. One shot only.

To do this technique you ideally need a minimum exposure of 30 seconds. It's from here you count back the number of stops needed to burn in the sky.

So, if the ground takes 30 seconds, allow roughly 2 - 4 seconds for a sunset/ sunrise.

It's quite nifty and well worth trying out