chee dale wye lighting problems

[andydo]

with 300ft cliffs either side how would i get the correct lighting

[MattUK]

Either spot-focus on something that is about medium lighting, or alternatively use shutter priority or manual mode to ensure your shutter speed is long enough to allow enough light in.

[amk1977]

Hi Andy,

If you analyse the image you can glean a lot from it.

Firstly, you have a lot of underexposed areas on the right hand side predominantly, although there is some on the left too. You have slight under exposure in parts of the water. The background looks exposed well, as its obviously not being overshadowed by the cliffs quite so much. You also have blown out highlights in the sky.

With so many different exposure values being represented throughout different areas of the image, you're not going to be able to get all of them exposed correctly in one shot. The only way you could do it with a single picture in theory, would be to expose for the sky, which is the brightest element in the photo, causing the bright green area to darken a tad and the shadows even futher. You'd then have to fire a flashgun(s) to lift the dark areas to raise the exposure on them and bring them more into line with the background brightness.

How successful this would be, I would hate to guess at. It would depend a lot on the power of the flash and I suspect you'd need one either side of the bank controlled on a wireless trigger system. You might also run into trouble with shadows being cast, so you'd have to diffuse the light through a soft box, to lessen this effect.

Alternatively, you'd achieve correct exposure by bracketing the photo. Tripod mount the camera. Keep the aperture the same for all images to maintain the same DOF. Take one image that exposes for the sky. One for the bright green area and one for the shadows. The first would be the quickest, say 1/200. The bright green area, maybe 1/100 sec. The shadows may require something like 1/10 sec. Shoot all images in RAW format if possible to give you more flexibility in the EV range. You then combine the 3 photos (or however many you take for various exposure points) in post processing, combining the correctly exposed areas together, to make one image, with overall much better lighting.

[rbarry]

As amk suggests, fill in flash or bracketing would give you a better result.

If those options were not available to you (not a good enough flash and/or no tripod) there was one trick you missed. Your aperture was pretty much wide open at f3.5, your shutter speed was slow at 1/17th sec, so you couldn't have gone much beyond these settings, but your ISO was set at 100. Bump that up to 400 and you've instantly got 2 more stops of light. This would blow out the sky, but should of made it possible to get a much better exposure of your subject material, that being the river and the two opposing river banks. If ISO 400 would have been too low, then try another stop at ISO 800 or keep going until you reach the best compromise of correct subject exposure levels against increased high ISO graining.

Rick.

[andydo]

ok cheers for the advice i always use a tripod now but lighting would be a problem due to only having the flash on my camera and to even try and get lights down there at the minute would be disasterous as the wild rhubarb is the height of my chest only thing i think will be achievable would be to boost my iso and slow the speed

[Markulous]

I would definitely never use flash as, to give enough light to a scene like this, you'd have to use so much that there's be dreadful shadows everywhere.

I think you've pretty much found your best answer: boost ISO and slow the shutter. But if you find extremes of light/dark, if often pays to take two shots with one exposed closer to the highlights and the other closer to the shadows and then blend in photo editing. Having said that, here's some (single) shots from Millers/Chee Dale - I struggled to get the right compromise on ISO/Shutter/Highlights/Shadow but was pretty pleased







All taken a few years ago on the same day on a 30D. It was one of my first halfway decent shots of a Dipper but considering how dark it was (at the base of the valley with the steep sides!) I was OK with it!

[andydo]

mark i like the shot of the dipper i think its a photographers nightmare down there great scenery but lighting is terrible u got any shots of the stepping stones

[Markulous]

Originally Posted by andydo

mark i like the shot of the dipper i think its a photographers nightmare down there great scenery but lighting is terrible u got any shots of the stepping stones

Nope! Despite just living around the corner, I never have! But a few of otherparts of the river!

[andydo]

as a keen angler i got intouch with the bailiffs office and it costs 80 quid for the day him in the shot must have plenty cash lol another good shot where do you live

[Markulous]

I remember he's a member of the Cressbrook & Litton Flyfishers’ Club - think there's a waiting list for membership, so yup, he's obviously keen on fishing!! Had the gear too:

This section of river was very dark - hence the slow shutter and blur of the rod tip

Edit: I live outside Bakewell, near Lathkill