Will a long exposure with an ND filter make a high-contrast forest scene look more evenly lit?
Asked 8/22/2018
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I’m photographing a forest scene in daylight where trees cast deep shadows and bright sun patches. To my eyes the scene looks fairly balanced, but in my photos the shadows go very dark and the highlights get very bright.
I noticed a similar image was shot with a strong ND filter and a 30-second exposure. Does using a long exposure together with an ND filter make the light look more even, or is something else responsible for that look?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
7y ago
2 Answers
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No, changing the exposure or using an ND filter will not help you with this, since both will only brighten or darken everything by a certain factor.
Your problem is the large relative difference between the bright and dark parts, the dynamic range. And your eyes can capture a much larger dynamic range than the camera's sensor.
In order to have a photo looks similar to what your eyes see, you need to use HDR techniques, i.e. taking several photos with different exposure settings and combining them via special software. For less extreme cases, post-processing of raw images may be sufficient.
Originally by user25699. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user25699
7y ago
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Not really. An ND filter just reduces all light equally, so it does not reduce the brightness difference between highlights and shadows. A longer exposure also mainly brightens everything together, so by itself it won’t solve a dynamic-range problem.
The main issue is that your eyes can perceive a wider range of brightness than a camera sensor can capture in one shot. To get closer to what you saw, the usual solutions are:
- shoot RAW and recover shadows/highlights in post
- use HDR/bracketing and combine multiple exposures
- reduce glare with a circular polarizer, which can help tame bright reflections in foliage and forest scenes
A very long exposure may soften contrast a little in some cases because the sun moves slightly and foliage may move, which can blur the edges between sun and shadow. But this is only a small effect, not the main reason a scene looks evenly lit.
So: ND + long exposure is not the key tool for balancing forest shadows and highlights; dynamic-range techniques and possibly a polarizer are more relevant.
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