How I shoot Landscape – black card method (use finger)

I actually want to share this “black card” quite some time ago .. but I always forget and not really able to get some good result to share … and while I am doing this , one of my gang actually notice me shaking my finger around the front len .. and she did ask what was I doing … 😀 and here you go ….

what is black card method and when will we use it ?

when we having different exposures, I normally do GND filter, exposures blending, black card, HDR …(we not going to discuss all here but share some sample)

 

A. GND filter

this is just like GND filter, most of the time we have big dynamic range/different between sky and foreground.. it normally have different from 2-9 stops …. e.g. for standard sunrise/sunset/magic hour environment, we face 2-4 stops different between foreground – sky… to resolve this we normally use GND to single frame picture have the correct exposure among foreground and sky e.g.

1. without GND

Magical moment - no GND

2. GND

... the magical moment ...

– the sky is ~4 stops different from the foreground…

– I use GND.9s for above picture and do some PP trick to make the right exposure

 

B. HDR (seldom do this …but think we still good to know this)

Cold Reflection

– why I choose HDR … this was shoot use my SIGMA12-24mm which cannot fit any filter

– it was too cold to think which method to choose so I simply shoot 7 exposures back 😀

 

3. black card

– seldom use this as I am not really experience

– filter much easy

– need a lot of try and error but the good light could be disappear any time

original shot without any filter, blending, black card

– why I choose black card, the environment was dark, not sure how/where to apply GND

– multiple exposures will take double or even more times for single shot

– the exposure different >3 stops

for me I know the area that make me concern as below

the over expose portion

– so what I did was, use my fingers block the over expose area

– allow only ~2-3 seconds exposure over 30 seconds exposure, so I block it until last few seconds and I remove my finger

 

so I get

... another milky way ...

 

most of the time we just need try and error, where some fail sample .. think only expose for ~1s

wrong timing to shake the black card/finger

I will discuss more on other method in future … but let’s try and error on black card 😀

 

some of my Nightscape/Stars collections

Me and my gang was crazy with nightscape with stars since last year but too bad year end is not a good season for stars photography due to weather … so we stop for months and now we are back with full actions where we are thinking, dreaming of stars every moment .. and we also try to plan as much as possible stars chasing outing 😀

some of my stars pictures

1. my very 1st “plan” star shooting

… Galaxias | the milky way …

2. star trail from USA

… a cold Startrails …

– still time elapse for the stars movent

http://www.flickr.com/photos/liewwk/4598121297/

3. while waiting for the sunrise

… another waiting moment …

 

4. waiting for sunrise also

… the Star still Shines …

 

5. my 1st Milky way

… the Milky way …

 

6. … the Dawn full with Stars …

… the Dawn full with Stars …

More Nightscape and Stars pictures

http://www.flickr.com/photos/liewwk/sets/72157625783040852/

and have share how I shoot stars