Hi. In this video, we’re talking sunset photography and how to do bracketing.
Hi. I’m Adam and welcome to First Man Photography the channel that will help you take your photography
to the next level.
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Okay, let's get into this.
I’ve talked before about how our eyes and our brains work together to let us see a very
large dynamic range of light.
We see detail in the highlights and in the shadows at the same time.
This is not the case with our cameras still though.
They are improving all the time but they don't compare to our eyes.
This is a particular problem in high contrast situations and sunset photography is one of
those occasions.
We’re often shooting into the sunset.
So it’s a very high contrast situation where we’ve got the sun and the sky, which are
very bright, and then the darkening foreground or lend below the horizon which is getting
ever darker as the sun starts to set and we get those long shadows.
One way to get around this is using physical filters like a graduated filter which will
darken the sky slightly.
Another technique is to use bracketing.
Now how this works is by combining a number of exposures that capture the highlights,
the mid-tones and the shadows and then we combine them together in Lightroom or Photoshop
to create one single file which has then got all that dynamic range information in there.
If it sounds a little bit like HDR photography it is because it is pretty much the same thing.
However, when were doing bracketing, we’re really just trying to reproduce the natural
scene that we saw rather than creating that HDR look which a lot of people, including
myself, don't particularly like.
But in this case, we’re just trying to reproduce what we saw with our eyes and our brain at
the time of shooting.
So, if you take a look at this scene from my most recent vlog, we’ve got the really
bright highlights in the sky with the sun coming through the clouds and hitting that
tarn.
In order to capture all the detail which I could see with my eyes at the time, which
is slightly different from what you can see here, I used bracketing.
To set your camera to do bracketing you, firstly, need to be in manual mode.
I’ve got lots of other videos that will help you out with manual mode but you also
will need to have your camera resting on a tripod because we want the composition to
be the same across the shots that we take.
Set the ISO to 100, aperture in the F8 to F16 range, depending upon how close your foreground
is, and then you want to take a shot with the exposure metering for the mid-tones.
You want to have highlights that aren't totally blown out and then some detail in the shadows
and this will be a good point to start your bracketing from.
You can use your histogram to help you if you can't quite see it on the screen but then
you need to turn on bracketing mode.
I'm going two stops either side is a pretty good place to be the sunset photography.
On this Canon camera, you have to the Q button or go into the Q menu, and then you’re going
to go to the bracketing meter.
Then just roll the slider or press the buttons to make the bracketing start.
This will only work if you are in manual mode.
So you need to roll it up to two stops higher, two stops lower and then your exposure for
the mid-tones in the middle.
Put the camera onto the two second timer because when you then it hit the shutter button it
will take all three images and you'll ensure that there is no camera shake because, if
Lightroom detects the images are slightly different, it might refuse to combine them
together.
So, once you’ve taken your shot, it’s time to put them into the computer and we’ll
combine them.
Okay, so we’re into Lightroom and here we have our three images.
The one on the left here is exposed for the mid-tones, the one in the middle is exposed
for the highlights, where you’ve got the detail in the sky, and then the one on the
right is exposed for the shadows where we are pulling detail out of that foreground.
In order to combine them, you just select all three, hold shift down and then just right
click and go to Photo Merge.
Like I said, very similar HDR.
So we’re going to hit Combine in HDR.
You just have to wait a minute for Lightroom to do its thing, combine the images and it
gives you this preview.
So you’ve got a couple of options here on the right-hand side.
You’ve got HDR Options, Auto Align and Auto Tone.
Leave Auto Align selected on most occasions because it’ll keep things in in-line, like
it says, and then Auto Tone.
I leave this selected, generally, just to give yourself a head start.
Sometimes, it gets it wrong, sometimes it is a bit closer to what you can actually see.
Leave this set though and it will make an attempt to get things right for you.
Then you have the Deghost Amount.
What this does is, generally you’re going to be leaving this on None, but what this
does is if, say, you have an aeroplane flying through the sky at the time you’re shooting,
if you don’t want that to be part of your image, it might try and sort that.
If there is some difference between the three images that you’ve taken, if there’s something
moving through the frame, for example, it will try to remove those for you.
It is not particularly good.
On the whole, leave it on None and you should be okay.
So I’m going to go ahead and click Merge and it will do its business again.
So once it has finished, it creates a fourth image which is the combined three shots.
It’s a bigger file because it’s got all that information in there from all three shots
and you have the ability to adjust it to that extent.
So just hit that image, click the D button or go into the Develop module and then we
can just use our sliders as we would normally.
So, as you can see, the Auto Tone has made an attempt.
It has dragged the highlights right down.You can see the difference that makes.
It’s my Shadows right up.
You can see it’s got all that information in there with those sliders so you can go
ahead and edit your image as normal.
Things to be careful of, to avoid having that HDR look because were looking for an image
that is similar to what we saw, try to avoid going too far up on the Shadows.
So, if we go very high on the Shadows, like this, and then very low on the Highlights,
it looks unnatural and unrealistic, especially, when you can also use Graduated filters, like
this, to bring some of the highlights down even further which is a nice technique to
use.
But, as you can see, it starts to look very false with that really bright foreground and
really slightly darker highlights.
So you just need to be careful how you edit your shots.
Keep it nice and natural.
You also need to be careful where the horizon line is because it starts to get this glow
on the edge where that contrast is and, again, that looks unnatural and it makes it look
processed or over processed.
You just have to be careful of all those little things because, as we discussed before, it’s
the little things that make the difference.
You have to be careful when you’re editing your photo.
So I took this photo and edited it in to this.
This is my final image when I played around with the sliders, adjust exposure, contrasts,
saturation, the normal kind of stuff.
This is what I ended up with.
So one question you may be asking or a concern you might have is, is this cheating?
For me, absolutely not.
It is not cheating because all I'm doing is trying to reproduce and capture the scene
I saw with my own eyes and my own brain.
The method that I used to do that, to me, is irrelevant.
Whether it's using a physical, graduated filter, bracketing like we are here or some futuristic
camera in the future that’s going to capture all that dynamic range just doesn't matter
to me because I'm just trying to reproduce what I saw with that composition that I have
chosen and decided on.
So leave a comment down below to let me know what your method for capturing sunset photography
is.
Have you tried bracketing?
Will you try it now?
Do you think it's cheating?
I’d really like to hear from you whatever your opinion is.
I hope you enjoyed this video as well.
Please give it the thumbs up if you did because that really helps me out and, as always, if
you haven't done so already, please do subscribe to the channel because I really think you will enjoy
it in fact.
There’s new videos going up every Sunday and every Wednesday and I'll see one another
one very, very soon.
I’m Adam.
This is First Man Photography….
Out!!!!