7. Landscape Photography

In this chapter, we’ll explore some of the features of the T6s / T6i that not only improve the look of your landscape photography, but also make it easier to take great shots. We’ll also explore some typical scenarios and discuss methods to bring out the best in your landscape work.

The second reason is also related to the amount of light that you’re gathering with your camera. When taking landscape photos, you will usually want to be working with very small apertures, as they give you lots of depth of field. This also means that, once again, you will be working with slower-than-normal shutter speeds.

Slow shutter = camera shake = bad photos.

Do you see the pattern here? The one tool in your arsenal to truly defeat the camera shake issue and ensure tack-sharp photos is a good tripod (Figure 7.1).

So what should you look for in a tripod? Well, first make sure it is sturdy enough to support your camera and any lens that you might want to use. Next, check the height of the tripod. Your day will end much better if you haven’t been bent over all day to look through your viewfinder. Finally, think about getting a tripod that uses a quick-release head. This usually employs a plate that screws into the bottom of the camera and then quickly snaps into place on the tripod. A quick-release head will be especially handy if you are going to move between shooting by hand and using the tripod. You can find more information on tripods in the “Pimp My Ride” bonus chapter.

Now check out another image that was taken in the same canyon light but with a much lower ISO setting (Figure 7.5 and Figure 7.6). As you can see, the noise levels are much lower, which means that my blacks look black, and the fine details are beautifully captured.

When shooting landscapes, set your ISO to the lowest possible setting at all times. Between the use of image stabilization lenses (if you are shooting handheld) and a good tripod, there should be few circumstances where you would need to shoot landscapes with anything above an ISO of 400.

There can be an issue when using a low ISO setting: the sometimes lengthy shutter speeds can also introduce noise. This noise is a result of the heating of the camera sensor as it is being exposed to light. This effect is not visible in short exposures, but as you start shooting with shutter speeds that exceed one second, the level of image noise can increase. Your camera has a couple of features that you can turn on to combat noise from long exposures and high ISOs.

Setting up noise reduction

1. Press the Menu button, and then use the Main dial to get to the third shooting menu. Highlight the High ISO Speed NR selection and press Set (A).

2. Select one of the settings for your ISO needs. The default setting is Standard (B).

3. Press the Menu button to return to the shooting menu and then select Long Exp. Noise Reduction. Press the Set button to change the options (C).

4. The default setting is Auto, which turns on noise reduction for exposures over 1 second (D). If you know you are going to be making extremely long exposures, you should probably go ahead and set it to On.

You can select the most appropriate white balance for your shooting conditions in a couple of ways. The first is to just take a shot, review it on the LCD, and keep the one you like. Of course, you would need to take one for each white balance setting, which means that you will have to take about seven different shots to see which is most pleasing. The second method, and my personal favorite, doesn’t require taking a single shot. Instead, it uses Live View to get perfectly selected white balances. Live View gives instant feedback as you scroll through all of the white balance settings and displays them for you right on the rear LCD. Even better, you can choose a custom setting that will let you dial in exactly the right look for your image. (See Chapter 6, “Say Cheese!” for more on Live View.)

Using Live View to preview different white balance settings

1. Press the Live View button located to the right of the rear LCD screen.

2. With Live View activated, press the Q button, which will bring up the Live View options on the sides of the screen.

3. Tap on the White Balance icon (the top one on the right side of the screen) and then rotate the Main dial to change the white balance.

4. Select the white balance setting that looks most appropriate for your scene; then press the Q button to lock in your change and resume shooting.

5. Press the Live View button once again to exit Live View mode.

Setting up the Landscape picture style

1. Press the Picture Style button to open the selection window.

2. Navigate the cursor to the Landscape setting and press Set (A).

3. If you want to make any changes to the setting, press the INFO button before pressing Set to bring up the options screen (B).

If you are shooting RAW, your images will look like they have the picture style applied when viewing on the back of the camera, but the style will go away once you open the images in your postprocessing software. You will need to add the picture style back as part of your postprocessing. Only JPEGs have the picture style applied in camera as part of the final image processing.

The one way to tell if you have blown out your highlights is to check the Highlight Alert, or “blinkies,” feature on your camera (see the “How I Shoot” section in Chapter 4, “The Creative Zone”). When you take a shot where the highlights are exposed beyond the point of having any detail, that area will blink in your LCD display. It is up to you to determine if that particular area is important enough to regain detail by altering your exposure. If the answer is yes, then the easiest way to go about it is to use some exposure compensation.

With this feature, you can force your camera to choose an exposure that ranges, in 1/3-stop increments, from five stops over to five stops under the metered exposure (Figure 7.12).

Using Exposure Compensation to regain detail in highlights

Depending on which camera system you have, the exposure compensation process can be slightly different to adjust. If you have a T6s, use the following process:

1. Activate the camera meter by lightly pressing the shutter release button.

2. Use the Quick Control dial to set the amount of over- or underexposure that you desire.

3. Take a photo.

4. If the blinkies are gone, you’re good to go. If not, keep subtracting from your exposure by 1/3 of a stop until you have a good exposure in the highlights.

If you are using a T6i, follow this procedure to change the exposure compensation:

1. Activate the camera meter by lightly pressing the shutter release button.

2. Press and hold the Av button.

3. Use the Main dial to set the amount of over- or underexposure that you desire.

4. Take another photo.

5. If the blinkies are gone, you’re good to go. If not, keep subtracting from your exposure by 1/3 of a stop until you have a good exposure in the highlights.

I generally keep my camera set to –1/3 stop for most of my landscape work unless I am working with a location that is very dark or low key.

The four filter colors are yellow, orange, red, and green. The most typically used filters in black-and-white photography are red and yellow. This is because the color of the filter will darken opposite colors and lighten similar colors. So if you want to darken a blue sky, you would use a yellow filter because blue is the opposite of yellow. To darken green foliage, you would use a red filter. Check out the series of shots in Figure 7.14 with different filters applied.

You can see that no real difference in contrast exists between the color and the black-and-white image with no filter, but there is a definite loss of tonal value between many of the different colors. For instance, the light violet and chartreuse appear to be the same shade of gray in the black-and-white image with no filters applied. This is the same for many of the colors, which would normally be fairly contrasting in their appearance. You can regain some of this tonal contrast by applying a colored filter effect to the Monochrome picture style. There are four different colors to choose from—yellow, orange, red, and green. Each will lighten subjects of the same color while darkening colors on the opposite side of the spectrum. For example, the red filter makes red objects lighter and cyan objects darker; the yellow filter makes yellow objects lighter while making blue objects darker. So if you have a blue sky, you might want to try the yellow or orange filter to make it look a bit darker in your image. Experiment with the different options to get the best result for the scene that you are photographing.

Other options in the Monochrome picture style enable you to adjust the sharpness and contrast, and even add some color toning to the final image. This information is also in the “Classic Black-and-White Portraits” section of Chapter 6. I like to have Sharpness set to 5 and Contrast set to 1 for my landscape images. This gives an overall look to the black-and-white image that is reminiscent of the classic black-and-white films. Experiment with the various settings to find the combination that is most pleasing to you.

I have already stressed the importance of a good tripod when shooting landscapes. The tripod lets you concentrate on the aperture portion of the exposure without worrying how long your shutter will be open. This is because the tripod provides the stability to handle any shutter speed you might need when shooting at small apertures. I find that for most of my landscape work I set my camera to Aperture Priority mode and the ISO to 100 (for a clean, noise-free image).

However, shooting with the smallest aperture on your lens doesn’t necessarily mean that you will get the proper sharpness throughout your image. The real key is knowing where in the scene to focus your lens to maximize the depth of field for your chosen aperture. To do this, you must use something called the “hyper focal distance” of your lens.

Hyper focal distance (HFD) is the point of focus that will give you the greatest acceptable sharpness from a point near your camera all the way out to infinity. If you combine good HFD practice with a small aperture, you will get images that are sharp to infinity.

There are a couple of ways to do this, and the one that is probably the easiest, as you might guess, is the one that is most widely used by working pros. When you have your shot all set up and composed, focus on an object that is about one-third of the distance into your frame (Figure 7.17). It is usually pretty close to the proper distance and will render favorable results. When you have the focus set, use your depth of field preview button to check the sharpness of all the objects in your scene. The button is located just under the lens release button and is activated once you have depressed the shutter button partway (Figure 7.18).

When the depth of field preview button is depressed, it will cause the lens to close down to the selected aperture and let you preview the depth of field directly through your viewfinder. You can also use this feature during Live View mode to see the depth of field directly on your LCD display.

One thing to remember is that, as your lens gets wider in focal length, your HFD will be closer to the camera position. This is because the wider the lens, the greater depth of field you can achieve. This is yet another reason why a good wide-angle lens is indispensable to the landscape shooter.

But you can have the best of both worlds by having the camera focus for you, and then switching to manual focus to comfortably recompose your shot (Figure 7.19).

Getting focused while using a tripod

1. Set up your shot and find the area that you want to focus on.

2. Pan your tripod head so that your active focus point is on that spot.

3. Press the shutter button halfway to focus the camera and then remove your finger from the button.

4. Switch the camera to manual focus by sliding the switch on the lens barrel from AF to MF.

5. Recompose the composition on the tripod and then take the shot.

The camera will fire without trying to refocus the lens. This works especially well for wide-angle lenses, which can be difficult to focus in Manual mode.

Setting up for a waterfall shot

1. Attach the camera to your tripod; then compose and focus your shot.

2. For the best quality, make sure the ISO is set to 100.

3. Using Av mode, set your aperture to the smallest opening (such as f/22 or f/36).

4. Press the shutter button halfway so the camera takes a meter reading.

5. Check to see if the shutter speed is 1/15 or slower.

6. Take a photo and then check the image on the LCD.

If the water is blinking on the LCD, indicating a loss of detail in the highlights, then use the Exposure Compensation feature (as discussed earlier in this chapter) to bring details back into the waterfall. You will need to have the Highlight Alert feature turned on to check for overexposure (see “How I Shoot” in Chapter 4).

There is a possibility that you will not be able to have a shutter speed that is long enough to capture a smooth, silky effect, especially if you are shooting in bright daylight conditions. To overcome this obstacle, you need a filter for your lens—either a polarizing filter or a neutral density filter. The polarizing filter redirects wavelengths of light to create more vibrant, accurate colors, reduce reflections, and darken blue skies. It is a handy filter for landscape work. The neutral density filter is typically just a dark piece of glass that serves to darken the scene by one, two, or three stops. This allows you to use slower shutter speeds during bright conditions. Think of it as sunglasses for your camera lens. You will find more discussion on filters in the bonus chapter “Pimp My Ride.”

There is a general order at which we look at elements in a photograph. The first is brightness. The eye wants to travel to the brightest object within a scene. So if you have a bright sky, it’s probably the first place the eye will travel to. The second order of attention is sharpness. Sharp, detailed elements will get more attention than soft, blurry areas. Finally, the eye will move to vivid colors while leaving the dull, flat colors for last. It is important to know these essentials in order to grab—and keep—the viewer’s attention and then direct them through the frame.

In Figure 7.21, the eye is drawn to the bright flowers in the bottom of the page. They are also the sharpest and most colorful objects in the image, which helps to focus attention on them as the main subject. From there, the eyes move to the less colorful and slightly out-of-focus house in the background. Finally, the view is moved to the sky and dark trees, which then leads back to the flowers. The elements within the image all help to keep the eye moving but never leave the frame.

The key to using this method of composition is to have your main subject located at or near one of the intersecting points (Figure 7.22).

By placing your subject near these intersecting lines, you are giving the viewer space to move within the frame. The one thing you don’t want to do is place your subject smack dab in the middle of the frame. This is sometimes referred to as “bull’s-eye” composition, and it requires the right subject matter for it to work. It’s not always wrong, but it will usually be less appealing and may not hold the viewer’s focus.

Speaking of the middle of the frame: the other general rule of thirds deals with horizon lines. Generally speaking, you should position the horizon one-third of the way up or down in the frame. Splitting the frame in half by placing your horizon in the middle of the picture is akin to placing the subject in the middle of the frame; it doesn’t lend a sense of importance to either the sky or the ground.

In Figure 7.23, I incorporated the rule of thirds by aligning my horizon in the top third of the frame and the horizon near the bottom third. In doing so, I have created a sense of depth in the image. By selecting the right lens focal length (24mm, in this instance) and the right vantage point, I am able to place my horizon line so that it gives the greatest emphasis on the subject.

The barn image in North Carolina, shown in Figure 7.24, illustrates this well. The fence and wildflowers define the foreground area. The barn and trees establish the middle ground, and the sky and distant hills provide the final elements of depth to the scene.

Comparing depth of field: wide-angle vs. telephoto

You should practice using the hyper focal distance of your lens to maximize the depth of field. You can do this by picking a focal length to work with on your lens. If you have a zoom lens, try using the longest length. Compose your image and find an object to focus on. Set your aperture to f/22 and take a photo.

Now do the same thing with the zoom lens at its widest focal length. Use the same aperture and focus point.

Review the images and compare the depth of field when using wide-angle as opposed to a telephoto lens. Try this again with a large aperture as well.

Applying hyper focal distance to your landscapes

Pick a scene that once again has objects that are near the camera position and something that is clearly defined in the background. Try using a wide to medium-wide focal length for this (18–35mm). Use a small aperture and focus on the object in the foreground; then recompose and take a shot. Without moving the camera position, use the object in the background as your point of focus and take another shot. Finally, find a point that is one-third of the way into the frame from near to far and use that as the focus point. Compare all of the images to see which method delivered the greatest range of depth of field.

Using Live View and the rule of thirds

Using the Live View grid, practice shooting while placing your main subject in one of the intersecting line locations. Take some comparison shots with the subject at one of the intersecting locations and then shoot the same subject in the middle of the frame.

Shooting black-and-white landscapes

The T6s / T6i gives you so much shooting flexibility when it comes to landscapes. Some of the most iconic landscapes ever captured were in black and white, so you should definitely give this picture style a try. Find a colorful scene, then try capturing the scene with a normal black-and-white look and then with different color filter effects. Don’t forget to switch back to the Landscape picture style when you are done.

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