There has always been something about shooting landscapes that has brought a sense of joy to my photography. It might have something to do with being outdoors and working at the mercy of Mother Nature. Maybe it’s the way it challenges me to visualize the landscape and try to capture it with my camera. It truly is a celebration of light, composition, and the world we live in.

In this chapter, we will explore some of the features of the 50D that not only improve the look of your landscape photography, but also make it easier to take great shots. We will also explore some typical scenarios and discuss methods to bring out the best in your landscape photography.

Throughout the previous chapters we have concentrated on using the camera to create great images. We will continue that trend through this chapter, but there is one additional piece of equipment that is crucial in the world of landscape shooting: the tripod. Tripods are critical to your landscape work for a couple of reasons. The first relates to the time of day that you will be working. For reasons that will be explained later, the best light for most landscape work happens at sunrise and just before sunset. While this is the best time to shoot, it’s also kind of dark. That means you’ll be working with slow shutter speeds. Slow shutter speeds mean camera shake. Camera shake equals bad photos.

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 (DOF). 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).

Figure 7.1. A sturdy tripod is the key to sharp landscape photos.

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. There is nothing worse than having to bend over all day to look through your viewfinder. Finally, think about getting a tripod that utilizes 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. This will be especially handy if you are going to move between shooting by hand and using the tripod. There’s more about tripods in the bonus chapter.

IS Lenses and Tripods Don’t Mix

If you are using image stabilization (IS) lenses on your camera, remember to turn this feature off when you use a tripod (Figure 7.2). This is because the image stabilization can, while trying to minimize camera movement, actually create movement when the camera is already stable. To turn off the IS feature, just slide the Stabilizer selector switch on the side of the lens to the Off position.

Figure 7.2. Turn off the Image Stabilization feature when using a tripod.

As discussed in Chapter 4, A-DEP is what I would refer to as an advanced automatic mode. The camera evaluates the distance of objects in the viewfinder and then determines the proper aperture setting to render everything in focus. It is automatic because it requires no input from the camera operator, but it is advanced because it is not just trying to select the maximum aperture as with the Landscape mode in the Basic zone.

Take a look at Figure 7.3 and let’s see what A-DEP is thinking.

Figure 7.3. A-DEP is looking at the trees and the distant bridge and picking a small aperture to give enough depth of field to keep them both looking sharp and in focus.

There were two main subjects in the image of the Golden Gate Bridge. The bridge is the main character, but the trees on the hillside are of equal importance to me. There was quite a bit of distance between these two subjects, so a lot of depth of field was necessary to give sharp focus to each of them.

Using the A-DEP mode, the camera utilizes the autofocus information to evaluate the distance of the trees and the bridge. While it is checking the subjects’ distances, it is also gathering information on the available light levels. Based on all of this data, it determines that an exposure of f/32 at 1/40 of a second with an ISO of 200 is the proper setting to make all of the subjects appear in focus.

The problem with A-DEP is the control factor: you really have none. If the mode calls for an exposure of more than 30 seconds, you have no choice except to raise your ISO. If the shutter speed selected is greater than 1/8000 of a second, then you have to lower the ISO. Considering the limitations of this mode, it might best be used as an evaluation of the scene and exposure. Think of it as asking the camera for its opinion.

One of the downfalls of A-DEP mode is the use of ISO to change exposure settings. When shooting most landscape scenes, the ISO is the one factor that should only be changed as a last resort. While it is easy to select a higher ISO to get a smaller aperture, the noise that it can introduce into your images can be quite harmful (Figures 7.4 and 7.5). The noise is not only visible as large grainy artifacts, it can also be multicolored, which further degrades the image quality. Take a look at the image in Figure 7.4, which was taken with an ISO of 1600. The purpose was to shorten the shutter speed and still use a small aperture setting of f/22. The problem is that the noise level is so high that, in addition to being distracting, it is obscuring fine details in the canyon wall.

Figure 7.4. A high ISO setting created a lot of digital noise in the shadows.

Figure 7.5. When the image is enlarged, the noise is even more apparent.

Now check out another image that was taken in the same canyon light but with a much lower ISO setting (Figures 7.6 and 7.7). As you can see, the noise levels are much lower, which means that my blacks look black, and the fine details are beautifully captured.

Figure 7.6. By lowering the ISO to 100, I was able to avoid the noise and capture a clean image.

Figure 7.7. Zooming in shows that the noise levels for this image are almost nonexistent.

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.

Both canyon images were taken with a tripod, but the image set to an ISO of 100 required four times the shutter speed (30 seconds at ISO 100) of the high ISO image (2 seconds at ISO 1600). The temptation to use higher ISOs should always be avoided, as the end result will be more image noise and less detail.

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.

This probably seems like a no-brainer. If it’s sunny, select Daylight. If it’s overcast, choose the Shade or Cloudy setting. Those choices wouldn’t be wrong for those circumstances, but why limit yourself? Sometimes you can change the mood of the photo by selecting a white balance that doesn’t quite fit the light for the scene that you are shooting.

Figure 7.8 is an example of a correct white balance. It was late afternoon and the sun was starting to move low in the sky, giving everything that warm afternoon glow. The white balance for this image was set to Daylight.

Figure 7.8. Using the “proper” white balance yields predictable results.

But what if I want to make the scene look like it was shot in the early morning hours? Simple; I just change the white balance to Fluorescent, which is a much cooler setting (Figure 7.9).

Figure 7.9. Changing the white balance to Fluorescent gives the impression that the picture was taken at a different time of day than it really was.

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 LCD. Even better, you can choose a custom setting that will let you dial in exactly the right look for your image.

To use Live View, you must first activate it in the menu system (as described in Chapter 6).

When shooting landscapes, I always look for great color and contrast. This is one of the reasons that so many landscape shots are taken in the early morning or during sunset. The light is much more vibrant and colorful at these times of day and adds a sense of drama to an image.

You can help boost this effect, especially in the less-than-golden hours of the day, by using the Landscape picture style (Figure 7.10). Just as in the Landscape mode found in the Basic zone, you can set up your landscape shooting so that you capture images with increased sharpness and a slight boost in blues and greens. This style will add some pop to your landscapes without the need for additional processing in any software.

Figure 7.10. Using the Landscape picture style can add sharpness and more vivid color to skies and vegetation.

Balancing exposure in scenes that have a wide contrast in tonal ranges can be extremely challenging. The one thing you should never do is overexpose your skies to the point of blowing out your highlights (unless, of course, that is the look you are going for). It’s one thing to have white clouds, but it’s a completely different, and bad, thing to have no detail at all in those clouds. This usually happens when the camera is trying to gain exposure in the darker areas of the image (Figure 7.11). The one way to tell if you have blown out your highlights is to turn on the Highlight Alert, or “blinkies,” feature on your camera (see the “How I Shoot” section in Chapter 4). 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.

Figure 7.11. The walls and underside of the tin roof are well exposed, but parts of the building in the sun has no detail whatsoever.

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

Figure 7.12. A compensation of two stops of underexposure brought back the detail in the highlights.

There is nothing as timeless as a beautiful black and white landscape photo. For many, it is the purest form of photography. The genre conjures up thoughts of Ansel Adams out in Yosemite Valley, capturing stunning monoliths with his 8×10 view camera. Well, just because you are shooting with a digital camera doesn’t mean you can’t create your own stunning photos using the power of the Monochrome picture style. (See the “Classic Black and White Portraits” section of Chapter 6 for instructions on setting up this feature.) Not only can you shoot in black and white, you can also apply built-in filters to lighten or darken different elements within your scene, as well as add contrast and definition.

The four filter colors are red, yellow, green, and orange. 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 7.13 with different filters applied.

Figure 7.13. Adding color filter settings to the Monochrome picture style allows you to brighten or darken elements in your scene. The top right image has no filter applied to it. The bottom left has a green filter, and the bottom right has an orange filter.

You can see that there is no real difference in contrast between the color and the black and white image with no filter. The green filter has the effect of darkening the skies slightly and giving a significantly darker look to the buttes, which are orange in color. Using the Orange filter makes the buttes very light but dramatically darkens the sky. For this particular shot, I much prefer the look of the darkened skies.

Other options in the Monochrome picture style enable you to adjust the sharpness, 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.

If you ask any professional landscape photographer what their favorite time of day to shoot is, chances are they will tell you it’s the hours surrounding daybreak and sunset (Figures 7.14 and 7.15). The reason for this is that the light is coming from a very low angle to the landscape, which creates shadows and gives depth and character. There is also a quality to the light that seems cleaner and is more colorful than the light you get when shooting at midday. One thing that can dramatically improve any morning or evening shot is the presence of clouds. The sun will fill the underside of the clouds with a palette of colors and add drama to your skies.

Figure 7.14. The few minutes just prior to sunrise can add great colors to a partly cloudy sky.

Figure 7.15. Late afternoon sun is usually warmer and adds drama and warmth to the clouds.

Large landscape scenes are great fun to photograph, but they can present a problem: where exactly do you focus when you want everything to be sharp? Since our goal is to create a great landscape photo, we will need to concentrate on how to best create an image that is tack sharp, with a depth of field that renders great focus throughout the scene.

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 utilize something called the “hyper focal distance” of your lens.

Hyper focal distance, also referred to as 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 in combination 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 7.16). 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 7.17).

Figure 7.16. To get maximum focus from near to far, the focus was set one-third of the way into the pool of water, about where you see the reflection of the clouds in the water. l then recomposed before taking the picture. Using this point of focus with an aperture of f/16 gave me a sharply focused image all the way back to the distant rocks. This is another excellent place to use the One Shot focus mode as well.

Figure 7.17. Using the Depth of Field preview button can help you ensure that the image is sharp.

When the Depth of Field preview button is depressed, it will cause the lens to stop 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.

There’s no denying that the automatic focus features on the 50D are great, but sometimes it just pays to turn them off and go manual. This is especially true if you are shooting on a tripod: once you have your shot composed in the viewfinder and you are ready to focus, chances are that the area you want to focus on is not going to be in the area of one of the focus points. Often this is the case when you have a foreground element that is fairly low in the frame. You could use a single focus point set low in your viewfinder and then pan the camera down until it rests on your subject. But then you would have to press the shutter button halfway to focus the camera and then try to recompose and lock down the tripod. It’s no easy task.

But you can have the best of both worlds by having the camera focus for you, then switching to manual focus to comfortably recompose your shot (Figure 7.18).

Figure 7.18. Using the DOF one-third rule, I focused on the rock bed in front of the boulder, then switched the lens to manual focus before recomposing for the final shot.

There’s nothing quite as satisfying for the landscape shooter as capturing a silky waterfall shot. Creating the smooth-flowing effect is as simple as adjusting your shutter speed to allow the water to be in motion while the shutter is open. The key is to have your camera on a stable platform (such as a tripod) so that you can use a shutter speed that’s long enough to work (Figure 7.19). To achieve a great effect, use a shutter speed that is at least 1/15 of a second or longer.

Figure 7.19. I used a tripod and a long exposure time to give the double waterfall its silky look.

Setting Up for a Waterfall Shot

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

2. 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 colors, reduce reflections, and darken blue skies. It is a handy filter for landscape work (Figure 7.20). 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.

Figure 7.20. I used a polarizing filter to add two stops of exposure, thus allowing for a longer exposure time under the midday sun. I got the added benefit of darkening the blue sky.

As a photographer, it’s your job to lead the viewer through your image. You accomplish this by utilizing the principles of composition, which is the arrangement of elements in the scene that draws the viewer’s eye through your image and holds their attention. As the director of this viewing, you need to understand how people see, and then use that information to focus their attention on the most important elements in your image.

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 white cloud in the middle of the frame. From there, it is pulled toward the sharpness and color of the large boulder that is anchoring the lower-left portion of the image. The eye moves around the curved section of stone at the bottom of the frame, where it is then lifted back up to the sky and clouds, right back to the beginning. The elements within the image all help to keep the eye moving but never leave the frame.

Figure 7.21. The composition of the elements pulls the viewer’s eyes around the image, leading from one element to the next in a circular pattern.

Rule of Thirds

There are, in fact, quite a few philosophies concerning composition. The easiest one to begin with is known as the “rule of thirds.” Using this principle, you simply divide your viewfinder into thirds by imagining two horizontal and two vertical lines that divide the frame equally.

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).

Figure 7.22. Placing the small shrub in the upper-left portion of the image creates a much more interesting composition than having it dead center in the frame.

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 bottom third of the frame and the mountains near the top third. I have also placed the large tree in the foreground at one of the intersecting lines and the peak of one of the mountains in another. I achieved this by choosing the right focal length (in this case, it was 200mm) and by moving my camera position until I had all of the key elements in the right place.

Figure 7.23. Placing the horizon of this image at the bottom third of the frame places emphasis on the subjects above it—the large tree and the mountains.

Creating Depth

Because a photograph is a flat, two-dimensional space, you need to create a sense of depth by using the elements in the scene to create a three-dimensional feel. This is accomplished by including different and distinct spaces for the eye to travel: a foreground, middle ground, and background. By using these three spaces, you draw the viewer in and render depth to your image.

The hilly scene in northern California, shown in Figure 7.24, illustrates this well. The tree strongly defines the foreground area. The shadowy hills help separate the tree from the middle ground, and the sky gives a great blue background that contrasts with the warm tones of the late afternoon sun.

Figure 7.24. The tree, shadow, sloping hills, and sky all add to the feeling of depth in the image.

This section comes with a warning attached. All of the techniques and topics up to this point have been centered on your camera. The following two sections, covering panoramas and high dynamic range (HDR) images, require you to use image-processing software to complete the photograph. They are, however, important enough that you should know how to correctly shoot for success, should you choose to explore these two popular techniques.

Shooting Panoramas

If you have ever visited the Grand Canyon, you know just how large and wide open it truly is—so much so that it would be difficult to capture its splendor in just one frame. The same can be said for a mountain range, or a cityscape, or any extremely wide vista. There are two methods that you can use to capture the feeling of this type of scene.

The “Fake” Panorama

The first method is to shoot as wide as you can, and then crop out the top and bottom portion of the frame. Panoramic images are generally two or three times wider than a normal image.

Creating a Fake Panorama

1. To create the look of the panorama, find your widest lens focal length. In my case, it would be the 18mm setting on the 18–200mm EF-S kit lens.

2. Using the guidelines discussed earlier in the chapter, compose and focus your scene, and select the smallest aperture possible.

3. Shoot your image. That’s all there is to it, from a photography standpoint.

4. Then, open the image in your favorite image-processing software and crop the extraneous foreground and sky from the image, leaving you with a wide panorama of the scene.

Figure 7.25 shows an example using a photo taken in the Tonto National Forest, just outside of Phoenix, Arizona.

Figure 7.25. This is a nice image but it lacks visual impact.

As you can see, the image was shot with a very wide perspective, using an 18mm lens. While it is not a bad photo, it lacks impact and suffers from poor composition. This isn’t a problem, though, because it was shot for the express purpose of creating a “fake” panorama. Now look at the same image, cropped for panoramic view (Figure 7.26). As you can see, it makes a huge difference in the image and gives much higher visual impact by reducing the uninteresting foreground and sky, drawing your eyes across the length of the horizon.

Figure 7.26. Cropping gives the feeling of a sweeping vista and makes the shot visually appealing.

The Multiple-Image Panorama

The reason the previous method is sometimes referred to as a “fake” panorama is because it is made with a standard-size frame and then cropped down to a narrow perspective. To shoot a true panorama, you need to use either a special panorama camera that shoots a very wide frame, or the following method, which requires the combining of multiple frames.

The multiple-image pano has gained in popularity in the past few years; this is principally due to advances in image-processing software. Many software options are available now that will take multiple images, align them, and then “stitch” them into a single panoramic image. The real key to shooting a multiple-image pano is to overlap your shots by about 30 percent from one frame to the next (Figures 7.27 and 7.28). It is possible to handhold the camera while capturing your images, but the best method for capturing great panoramic images is to use a tripod.

Figure 7.27. Here you see the makings of a panorama, with eight shots overlapping by about 30 percent from frame to frame.

Figure 7.28. I used Adobe Photoshop to combine all of the exposures into one large panoramic image.

Now that you have your series of overlapping images, you can import them into your image-processing software to stitch them together and create a single panoramic image.

Shooting Properly for a Multiple-Image Panorama

1. Mount your camera on your tripod and make sure it is level.

2. Choose a focal length for your lens that is somewhere between 35mm and 50mm.

3. In Av mode, use a very small aperture for the greatest depth of field. Take a meter reading of a bright part of the scene, and make note of it.

4. Now change your camera to Manual mode (M), and dial in the aperture and shutter speed that you obtained in the previous step.

5. Set your lens to manual focus, and then focus your lens for the area of interest using the HFD method of finding a point one-third of the way into the scene. (If you use the autofocus, you risk getting different points of focus from image to image, which will make the image stitching more difficult for the software.)

6. While carefully panning your camera, shoot your images to cover the entire area of the scene from one end to the other, leaving a 30 percent overlap from one frame to the next.

Shooting High Dynamic Range (HDR) Images

One of the more recent trends in digital photography is the use of high dynamic range (HDR) to capture the full range of tonal values in your final image. Typically, when you photograph a scene that has a wide range of tones from shadows to highlights, you have to make a decision regarding which tonal values you are going to emphasize, and then adjust your exposure accordingly. This is because your camera has a limited dynamic range, at least as compared to the human eye. HDR photography allows you to capture multiple exposures for the highlights, shadows, and midtones, and then combine them into a single image using software (Figures 7.29–7.32). A number of software applications allow you to combine the images and then perform a process called “tonemapping,” whereby the complete range of exposures is represented in a single image. I will not be covering the software applications, but I will explore the process of shooting a scene to help you render properly captured images for the HDR process. Note that using a tripod is absolutely necessary for this technique, since you need to have perfect alignment of each image when they are combined.

Figure 7.29. Underexposing two stops will render more detail in the highlight areas of the clouds.

Figure 7.30. This is the normal exposure as dictated by the camera meter.

Figure 7.31. Overexposing by two stops ensures that the darker areas are exposed for detail in the shadows.

Figure 7.32. This is the final HDR image that was rendered from the three other exposures you see here.

Sorting Your Shots for the Multi-Image Panorama

If you shoot more than one series of shots for your panoramas, it can sometimes be difficult to know when one series of images ends and the other begins. Here is a quick tip for separating your images.

Set up your camera using the steps listed here. Now, before you take your first good exposure in the series, hold up one finger in front of the camera and take a shot. Now move your hand away and begin taking your overlapping images. When you have taken your last shot, hold two fingers in front of the camera and take another shot.

Now, when you go to review your images, use the series of shots that falls between the frames with one and two fingers in them. Then just repeat the process for your next panorama series.

Setting Up for Shooting an HDR Image

1. Set your ISO to 100 to ensure clean, noise-free images.

2. Set your program mode to Av. During the shooting process, you will be taking three shots of the same scene, creating an overexposed image, an underexposed image, and a normal exposure. Since the camera is going to be adjusting the exposure, you want it to make changes to the shutter speed, not the aperture, so that your depth of field is consistent.

3. Set your camera file format to RAW. This is extremely important because the RAW format contains a much larger range of exposure values than a JPEG file, and this information is needed by the HDR software.

4. Change your shooting mode to Low-speed continuous. This will allow you to capture your exposures quickly. Even though you will be using a tripod, there is always a chance that something within your scene will be moving (like clouds or leaves). Shooting in the Low-speed continuous mode minimizes any subject movement between frames.

5. Adjust the auto exposure bracket (AEB) mode to shoot three exposures in two-stop increments. To do this, press the Menu button and navigate to the second shooting screen. Rotate the Quick Control dial to highlight the Expo.comp./AEB setting and press the Set button. Now turn the Quick Control dial to the right until the AEB indicators move all the way out to –2 and +2. Press the Set button to lock in your changes.

   

6. Focus the camera using the manual focus method discussed earlier in the chapter, compose your shot, secure the tripod, and hold down the shutter button until the camera has fired three consecutive times.

A software program, such as Adobe Photoshop or Photomatix Pro, can now process your exposure-bracketed images into a single HDR file. You can find more information on HDR photography and creating HDR images in the Tutorials section at www.photowalkpro.com.

Bracketing Your Exposures

In HDR, bracketing is the process of capturing a series of exposures at different stop intervals. You can bracket your exposures even if you aren’t going to be using HDR. Sometimes this is helpful when you have a tricky lighting situation and you want to ensure that you have just the right exposure to capture the look you’re after. In HDR, you bracket to the plus and minus side of a “normal” exposure, but you can also bracket all of your exposures to the over or under side of normal. It all depends on what you are after. If you aren’t sure whether you are getting enough shadow detail, you can bracket a little toward the overexposed side. The same is true for highlights. You can bracket in increments as small as a third of a stop. This means that you can capture several images with very subtle exposure variances and then decide later which one is best.

We’ve covered a lot of ground in this chapter, so it’s definitely time to put this knowledge to work in order to get familiar with these new camera settings and techniques.