Tricks of the Trade #2 - 2 Stops Under

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v194/Pegasus@2006/blog/DSCF0001b-2.jpg
chinese garden
taken with fujifilm s3pro

This was what came to my mind when i bought a new pair of shades lately. It totally revolutionized my outlook on landscape photography. Photographically, the phrase means that when you cut off light by about 4 times. When this happens, bright areas become darker, and so the amount of detail you see in the clouds become clearer.

On a digital camera, how you maximize the detail in clouds when shooting landscapes will be to aim the center of your LCD at the bright clouds, instead of the horizon and half press. This way, the camera will take the light value of the clouds and give you the maximum amount of detail in it. The caveat here is that the land mass becomes darker as well. However, I always find it easier to brighten things slightly during post processing. Once the sky is blown out (i.e. whitewashed) there is very little way you can retrieve that information from your digital file.

If you know your camera stuff, just use your SLR's inbuilt spot meter or center-weighted meter and get the exposure of the brightest part of clouds you want in your frame. Then switch to manual and input the same values. If you want to, you can also dial down by a stop.

Cheers!
geraldtay