Using graduated filters - what's your technique?

[ljb0904]

Hmm, I'll have to try the matt black card.

I mostly guess and don't worry to much with the soft grads. Hard grads I place, stop down almost as far as the lens will go, rotate the grad in the holder and reposition. It's easier to see the transition if you rotate the grad.

[QT Luong]

Justin's tip could be handy in a situation where GNDs are difficult to use (such as extreme wide angles or shooting into the sun), but how can you position accurately the transition when using a card ?

[Justin Black]

Justin's tip could be handy in a situation where GNDs are difficult to use (such as extreme wide angles or shooting into the sun), but how can you position accurately the transition when using a card ?

That is a really good question, and sorry that I didn't describe the technique in greater detail. Basically, I stop the lens down to shooting aperture, look at the ground glass, and position the black card at the bottom of the part of the composition that I want to dodge. Then I hold it in place against the front of the lens, pull my head out from under the dark cloth, and look at it to see where it falls in relation to the lens itself. Then meter the exposure and decide how long the dodge for the bright part of the scene will be relative to the exposure for the dark part. Start the exposure, dodging with the card in front of the lens and counting down the seconds. Pull the card away to allow the necessary time for exposure of the bright part of the scene. Close shutter. That's it.

It takes a little bit of practice to get this right, but it is really much easier to pull off well than it might sound. Unfortunately, it doesn't really deal with the potential benefit that Tuan mentions with regard to eliminating the need for a grad filter when shooting into the sun, because if you're shooting into the sun, your exposure would be too short to use this technique.

[newmoon2night]

Justin. That is a really good idea - thanks, and I was wondering what your technique was also, and had thought that maybe you were using multiple exposures.

I was scratching my head wondering what construction paper was! A quick search on Wikipedia and I see its sugar paper, which I think is the name used in the UK. My wife's an artist so I'm pretty certain there'll be some readily available.

That is a really good question, and sorry that I didn't describe the technique in greater detail. Basically, I stop the lens down to shooting aperture, look at the ground glass, and position the black card at the bottom of the part of the composition that I want to dodge. Then I hold it in place against the front of the lens, pull my head out from under the dark cloth, and look at it to see where it falls in relation to the lens itself. Then meter the exposure and decide how long the dodge for the bright part of the scene will be relative to the exposure for the dark part. Start the exposure, dodging with the card in front of the lens and counting down the seconds. Pull the card away to allow the necessary time for exposure of the bright part of the scene. Close shutter. That's it.

It takes a little bit of practice to get this right, but it is really much easier to pull off well than it might sound. Unfortunately, it doesn't really deal with the potential benefit that Tuan mentions with regard to eliminating the need for a grad filter when shooting into the sun, because if you're shooting into the sun, your exposure would be too short to use this technique.

[lostcoyote]

in a pinch, you can use your sheet film slider... but you have to be careful that it doesn't reflect light if held at the wrong angle. most of my slides have a dull black finish.

you can use your own eyes and line of sight with respect to the subject line, the lens, and the displayed image to determine where to hold the filter as well.

i sorta made a crude diagram. the lower image shows a 50/50 split between bright and dark areas (red is say, 2 stops brighter and the camera is positioned so that the bright and dark areas cover 50/50 film area as well. the slide is positioned 1/2 way across the lens to dodge thge bright area... say, the sky.

in the upper diagram, (sorry, i didn't get the black lines drawn in) i tried to show a diagram of the camera pointing down so that the bright area is only 25% of the image area. of course, when doing this, you might tilt the film plane backwards to keep it parallel with the object and secure the focal plane depth of field/focus... but if you draw a line between red and green splits, intersecting the lens center point, you can see the card gets placed higher up on the lens 25% down from the top of the lens.

this imaginary line of sight (hand-drawn red line) is shown in the third diagram and holds for all camera/lens orientations with respect to the subject and the image displayed on the ground glass.