what do you do when shooting mid-day?

[al olson]

Infrared has been mentioned a number of times on this thread and I concur. In one of my photo books the author recommended that during the early morning and late afternoon sweet times you use your normal films and between mid morning and mid afternoon you use your IR. I found that to be good advice.

In addition, with the demise of faster IR film (i.e. Kodak) the remaining, slower films (ala Efke) give the best exposure with mid day light.

I agree with Brian's analysis of your example image and I think IR would better serve your subject:

B&W is all about lighting and tones. The problem with the sample image in the OP is that due to the mid day lighting the trees blend into the mountains, the mountains are rather dull looking and any real sense of depth or distance is lost. While there might be some people who consider those to be virtues, I do not.

While there are circumstances where mid day light can work, most notably when there are clouds present to cast strong shadows, most often landscape photography is better served when the sun is lower in the sky.

With IR the leaves of your apple trees would be much lighter in contrast with the mountains; the shadows around the trees would be much darker, thus emphasizing their patterns on the ground; it would penetrate the existing haze to display the texture of the mountains; and the sky tones would deepen adding emphasis to existing clouds.

I would like to see an IR example under similar conditions for comparison. I believe that IR at high noon would make your subject far more dramatic.

[AFSmithphoto]

Daniel,

A green filter will help in such situations because it will lighten the tone of the leaves and will not darken blue. The shadows under a blue sky will have a high blue component, so any filter that darkens blue will will cause the shadows to be darker. You could also use a yellow filter if you want to darken a sky a bit. This will have less of an effect on the shadow values than a polarizer, and will help with tonal separation.

A polarizer will affect the shadows as it does the blue sky; it will darken them.

An option may be to use an orthochromatic film. It will give lively tones to green foliage. However, since ortho is not blue-sensitive, skies will be very light in tone. The affect could be very nice depending upon subject matter. I don't know if Ortho is still available, but if so, it may be fun to experiment with it.

-Preston

This contains a little bit of mis-information. A polarizer doesn't darkern blues, it eliminates off-axis light. It will darken the sky and minimize reflections, it will NOT darken the shadows.

It is true that shadows contain a high proportion of UV light, so a yellow filter WILL darken them along with the sky.

Also, it is true that ortho will make a very light sky and lighten the foilage. This is because it lacks RED sensitivity, not blue. (If it were not blue sesitive the sky would be quite dark, as in infra-red film.)

Both infra-red and ortho films are readily available. If you want dark skies and bright foilage, give infra-red a shot.

[Ken Lee]

One method I'm interested to try with noon photos, is Divided Development.

It should also make it possible to shoot in the woods, which can be extremely contrasty.

[Robert Hughes]

Of course, up north this time of year, the whole day is magic hour...

[Preston]

AF,

I stand corrected. Thank you!

-P

[Deniz Merdanogullari]

mid day is my fav time of the day to shoot!

[Ken Lee]

A Polarizer with a Yellow Filter, can darken the sky (off-axis), lighten foliage, and darken the shadows only minimally - whereas a Red or Orange filter will darken the sky, darken foliage, and darken shadows strongly.

[Chuck P.]

How would yall do it, if you were shooting mid-day with trees, sky, ground, a scene similar to this one:

IMO, Donald Miller's post (#10) is the most informative (I did not finish all of them),but it gets to the heart of the matter.

Sun and shade mix----filtration is the key to getting acceptable separation of values followed by delicate development------the exposure has to be decidedly on the the most important shadow values you desire after taking into consideration the filtration you'll be using. Added exposure is needed when using any of the blue absorbing filters so that the shadows do not get too empty for your visualization of the final print (perhaps half to one zone more exposure i.e., +half to +1 stop) and this ultimately is going to lead to highlights that may very well fall too high on the zone scale.

Therefore, a reduction or modification in development will be needed to keep the density range of the negative to within the exposure scale of the paper. Your're trying to contract a high contrast scene onto the film so that all the "important" values print for you on paper with acceptable separation, not necessarily an easy thing to do.

[Chuck P.]

Well, thanks to Percepts for helping me with the uploads-----kept changing and changing and finally could get these to load at the low to mid 90'sKB size.

These are both mid-day or late afternoon shots that posed the standard difficulties associated with strong mix of sun and shade, boring shots I admit, but I think successful. The forest shot was filtered with #21 orange, Zone IV shadow placement on the shaded tree trunk and N-1 development. The old house, done in MF, was unfiltered because I did not feel there would be a problem with merging values; it's a Zone II shadow placement beneath the house with N-1 development.

Seems I have to boost the brightness/contrast in PS Elements Editor beyond what is desired in order for it to upload here to be closer to what is desired-----hope that makes sense.

[Doug Dolde]

I shoot three exposures (+2,0,-2) and blend in Photomatix. But then I am shooting with an Aptus 75S