38 http://www.digitalcameraworld.com
Contrast levels are
extreme at sunrise
and sunset, and your
camera will be unable
to record details in
both the brightest
and darkest areasNEWCANONSKILLS
18
Better tonal range
in landscapes
A strong dynamic range is particularly important in
landscape photography. Dynamic range is a way of
describing the range of different brightness levels in
a scene, from the deepest shadows to the brightest
highlights. Landscapes can be a test for a camera’s
dynamic range, as you’ll often be dealing with high
levels of contrast where a sky’s substantially brighter
than the foreground, and the chances are your camera
will lose some detail in the bright areas or those in
shadow – or both.You can either compress the dynamic range of the
scene so that it will fit within the dynamic range of the
camera, or extend the dynamic range of the final image
using exposure blending or HDR techniques.
Using graduated filters to squeeze the dynamic
range is a classic technique. Or you can bracket the
exposure, shooting one image with the sky exposed
correctly and the other with the foreground exposed
correctly, then blending the best bits in post. You may
be able to get away with processing a single Raw file
twice, once for the shadows and once for the bright
areas, and blend the two.