Why can't I take an outdoor photo and have both the subject and the sky exposed correctly? As a general rule, I always try to expose for the shadow, but as a result the sky is usually totally overexposed. Even when I underexpose the subject, the sky still turns out as a glowing white backdrop. I have had limited success correcting this problem with colour filters, but they seem to work only when I'm facing at a certain angle from the sun. Is there any way to take a decent picture of a subject and have a correctly-exposed sky in the background, regardless of which direction I'm pointing the camera?

-- Rick Hohn (snapperhead@bc.sympatico.ca), November 21, 1997

Answers

The sky is very often many stops brighter than the foreground. The closer you point to the sun, the brighter is is, and it could be 10 stops or so.

B&W film can capture 10 stops, but that's about it. You can reduce the contrast of the film development so you can capture a greater range.

With filters, you could:

- use a graduated grey filter, to reduce the overall tones in the sky;

- use a yellow, or orange, or red filter to darken the blue of the sky;

- use a graduated yellow, orange or red filter for a combination of the above;

- use a polarizer, but these are most effective 90 degrees away from the sun, and the effect is difficult to judge.

If you do your own printing, you can just burn in the sky.

-- Alan Gibson (gibson.al@mail.dec.com), November 21, 1997.

I assume you are using black and white film and probably 35mm. If you are in northern New Mexico you can usually get by without a filter. If you are in other areas where the sky is pretty light blue a #25 red filter will help. With normal sunlight situations and placing shawdows where you want to retain some detail on zone 3 or 4 the sky will usually fall on zone 8, 9 or 10. If you sacrifice some shadow detail and place them on zone 2 or 3 then the sky will usually fall on zone 7 or 8. This will still not give you a very dark sky so you need to do some adjustment of the scale with development. With more dilution of your developer you can move the zone 7 sky value down to perhaps zone 6. To be accurate with this process it takes lots of testing your particular film exposure and development. The simplest way is use the red filter and burn in the sky some when you make your print. Of course the red filter is going to degrade the shadow detail some so in addition to the filter factor an additional 1/3 stop will help the shadow detail. Its also best to keep the sun to your back or side.

-- Dell Elzey (potog@mindspring.com), November 21, 1997.

Re: tips for photographing sky

Rick,

The immediate use of filters to correct your sky values is somewhat questionable advice. Filters change the response of the film with respect to the filter used, thereby changing other tonal relationships in your photograph as well. OK if you know what those relationships are. Not OK if you don't. What it sounds like to me is more a question of exposure and development. With proper exposure and development of most films, shadow detail and highlight detail should be very printable. The blank white sky that you describe can be a result of too much exposure, too much development, or both. Without knowing what film, film speed, or developer you're using, it is difficult to make a recommendation on how to correct the problem. It is also difficult without knowing the lighting situation in which you were shooting. In black and white film, shadow detail is critical. If you underexpose the film to hold your highlight values and have no shadow detail, you might as well throw away the negative. Filter that darkens the sky will also darken sky-illuminated shadows. If you increase exposure to compensate for this but don't know what development methods to employ to compensate for the resultant increase in highlight density, you have gained little. If you are shooting and are happy with the shadow detail that you have, keep shooting the same way. Now work on your development methods (i.e. time, dilution, developer, temperature, etc.) to bring your highlights into a more printable range. Do this before you embark on the filter journey. You'll save yourself a lot of heartaches this way.

-- Jef Torp (JefTorp@aol.com), November 25, 1997.

Sky blown out

Unfortunately B&W films are very sensitive to UV light, some more than others. So the sky may look like it should fall on Zone VII, while the film will record it at Zone X, or even XI! This makes the use of a UV filter manditory, but the choice of film can help too. Look at the spectral senitivity curve on the data sheets. I have found Ilford Delta films to be fairly well balanced here. Also there is a "magic" developer for long scale negatives. This is PMK (Pyro-Metol-Kodalk) developed by Gordon Hutchings and available from Photographers Formulary (or easily mixed from scratch.) This is a staining developer and the density is about half stain and half silver crystals. This makes printing through the bright sky possible while retaining highlight detail, like clouds. See the current issue of Camera Arts magazine for an article by Mr. Hutchings regarding PMK with roll film.

-- Michael D Fraser (mdfraser@earthlink.net), November 26, 1997.

What works for me: An orange filter, sometimes combined with a polarizer. The orange filter doesn't darken foliage and doesn't need as much exposure compensation (4X vs 8X) as a red filter. Then I burn in the sky when printing. I don't like reduced development because it reduces midrange contrast. Last, I always expose for the shadows and prefer a film with some shoulder. Delta films seem, to me, to have more shoulder than Tmax. I haven't used the "traditional" films like Tri-X and HP-5 in 20 years.

-- Tim Brown (brownt@ase.com), November 26, 1997.

Whenever I take outdoor photos or any photos which I am unsure how the contrast will turn out I use a yellow no.8 (i think) filter and always get pretty good results

-- Eric Whitaker (ewhitake@linknet.kitsap.lib.wa.us), November 30, 1997.

Another option is to shoot at dawn or dusk when the sky and your subject are nearly the same exposure value.

-- Andy Cripe (ACRIPEAZ@aol.com), April 15, 1998.