Better landscape exposures

It isn’t always possible to get a single exposure that can hold detail in both the foreground and the sky of a landscape shot. Here’s a simple guide to why this happens, and what you can do about it.

You’ll typically be dealing with high levels of contrast when you're photographing a scenic view, with a sky that’s anywhere from slightly to substantially brighter than the foreground. You can only set a single exposure on the camera at any one time. So, if you expose for the sky you can end up with an underexposed foreground, and if you expose for the foreground you can end up with an overexposed sky. With high-contrast scenes, you may end up with lost detail in both areas. But you can take steps to fix this, such as using a graduated ND filter or exposure blending.

You can easily check if there are any exposure problems by referring to the histogram. When you play back a shot, repeatedly press the INFO or DISP button to cycle through the information displays until you see the histogram.

The horizontal axis of the graph represents the brightness range your camera can record in a single exposure, and the histogram shape represents the brightness of the scene – from shadows on the left to highlights on the right.

If the histogram is pushed up against one side of the graph, you can use exposure compensation to improve the exposure. If the histogram is pushed up against both sides, then you may want to take steps to reduce the contrast.

In landscape photography, the traditional way to control the contrast is to use a graduated Neutral Density (ND) filter. Dark at the top and clear at the bottom, these filters reduce the exposure level of a bright sky so that it’s closer to the exposure of the foreground, allowing detail to be recorded in both areas in a single shot.

ND grads are available in different densities or strengths: you’ll need higher densities at sunset and sunrise when contrast levels are more extreme.

Set your camera to Manual (M) exposure mode and adjust the aperture, shutter speed and ISO to give you your preferred exposure for the foreground. Then, without changing the exposure, use the filter to darken the sky.

If you shoot RAW files you can usually pull more detail from the shadows and highlights when you process your files in Digital Photo Professional software. Check Canon website to download it for free.

You can also record a range of exposures in the camera, using Exposure Compensation or Auto Exposure Bracketing if available. Then blend the best bits of each when you process the images. But there’s a lot to be said for getting it right in-camera in a single shot. It can reduce your editing time, for instance, and saves you time when you’re experimenting with long exposure landscapes.