The Graduated Neutral Density Filter
13th May 2011
The Graduated neutral density filter is one of the most useful and essential pieces of equipment for the landscape photographer. I won’t even take my camera for a walk without one! Skies are a really important part of the picture and today the skies over Mayo were just fantastic. I was driving for most of the day and was truly frustrated because there were so many glorious skies but every time I stopped the sun went behind the clouds and the effect was lost. I did get a couple of pictures however on the Mayo /Roscommon border.
The sky in this picture was really bright and contrasted hugely with the trees in the foreground and without the filter would have been very difficult to capture.
I am posting a second picture taken a few minutes earlier as I calculated what exposure to set in the camera. You can see that the sky is almost overexposed and the foreground is almost silhouetted because it is under exposed, a three stop Neutral density filter has helped to balance them in the first picture.
The sky in this picture was really bright and contrasted hugely with the trees in the foreground and without the filter would have been very difficult to capture.
I am posting a second picture taken a few minutes earlier as I calculated what exposure to set in the camera. You can see that the sky is almost overexposed and the foreground is almost silhouetted because it is under exposed, a three stop Neutral density filter has helped to balance them in the first picture.