Thursday 20 October 2011

Olde Tractor & Why Cameras are Rubbish!

While scouting out possible locations for my future Oxfordshire workshops I came accross this old farm. I knocked on the door and asked permission from the owner to photograph some of the barns - Rex, the owner, slightly bemused, gave me the nod.


This is finally the shot I was looking for. I have been back and forth to this same position 6 times in the last 3 days. 

This 1974 Ford tractor sits in the old hay barn waiting for its turn to shine again - Rex told me that the cylinders are shot, and the exhaust system is broken as well. It used to get let out once a year to cart the hay out to the lambs for winter bedding in the barns on the hill. Now it stays in situ for 11 months of the year. It reminded me of Brum. 

I walked around the barn, thinking of how I would compose the picture. Eventually I pulled the tripod legs out and found this spot - I looked down as one of the tripod's legs wasn't sitting on the ground properly. I looked down in the dark corner and discovered that I had put my tripod leg entirely through the semi-rotted body of a rat the size of a beaver. I let out a subtle yet masculine-ish yelp and hit my head on the wooden beams above me.

After removing the corpse, I realised why this scene was so difficult to photograph. 

Why Cameras are rubbish! 

CONTRAST 

Very simply, the contrast is the range of brightness in the scene. A high contrast, as in this photograph, shows there are very bright parts of the image (entrance of the barn on the left) and very dark parts of the image (the roof or parts of the beams). 

When looking through our eyes, we can see the detail in the brightest part of the image AND in the darkest shadow but the camera cannot. Without getting too technical - our eyes have a higher dynamic range than the camera - Our eyes are able to pick up a larger range of brightness than cameras can. 

Here is an example:



Here is the finished shot of Moreton Forest in Dorset. You can see that it is a high contrast scene. This is how I saw it with my eyes. 

This is how the camera sees it.

This is the first image I took - See how the foreground is well exposed but the trees at the top are completely white and overexposed. This is because cameras can not see the amount of brightness as our eyes can. 


This is the second shot I took - I made the shutter-speed faster to let less light, giving a darker image than the previous. 
You can see now that the foreground is under-exposed but the trees are well exposed. 
This scene had a too high contrast for the camera to deal with... so what do I do? 

GRADUATED FILTERs


For any landscape photographer, in fact, any photographer, these are a must. Graduated filters reduce the range of brightness (dynamic range) of the image. By placing them over the brightest part of the photograph (usually the sky) the camera is now able to cope with the amount of brightness of the scene. 

I placed this filter over the trees until half way down the image and the camera produced this photograph. 


Piece of cake! 

John


  

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