
To make that picture, you'd have to expose either for the sky, and let the land go dark (underexpose), or expose for the land, and let the sky be too bright (overexpose). And that helps photographers work with scenes of extreme exposure differences.įor instance, let's say you're looking at a landscape where the sky is much brighter than the land beneath it. What makes a graduated neutral density filter special is that it's a neutral density filter that goes from light to dark.

Doing so creates the dreamy, cottony-look to moving water. These filters have been used for a long time to allow photographers to shoot at slower shutter speeds, while using a low ISO. Designed properly, it doesn't change the color of the scene in any way but simply lets in less light. A neutral density (ND) filter looks like a gray piece of glass or plastic that's placed in front of the lens. Over the years photographers have used one method more than any other to compensate for that range of light: the use of graduated neutral density filters. That's one of the exposure choices they have to make, usually with exposure compensation (EV) or exposure manually. In those cases photographers usually choose to let the dark areas go black, to keep detail in the other areas. When it happens in the shadows, we say the shadows are blocked up. When this happens to highlight or bright areas, we say the highlights are blown out. Anything outside that range records as either black or white, with no visible details.

Cameras, whether they use film or digital sensors, are limited to about six stops of light that they can record well. Human vision has a range of about 15 stops. Cameras are able to adjust the amount of light they let inside by using the aperture (f/stop) and shutter speed.
UV FILTER FOR NIKON P900 GOBE FULL
Photographers talk about light in terms of "stops." A "full stop" could mean double or half the light as in open up a full stop (let more light in by one f/stop) or close down a full stop (decrease the amount of light reaching the camera's image sensor by one f/stop). However, for purists, manually exposing an image and using graduated neutral density filters to bring down the dynamic range is often the chosen route.


These are great technologies, built-into cameras for the purpose of taking better pictures. Built-in HDR or Backlight HDR modes (available in select Nikon camera models) do basically the same thing-they take a scene with extreme contrast, and create an image where there is detail across the entire dynamic range. Active D-Lighting optimizes high contrast images to restore shadow and highlight details as you're taking the photograph. D-Lighting darkens areas that are too light and lightens areas that are too dark in an image after you've shot it. Today's Nikon digital cameras offer a number of technologies that allow you to take great photographs in lighting situations where there is a very wide dynamic range. What photographers may value more than the other capabilities, however, is how that visual system handles extreme ranges of light (contrast). The human eye is capable of extreme resolution, instant, extremely accurate autofocus (at least while you're young), the ability to go from super-wide to extreme close-up in a moment and instant, automatic white balance. With the advance of technology, cameras have come closer to working as well as the human visual system.
