How Much of It Is Exposure, and How Much of It Is The Camera?

Landscape requires real estate.

Please use this image for reference: http://www.postmyimage.com/images/imageszwS70417.j...

In other words, landscape requires a format larger than the D50 to adequately capture the long tonality of a landscape scene. For me, personally, I use 6x7cm film for my color shots and 8x10" for B&W. With proper exposure I never suffer clipped tonality.

The D50 is great for tiny prints and online sharing but it was never meant for serious landscape work. The sensor is marginally bigger than a frame of 110 film. How can you not experience clipping?

If you are serious about landscape then put away your D50 and pull out your Graflex. I've seen what you can do with that camera. Impressive!

Well if you having all the problems you say you are then it is YOU that is at fault.

Have a look at some of the landscapes here which have been taken with the d50 http://www.flickr.com/cameras/nikon/d50/

Quite simply, if the exposure is not right then the photograph will not be right, same goes for focus, composition and colour.

That is upto the photographer to sort out. If you leave the camera on AUTO everything then all you are is a button pusher (not saying you do leave it on auto).

With some scenes and lighting you will need to "tweak" things in photoshop just as things had to be adjusted in the darkroom in the film world, but you should be able to get things right in camera most of the time.

Repeat this 100 times: "It isn't the camera, its the photographer."

Yes, all problems you're experiencing are caused by you.

Either you aren't using your camera's meter correctly or maybe you're shooting at the wrong time of day or perhaps you've set something wrong.

Two essential pieces of equipment for good landscapes are a tripod and a circular polarizer.

Photoshop is not the answer to any poorly made photograph. If you "Get it right in the camera" you should need a minimum of post-processing.

These were taken with a very old film camera (about 1972 vintage) within the last week. The lake was with a 21mm lens. The other two are with a 24mm lens. I used a polarizer and the camera was leveled on my tripod. I always shoot in Aperture Priority at f16 and let the camera choose a shutter speed.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/drifter45h/3721872764...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/drifter45h/3721871978...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/drifter45h/3721056971...

To make a good exposure the camera needs the proper amount of light. Three things control exposure The shutter speed controls how long the shutter is open. If it's open for a short time, less light gets in. Open longer and more light gets in. These numbers are either double or half the one next to them. When you double or half it, it is called a full stop. Full stops have numbers like 1/60, 1/125, 1/ 250, 1/500, 1/1000 etc... eah number corresponds to how long the shutter is open. In the case of 1/60, that means the shutter is open for one sixtieth of a second. Aperture is the next thing, the aperture is how big of a hole that the lens makes to let light in. It has a complicated formula but it iss irrelevant, every camera works the same way. In aperture, the bigger the number the smaller the hole. It has numbers like 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22. Between each number lets in either twice the amount or half the amount of light-- these too are called stops in this case they are called f stops. At 2.8 the hole is quite large and it lets a great amount of light. At 22 just a little amount of light is let in. Next is ISO, the ISO is how sensitive the camera is to light. It has numbers like 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600 etc... . Each number is double or half the one next to it. Once again it is either twice or half the amount of light. We use these three numbers to control how much light gets into the camera for a properly exposed picture. One way to think about it is like thinking of a hose and a bucket that you need to fill up. a properly filled bucket is a properly exposed picture. Lets say you have a big hose (f2.8 - the aperture) and the valve is open for 1/60th of a second ( the shutter speed) with a fair amount of pressure behind it ( ISO 200). That is going to fill up the bucket with so much water.That might be enough to fill up the bucket. But lets say your hose is much smaller ( f22) now if we didn't change anything else, the bucket wouldn't fill up this time because not enough water ( light) could come through in time before you shut off the valve ( shutter). So to solve that we could leave the valve open longer so that it has time to fill the bucket ( increasing how long the shutter is open). What we do in photography is use the numbers to control how much light gets into the camera. Just like a hose and a bucket. Lets say instead of we had a small hose again (f22) and a short amount of time the valve was open ( shutter speed of 1/000), now we have a real problem. The hose is small (f22) and it's not open very long (shutter speed 1/1000) . We can only fill up the bucket with the right amount of water by increasing the water pressure behind it. So we adjust the ISO to a high number like ISO 800. No matter what we do, we alway have to fill the bucket up with the right amount of water ( we always have to fill the camera up with the right amount of light). There are always trade off's and we use these numbers to control for artistic reasons and such. but learing how exposure works is critical for photography.

Don't know the D50 but it sounds like it is set for hi contrast Do some experiments with other settings too. I think the camera is capable of making magnificent landscape images if it is set up correctly.

PS you would have to set up the D200 or Canon 20d anyway!

You are missing the point entirely.. The most important part is the person behind the camera. It doesn't matter about equipment or photo editing software. Photography is 95% the photographer and 5% camera.

A good photographer can create a shot worthy of hanging on a gallery wall from a disposable P&S.

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If you have never messed with the custom settings in your D50, now might be the time. Go to the shooting menu and choose Optimize Image. Go one step deeper and you will find settings for sharpening, tone composition, color mode and saturation. You will find that these are all set to "Auto," except saturation. Change them all to "Normal" or "Zero." This way, you can begin to learn what happens at different exposure settings in different situations. The camera will stop making decisions for you. This is important, because scenes that might appear rather similar to your eye might look different to the camera. In taking the picture the D50 actually compares your shot to a database of standardized shots and makes the settings for you. If the camera thinks a lot of the image is dark, as might be encountered with some landscape shots, it might just decide that you are shooting in the shade and blow out the highlights for you.

I know that you are using manual controls by now, so you will be able to pay attention to the changes you make and - as long as the camera in not changing these "secret" settings for you - you will learn what is going on. Putting your brain 100% in charge will actually take some of the mystery out of it.

You might not find these settings on your menu. If you do NOT see them, you will have to enable the detailed menu. I think this only applies to the custom settings menu, but if you do not see the things I mentioned above, go to the CSM/Setup menu and choose "Detailed" instead of "Simple."

To a point, you will indeed be handicapped by low grade equipment, but the D50 should give you fine results in landscape photography. Certainly, the exposure should be something that the camera handles well.

If you feel adventuresome, try using the spotmeter for your landscapes. Using the "M" mode, meter around the scene and see what you get for different areas. Your camera should handle a latitude of about 2 stops over and 2 stops under. It MIGHT not be quite that generous, but it will certainly handle 1.5 over and under. Meter the most "neutral" tone you can find. Typically, this would be some plain green grass. Set your camera to expose the grass at "zero." Not over and not under. Then check a dark place in the scene and see if it is within 2 stops of your zero reading. DO NOT CHANGE ANY OF YOUR SETTINGS. Just check on the dark areas. Now, go to the brightest spot in your composition. Make sure that it does not read as more than 2 stops overexposed. If it does, you will have irretrievably blown highlights in those areas. Dial it back a bit until your brightest areas ar no more than 2 stops overexposed. If this just ruins the exposure for the rest of the scene, you will have to decide if it's okay to have blown highlights or if the neutral to dark details are more important. This might be the case if the sun itself is in the frame or some reflection of the sun off a window or some water. As long as you are not getting huge expanses of white from these sources, it's kind of okay to accept a blown highlight in those circumstances. I mean, if you look at the sun, your eyes blow it out, too.

If all this spotmeter stuff is causing a brain freeze tonight, just use the matrix meter setting (still in manual mode) and bracket your shots, moving in less than full stop increments. Shoot 5 different exposures of the same scene (2 up, 2 down, 1 normal) and see what you think.

You know how to read the histrogram, so check it out. You do not necessarily want to "expose to the right," either. It depends on what levels of bright and dark there are in your scene. You want the histogram to reflect the conditions that exist in your scene. If it's all dark trees and foliage, you would expect to see the histogram shift to the left. If you manipulate the exposure to move it to the right, the richness of the deep colors will be lost.

If you want to take a step off the deep end, set your image quality to RAW. This will generally increase the dynamic range that your camera can record a little bit in each direction, but mostly in the darks. You can dial the highlights back a bit and still be able to recover some detail in the darks that you might lose in a jpeg. You'd have to have some software that can open and work with RAW images, though. Nikon cameras ship with a basic RAW converter now, but I don't know if you got this or not.

I've been watching you for a year or more now and you are a bright guy. If you get your camera off of those "hidden automatic" settings and pay attention to what you are changing and what the result it, you will pick this up quite well with your D50. One of our members here who does primarily landscape photography uses a D50. I'll defer to his decision about whether he wants to discuss this with you or provide a link to his images so you can see that the D50 is quite adequate for landscape, so long as you compose pretty much the way you

It's not the gear that makes a great photo. It's you. Though the only thing a camera does is create a better quality image. What I mean is, the high the megepixels the bigger you can blow the photo up without it losing alot of quality and creating spots (noise).

The camera dosn't have anything to do with color other than capturing it. That is done in post processing. That all depends on your imagination and skills.

So to answer your question:

Alot on you

some on post processing

little on gear.

post processing is very important in image making - learn it

a new camera or custom settings are not the answer, metering correctly is

I treat digis as being about 3/4-1 stop brighter than film at the same iso/ss/fstop, so meter off a grey card then bracket a stop either side (its digital - braketing costs nothing), once you get an idea how your meter and camera are proforming in relation to a grey card then there should be no stopping you

now on another note - a landscape shooter using digital? use digis as polaroids, anything great burn on a decent size peice of film - thats my angle