Nikon photographers, I need help
 

Since Santa was generous and gave me Nikon D60 for Christmas, because frankly, I was a good boy last year, I'm looking for a place where people discuss practical photography with Nikon DSLRs.

Like today we have a beautiful winter morning here, just a little bit below the freezing point, empty streets, sun is out and lays low on the horizon (basically the "golden hour" all day long). I took a few shots but I'm not satisfied with the settings. Its either streets appear well lid, while sky is almost white. Or sky is blue, but streets are all dark. Silly question, but how do I make the blue skies blue, and keep the streets well lid?

Santa has good taste in cameras, but having said that, what you need is to study up on general photography, not so much "Nikon owners R-us"... There are plenty of Nikon sites and forums out there but they talk about the cameras, not so much the actual taking pictures part.

To get better and more even exposures I would suggest shooting in RAW mode. That makes your D60 save a lot more information. Then you can easily adjust the exposure of the sky and the ground either in Nikon's proprietary software (that hopefully Santa included with the camera) or, preferably, Adobe Photoshop.

Good luck and keep shooting! :thumbsup

go to dpreview....

Oh... and the classic way to do the sky thing would be to buy a graduated neutral density filter to screw onto the front end of the lens. That way you can filter out some of the light from the sky while getting all the light from the ground. However, they're a bit expensive and do not always give great results if you shoot anything besides landscapes... so I would still recommend RAW files and Photoshop. If you do not want to mess with image software, check if your D60 has a setting for "Active D-Lighting" and set that to "high", that makes the camera even out the dynamic range of the exposure a bit. Might help. :2 cents:

:2 cents:

here you go, all you want to know and MORE:thumbsup

http://www.nikonians.org/

Vixenator hit it, go buy some filters.

read the manual.

If you want great pics without thinking just set the camera to P - program mode. You also want to make sure you lookup white balance in your manual. The correct setting for white balance outdoors is from 5000-6000 K

I usually set it to 5600k unless its really cloudy then I go up .

Yep.

I saw the suggestion for graduated ND filter. Personally, I hate graduated filters. I used them a lot when I was 16-17 and Cokin dominated the market but these days I use regular ND filters or circular polarizers for almost all of my scenic stuff.

Use Manual exposure

Look and adjust

Shoot Raw

Read Langford's "Basic Photography" you will then know more than 95% of "photographers".

:2 cents:

thanks, you guys rule!

Shoot raw yeah and use Nikons Capture software pre-photoshop
High contrast scenes are always hard. Either use a grad filter to darken the sky or use the cameras multiple exposure setting and then blend photos post production.

Not sure if the d60 has a ore white balance setting but if it does then set the wb toyour scene before capturing

Most of all, experiment, don't get disheartened on crappy shots and have fun

This is a pretty interesting technique ... but it is fairly complex .... google this:

digital dynamic range

High Dynamic Range, HDR

I recommend Photomatix Pro - inexpensive and allows exposure blending (which is what was required in the OP), not only HDR imaging.

Just got back from the Alpes - here's an early morning snap I took in tricky lighting a few days ago from our balcony, bracketed +/- 3ev and processed for HDR (light HDR settings) on a D300

http://www.borkedcoder.com/images/gfy/Alpes09.jpg