Digital Landscape Photography
 

Are there differences between photographing landscapes in digital and film cameras? In most cases the answer is no. We are still creating images by using our cameras, selecting the right lens, and choosing a viewpoint. Finally, we set up our tripod and select our exposure and release the shutter. What has changed with arrival of digital photography, is perhaps how we visualize a particular scene and some technical issues. In landscape photography, it is usually not necessary to do a lot of manipulations. Landscapes are photographed to show a place in certain time of day and season. Landscapes are powerful as they are without the need of any manipulations. Simple and to the point photographs in perfect light always produce great landscape images.

The image starts in your mind. How you visualize the final result and how you transfer that image in your head and into your camera. In film photography, this process ends in the camera once the film is exposed. Some manipulation is possible in the darkroom, especially with black and white films, but the process is limited. With digital images however, you can correct and improve your shots much further than film. If you shoot in RAW format, you can extend this even more. You can solve lighting problems or compositional errors. You can instantly view your image on the LCD monitor and re-shoot the scene if necessary.

Since landscapes don't go anywhere, you should have enough time to study the scene and pick the right viewpoint and equipment. You should also have enough time to experiment with different lenses or setting up your equipment from different angels. This is very much like using any other format. The main advantage is being able to further enhance or correct your faults in the computer.

One of the best tools for landscape photographers are right in your image editing software. It is the curve tool. In landscape photography, it is often a problem to create a balance between highlight and shadow areas. The sky could be very bright while the foreground is dark. Neutral density filters which are half tinted and half clear are used to balance out the difference between the highlight and shadow areas. The curve tool does the same by allowing us to lighten or darken specific areas of the image as opposed to brightness control which applies the correction to the whole image. The curve tool alone makes a big difference in how we actually take pictures of landscapes. At times, it is no longer necessary to apply ND filters or take additional exposure readings.

The Curve Tool

Another fantastic tool is a plug-in filter by Nik Multimedia for Photoshop and other photo editing software that support Photoshop plug-in filters. The plug-in is called Color Efex Pro 2. The plug-in features some of the most widely used landscape photography filters including neutral density filters and polarizing among others.

Above: Left image is the original shot. The right shows Nik Color Efex graduated orange filter applied.

You can apply these filters later in your computer as you would in the field. This filter alone has made my job much easier than ever. I now rarely use ND filters in the field unless the difference in highlight and shadows are extreme. My polarizer filter also sees less action in landscape photography, as I can apply polarization in Photoshop with Nik polarizing filter.

Above: Nik Color Efex Plug-in

One other area in landscape photography that can be a problem is depth-of-field. Ask any landscape photographer and they will tell you about how time consuming it can be to achieve and calculate the desired depth-of-field. This is one reason why many landscape photographers use view cameras or tilt-shift lenses. The camera or lens movement allows them to achieve greater depth-of-field to bring everything into sharp focus from few inches in front of the camera to infinity. Distortion can also be corrected through camera and lens movement.

Digital photography has solved these problems to some degree. Although it is still best to correct these problems in the field, the unsharp tool along with careful selection within the image can be used to improve overall sharpness due to lack of depth-of-field. A better tool is Andromeda Lens Doc plug-in which allows you to correct distortion and perspective by actually letting you choose different focal length lenses within the program.

The Imaging Factory depth-of-field plug-in filter is another great addition to landscape photography as it lets the user increase or decrees depth-of-field by selecting different lenses from wide-angle to telephoto and then adjusting the image as they see fit.

Although it is best to try to take landscape photographs in the field as you see them by using good techniques, digital photography offering you some tools to further correct your mistakes and make the job easier. A field camera such as 4x5 format or medium format still outperform digital images in terms of quality, but for most applications and average size prints, digital SLRs perform just fine and a lot easier.