Dear experts,

Today I went to AMS for a nice day of spotting. Or so I thought. Although the forecast for today was good, it was bound to be sunny in the afternoon. The weather Gods did not deliver so it was overcast all the way. No sun whatsoever.

As I am new to my D5100 I wanted to try out what this baby could do. I started of with F/8 on the A-mode and that gave me a underexposed photo. I figured that much. I lowered the F to F/5.6 and that gave me a shutterspeed that was not high enough to get sharp photos. I bumped up the ISO to 400 which gave me much sharper photos but now the noise was just too much to process out.

So I am wondering is there any way to deal with these kind of circumstances? Or is it just impossible to get some decent photos in nothing but overcast.

Twan

PS: Does anybody know a good site to upload photos to so I can show them to you on this forum as examples without compression and a large upload space to share the original .NEF or .DNG files?

Indeed they can!

Try having a look at imgur.com, it's a free site that doesn't compress your images like Photobucket does.

Paul

Only if the photo is <1MB

Photobucket seems to compress anything over about 150k, therefore Imgur doesn't compress your images like Photobucket.

For resized .JPEGs it's fine. But for future reference I would like to post my original .NEFs so I can learn from the feedback on my original rather then the feedback on the processed photo. I accept post-processing is part of the game but I would like to minimize it. I noticed the forum allows me to attach photo's to my posts but I'm afraid it will take up too much storage space if I do so with .NEFs everytime I have a question. Maybe I could try to utilize the FTP offered to me by my internet provider.

Anyway, this was the PS question Still I would like to thank you for your input!

On topic:

How to deal with heavy overcast and maintain sharp photos?
Yesterday I tried the following:
- Maintain a sufficient DOF with using F/8 to F/11 but this drops the shutterspeed to panning mode (and I suck at panning )
- Bump up the ISO to 400 which creates extreme noise due to difficult exposure and grey skies
- Using F/5.6 and 1/200 which results in very unsharp photos.

It seems I tried everything in my knowledge to get some decent photos. But it seems to me that it's not really possible to get some decent photos when they turn off the lights. Is this true?

Twan

Hi Twan,

It isn't be possible for you to post .NEF files because they're not actually photo files, they're RAW files, and basically they're the digitised information directly from the sensor with no image processing whatsoever. When you open that RAW file in your editing software the computer is recreating the processing your camera would have done to build the image, and this is why you can't post them in forums like you can with JPEG's; because internet browsers aren't built with the capability to deal with RAW files. The best thing to do when posting examples in forums is open the .NEF as a JPEG without any editing whatsoever and post the unedited JPEG.

To go any further we really need to see some example images before looking into the numbers involved.

Paul

You could use an online file storage website to share the NEF (or DNG). I tried a few, but they are all PAINSTAKINGLY slow, so I recommend to compress the files first...
You might want to google something like "free online file hosting" or similar, maybe you'll find a faster service.

After uploading, they will give you a link to your file(s) which you can then post on the forum...

Two sites I've found to work, but as said, they are TERRIBLY sluggish, so get a cup of coffee or two...
http://www.ifile.it
http://www.4shared.com

Regards, Adrian

Thanks for all your replies guys!

I will check out those sharing sites. But it might be better to share the unedited .JPEG. I was really disappointed with the photos I made Tuesday so I didn't keep many of them. If I can find some photos I will share them in this topic for your feedback. Thanks in advance.

Hey guys,

I promised you a picture of my first and worst spotting trip this year

The weather forecast looked awesome. Nice and sunny.
Once I parked my bike alongside the Polderbaan the sun was nowhere to be seen. Clouds everywhere... thick overcast.

Because I didn't want the weather to cut the trip short I decided to stay and take some photos anyway. Mainly to test my new gear and my own skills in dealing with overcast.
But as it turned out I failed.

Example: (Unedited RAW file converted to .jpg)
http://home.xmsnet.nl/splspotter/DSC_0035.jpg

I tried lower F-numbers to maintain an acceptable shutter speed but my lens only goes to F/5.6 and F/5 at 70mm. So this was not sufficient. Then I tried bumping up the ISO to 400. But that only resulted in noise.

So my question is: Is it possible to get decent photos with weather like this or am I better of staying home?

Thanks in advance.

Twan

Hi Twan,

The short and simple answer is yes, it's perfectly possible to get good images in those conditions, the only thing is it takes a little acceptance of the situation and an understanding that your images probably won't look as bright as if they were shot in good weather. Many people simply choose not to shoot unless the weather's perfect; personally I think that's a bit unrealistic as it's very rare the weather actually is perfect in our part of the world and I still want to enjoy my hobby, so I think it's a good idea to accept less than perfect light and learn how to deal with it.

Can you maybe do an edit of that original image and link to it so we can see what the final result looks like?

Paul