Early Morning Lake Landscape - How to get a more balanced shot

[alextdel]

I have been trying to get some landscape shots at Hinze Dam (Advancetown Lake). I'm aiming at a large print.
I'd love any advice on getting a better shot. Mine are always too dark despite the histogram looking pretty full to the right.

To take this one I put on an ND 8 to soften the water and a soft NDGrad to pull the sky down. Sun was to my left. It was about 20 mins after sunrise.
ISO 100
21mm
f/13
5.0sec
In Lightroom I have pushed the exposure up about 1 stop, pulled the highlights back and selectively put some saturation in the cloud and the reflected cloud using the adjustment brush

Advancetown Lake1-1.jpg
the histogram looks like

Histogram.JPG

This on was taken earlier with no filters
ISO 100
19mm
f/11
4sec
Advancetown Lake2-1.jpg
with this histogram
Histogram2.JPG

What do you think??

This was my first outing with my new 6D

[ameerat42]

Both have nice and different colours. I thought by balance you meant of the land/water.
In the 1st, with the land at that angle, it doesn't make for a comfortable scene. The 2nd certainly is, though.
Am.

[alextdel]

Thanks ameerat
I agree about the first, I was trying to capture the colour in the sky.

By balance I guess I am looking for advice on dark and light balance. If I fill in the dark landmass in camera then the sky will blow the colours out. If I fill the dark landmass in post the trees and hills look fake and noisy.
Cheers

[ameerat42]

(Fixed typo in orig post, "thought" indeed!)

If you use Photoshop, do a Levels adjustment on the 2nd image by just sliding the Shadows levels up a tad from 0.
It shouldn't do much to anything else.
Am.

[arthurking83]

..... Mine are always too dark despite the histogram looking pretty full to the right.

......

Going from this particular comment, I'd say your screen is not calibrated right. By default, almost all screens come to you with a wayyyy too bright luminance setting.
You probably have to dial it down by about half it's current setting(if you haven't calibrated it).

Look at the bottom of any page on AP and you will see a black to white step wedge graphic. If you can't distinguish any of the whiter blocks in the graphic your screen is too bright.(and it's probably set with too much contrast too).

Not that there's anything wrong with your exposures, but I think remove the 1 stop exposure adjustment in #1(to regain a bit of colour) .. and it'd probably look just about right.

#2 is good, in terms of exposure again .. but again I'd drop the exposure to bring more of the colours back in the image.

I'm not a huge fan of using saturation to bring colour back into the image .. I'm probably a bit old fashioned in that I prefer to reduce exposure to get colour into them.

[Mark L]

Thanks ameerat
By balance I guess I am looking for advice on dark and light balance. If I fill in the dark landmass in camera then the sky will blow the colours out. If I fill the dark landmass in post the trees and hills look fake and noisy.

So why don't you take 2 of 3 exposures of the same scene. One for the sky, the water and the dark hills. Then merge them.
The camera can't capture, in on exposure, all of what the eye sees in scene like the first.

[zacca78]

So why don't you take 2 of 3 exposures of the same scene. One for the sky, the water and the dark hills. Then merge them.
The camera can't capture, in on exposure, all of what the eye sees in scene like the first.

For sure go with bracketed exposures

[outstar79]

Agree, when shooting high contrast scnenes (ie: into the sun) it saves a lot of ginning about exposing for the various elements in the image, a single exposure will only get you so far without having to push the levels etc which will induce noise and degrade IQ.

Composition wise I agree with Am, the second image is definitely more balanced and the trees make a good POI in the water. Lovely spot too!