What do you do if outside is to bright?

E

etrust

Well-known member
Hi,

I'm asking me what is the right way to reduce britghtness if you are outside on a sunny day and is to bright.

What do you do on the canon 7d?
 
i haven't bought one yet. but, i've read that the good ones are around US$100.

i think variable ND filters are worth looking into. you can adjust the amount of light coming through dependent on your aperture setting and the amount of sunlight.

whichever brand you buy, make sure the threading on the filter fits the threading on your particular lens(es).
 
If you want to retain shallow Depth of field then use an ND filter, else just stop down the aperture in manual mode using the dial on the back of the camera. You can also decrease shutter speed but for filming you want to try and keep it at around 1/50th second to retain that filmic look.
 
You can step up your shutter speed. If you'd like to keep your aperture wide open & your shutter at say 1/50 and you can't afford a Vari-ND, get yourself 2 Filters - a Linear Polarizer & a Circular Polarizer, Screw them together (Linear polarizer in the front) & adjust your cam's white balance accordingly. (Tone will be warm when opened up & cool when stopped down) I use a Tiffen combo - Works great. Oh yeah - Buy a 77mm or larger & get yourself some step-up rings, so you can use your polarizers on a variety of lenses.
 
actually i use .9 all the time, keep in mind bottoming out the aperture will give you a DOF which doesn't lend itself to every situation. with a .9 you can get around a 2.8-4, which for these cameras will give you a pretty shallow DOF. Then again, all comes down to the situation and personal taste.
 
Hi Guys,

thank you.

I have read that using a ND Filter, i can loose Sharpness.

What if I only play wit the apperture? Will I have bad effects?
 
More things will be in focus,your footage will look like from regular camcorder most of the time.
Try to find only one ND 1.2 ,its ok for sunny days,maybe also nd 0.4 on top of it or you can close aperture to some degree and use only ND 1.2. ND 4 and ND 8 alone dont help much when you want shutter 1/50.
Theres tooooo much light during the day.
 
You need some type of ND, either traditional or Fader. I think in the past you did loose some sharpness with Faders if you shot stills photography with a really long lens. But I've heard they've since fixed that issue.

Put it this way. Pretty much every decent film production in many decades has used ND filters to control the light. It's the only way to get proper exposure without compromise, so you should probably use one also.

Conventional wisdom says it's bad to control light by adjusting the shutter speed, and IMO they're right because your footage looks really stuttery. Some people do it, but to me, the footage looks really weird.

I've shot a lot of stuff with the Fader ND (original) and I don't notice any loss of sharpness in video. Without NDs, your shot will look worse because you're exposure will be wrong a lot of the times.
 
etrust said:
Hi Guys,

thank you.

I have read that using a ND Filter, i can loose Sharpness.

What if I only play wit the apperture? Will I have bad effects?
Click to expand...

Any half-decent ND filter will not cause any loss in perceptible sharpness. (Besides, a little bit of softening isn't so bad. It helps decrease aliasing.) If you stop-down the aperture, you will defeat the purpose of using DSLRs for video, which is to create shallow DOF. You should learn more about DOF (e.g., by reading the Wikipedia article) to gain a better understanding of how it works and what factors affect it.
 
ok thanks guys. could somebody tell me a specific nd filter, so that i could search here in switzerland and buy it?

I found a canon circular B+W Filter for 250$. Is not cheap :=(
 
Something around $20 USD should be just fine if you're on a budget. But you can't just stop at one ND filter. You should get a set. Otherwise, get a Fader ND (variable ND made from two polarizers).
 
well it depends. Do you want to loose your DOF? Then step down. If you cant, then look into buying an ND Filter. For me the F stop is a last resort because of the DOF, however if i dont want that shallow depth then ya crank that baby up. If your doing video though i dont recomend cranking up the shutter speed to high, best to stick around the 60 shutter range for 24 p.
 
ydgmdlu said:
Any half-decent ND filter will not cause any loss in perceptible sharpness. (Besides, a little bit of softening isn't so bad. It helps decrease aliasing.) If you stop-down the aperture, you will defeat the purpose of using DSLRs for video, which is to create shallow DOF. You should learn more about DOF (e.g., by reading the Wikipedia article) to gain a better understanding of how it works and what factors affect it.
Click to expand...

Stopping down the aperture too far will also lose sharpness...which again can be a good thing for the DSLRs.


When shooting narrative work outside if a reflector is a must.

Also remember that long lenses will still give pretty shallow DOF even if stopped down a bit.
 
By the sounds of it, your best bet is a ND Fader. And I suggest this one well choice which one you need for your lens. Or if you like messing with filters and getting real artistic like I do, then pick up this with the Cokin P Series filter holder you can add just about any filter you want and the filters are pretty reasonable.

Best Wishes.
 
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