Sky on Fire

[Lesley Jones]

You know me - I started late after doing the animals and now I must go to bed. I'll probably change my mind about this tomorrow. I was thinking about lifting the highlights a tad with the levels adjustment, but as the sun had already gone down, this was more natural.

I had already packed up as getting off the Roaches in the dark with a tiddly torch simply wasn't on. I turned round for one last look at the old barn and the sky had gone berserk. I had no time to set up again, so I pushed the ISO as far as I dare (1200) and hoped I got lucky with steady hands. I had to tinker with the noise reduction as I only set up two presets because I can't get my head around all those sliders. Colour noise didn't seem much of a problem, but the luminance noise was pretty tricky. Would that be correct for these sort of conditions?

Edited to say I tinkered with the levels adjustment anyway...

 

[Julian de'Courcy]

I know the light well and it can seem hard to give a pleasing representation. My understanding is, this is where the camera cannot compete or have the ability and struggles to represent the light that is there at the time. That is in comparison to what our own eye can interpret. From what I see I think you have stayed within the natural. The light of the sky and luminosity of the land looks good from here, there is the warmth of the sky fading with the colder land of the evening . Another very good landscape.

 

[Lesley Jones]

Cheers Julian. You have put so eloquently what I simply can't put into words. We see that light at home a lot. At the moment I'm staying out in the fields to make sure the new chickens go to bed properly. The sky can remain fairly light and yet the colour and contrast (I guess) start disappearing from the land. It's after the sun has gone down that you can get the most intense colours in the clouds, but mostly they are spread widely across the sky and I don't have the lens to do them justice. I found something very interesting on the net a few years ago defining sunset, dusk and twilight, but I forget the descriptions now. Dusk has always been my favourite time of day

 

[Chris Dodkin]

Liking the tweaked version Lesley - there's enough detail in the landscape now to hold the eye, without distracting from that amazing sky

You've effectively replicated the effect of using something like a 3 stop ND grad, which would have been the 'traditional' film way to get this shot.