How to shoot clouds with a SLR?

The unpredictable clouds often add a lot of interest to landscape photos.

Most people think that clouds are only a part of composition, which is used to supplement and balance the scenery below the picture. Some people take a particularly infectious cloud, which is specially used to overprint landscape photos of the white sky; But few people think of a complete description of the cloud itself. In fact, beautiful clouds float in the sky and are fleeting, but it is a very useful theme.

camera lens

Although those standard lenses and various wide-angle lenses are suitable for taking large-scale cloud photos, the most useful ones are 105mm and 135mm telephoto lenses. When taking scenery photos, the sky is always brighter than the scenery on the ground. So even a telephoto lens with a medium maximum aperture can still cope. In fact, although the exposure time needs to be increased due to the use of red filters, they often reduce the aperture of 1-2.

color filter

Any warm color filter, such as yellow, orange and red, can be used to shoot black and white clouds. According to experience, the red filter is the most useful. It can not only darken the dark blue sky, but also photograph the very pale sky deeply, thus giving the clouds a proper contrast. Usually, when a small part of the blue sky is exposed through thin clouds, using a red filter can increase the contrast and make the picture three-dimensional. Compared with landscape photos with some clouds, the contrast of a single cloud photo may be more important.

Exposure; expose

If you only get exposure readings based on white clouds without considering the surrounding blue sky, then you will encounter underexposure. The same is true of shooting snow scenes with people. The exposure meter is calibrated according to the shooting scene with moderate contrast. Therefore, according to the digital exposure indicated by it, the white clouds will become medium gray. The best solution is to include some sky and clouds in the light receiving angle of exposure meter, but you must be careful, especially for cameras that use in-lens metering system. Don't forget that you often install a red filter on the lens, which will block the exposure of the blue sky. In fact, less exposure when shooting clouds can make the film clearer and the sky darker.

If you use a telephoto lens, there is a good way: first measure all or most of the clouds, and then increase the exposure of the first aperture. Using 135 mm lens, it is easy to master the exposure. It doesn't matter if a quarter of the lens is sky. If 105mm lens is used, the captured clouds only account for a quarter or less of the picture, and the average index of the sky and clouds can be taken. This index always moves between normal exposure and slight overexposure, so taking photos will not make you feel tired under any circumstances. When you zoom in, if you add a little exposure, the sky will have the greatest blackness.

When you use a camera with a manual in-lens metering system and a crimson filter, you will find it difficult to observe the pointer and scale. In fact, you can read the correct index without the color filter first, plus the factor of shaking the color mirror. This method is simple, you can shoot clouds, because the lens is always at infinity, and focusing is not a problem.

Although a reflective camera with a telephoto lens is easier to shoot clouds, it is not always the case. Many excellent cloud scenes also come from other small cameras and various cameras that can't change lenses.