Properly exposing different landscapes

Exposure, Exposure is an element of photography that uses aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. Exposure is what determines how bright or dark your image is and is one of if not the most important part of taking photos. Having the proper exposure for the image you are trying to capture varies for different times of day and different locations. Every landscape has different exposure techniques for that location. There are plenty of techniques for exposing but I am going to provide a groundwork for you to properly expose your shots when shooting various landscapes.

Pre-shoot questions

What type of conditions are you in? Cloudy day with no sun?, Clear skies with just sun?, Sunset? The first step to exposing properly is figuring out the lighting conditions for your shoot. What do you want in focus? All of the image?, Certain third of the image?, The sky? Is there a small subject like an animal or a car? These are all questions you ask yourself when first finding your shot.

Setting recommendations

Before the questions make sure you know where your exposure value is on your screen or when you are looking through the viewfinder or on screen. For sunny locations or just brighter places in general there are settings I would recommend for you to start with. Have your ISO at 100 or 200 because any higher gives a lot of risk for over exposure. For your shutter speed since we are taking landscape photos a shutter speed around 300 if you are a little shaky go a tiny bit higher to avoid losing focus. The aperture should be small around an 11 is good. A not so secret item to consider buying if you don’t already have one is a polarizer for those really bright days.

Forest and slightly lower light areas increase the ISO to around 400 but if you want to keep your image darker because thats how you like it keep it at 100 but for keeping things properly exposed around 400 is good. For shutter speed since there is less light go for around 1/200 or slower. Aperture keep that between 4-8 to let in more light. be careful of shadows and different types of lighting coming into the forest if you are taking pictures in a forest.

Mountains and snow are a little odd you want to slightly over expose your image to make sure the snow is white and not grey you want your ev to be slightly to the right generally. Make sure your ISO is as low as you can go without under exposing the image. The shutter speed should be set anywhere between 1/250- 1/500. A polarizer helps in these conditions as well because of all of the snow making the image bright.

Sunsets, they require a tripod because of the low shutter speed you will be using at around 1/30 or slightly higher. For sunsets you want to of course expose for the sky bringing out its colors. ISO should be at 100-200 for a nice crisp picture with no noise, noise isn’t a huge issue anymore because of the editing capabilities we have now, so if you do use a higher ISO don’t worry too much. A smaller aperture like f/8-f/16 is recommended for a nice depth of field in the photo.

As you see the variety in different landscapes there are also a variety of settings that go with them. Exposure is the most important part of taking an image especially with the variety of landscapes and conditions there are in nature. Another thing to consider is finding your own style of editing that is what sets photographers apart. Test different exposure levels maybe you like the moody type of photos or really bright and vibrant photos. something you can do at home is take a picture of the same location whether as long as its outside so you can see the exposures of different times of day.