Capture awesome sky detail without filters
Filters are a great way to get things right in-camera, but there are other ways to achieve the same results
Maintaining sky detail has been a challenge since the earliest days of sensitised glass plates, where emulsions were sensitive to blue light so skies naturally overexposed. Celluloid film was better, but thanks to the invention of ND grads decades ago, maintaining sky detail is easier than ever. But what can you do if you don’t own any ND grads?
The great thing about digital photography is that there are multiple ways to maintain sky detail in high-contrast scenes. The easiest, and one of the most effective, is the ‘split raw’ technique. Split raw requires that you shoot two images of a scene, with one exposed for the sky and the second exposed for the foreground. These can be seamlessly blended to mimic the effect of ND grads.
The advantage of the split raw technique is that you can set the sky exposure perfectly, down to one-third stop increments, so while you end up with more images and a little more editing work than when using ND grads, the result is arguably even more fine-tuned, because you ultimately have more control.