Detailed landscapes

landscapes are a classic high-contrast subject. Expose for the bright sky and the foreground becomes too dark. Expose for the foreground and the sky becomes blown-out. Set an exposure somewhere in the middle and you end up with a histogram showing the classic clipped twin peaks. There are, thankfully, a couple of options here: use a graduated ND filter to make the sky darker, or shoot a sequence of different exposures and blend the best bits of each later. Some EOS cameras even pack an HDR mode that automates the exposure blending for you. There is also an HDR tool in Canon’s Digital Photo Professional 4 that gives you more control of the overall look of the HDR image.