50mm landscape lens recommendation

Going round in circles.

Same advice gets offered but not accepted.

If you want the shadow areas to be visible with detail expose for them.

Use spot meter.

Don't be surprised the highlights get blown though.
 
Cloudbreak said:
Hi there. Very much appreciate your reply so thank you. I’m an architectural visualiser and the purpose of the photos is to use them as backgrounds for photomontages produced to show proposed developments for architects to include in legal planning documents. My background is in architectural 3D modelling so the photography side, although being something I’ve always been interested in, is definitely a much smaller part of my job. Part of the technical process of producing the photomontages involves obtaining gps coordinates of various objects within the photo so I can accurately place the development in it and therefore I need to identify certain markers to ask the surveyors to get the real world location of. Bear with me - the point of explaining all of this boring stuff is that when I’m actually taking the photo, I can quite often see objects in shade which I want to use like fence posts but when I come to marking the photos up for the surveyors, I struggle to see the same fence post. I am trying to troubleshoot whether it’s my camera (being quite old now), my lens or just me! Generally I think I have a good handle on camera methodology and I have to use manual shooting mode to keep the lighting consistent so I don’t think it’s me. I’m certainly not arrogant enough to think that I’m beyond improving though and I’m sure I could use my camera better! Good suggestion about uploading photos - I’ll try and add some tomorrow along with my settings.
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Today I tried a G9 in the same place.

The in camera HDR is much better than the 5Diii, but still no-where as good as bracketing and stacking/merging in Affinity.

It has an iDynamic feature that helps hugely.
It also has highlight and shadow adjustment, which can also help a lot

(you can see the effects of both here https://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/panasonic-g9/panasonic-g9A5.HTM )

If you had no camera, and had the choice of a G9 or a 5Diii, the G9 would be the obvious choice for you. (they are both roughly the same price used), more likely of the two to do waht you seem to need.

Would it get the shots you want straight out of the camera every time? Who knows, there is such a wide range of situations, it would not be possible to recommend buying one, it might work in tests done thinking they replicate your circumstances, or they may be miles off what you actually want, but if you look at the results in the link above, you would be the best judge if they relate to what you are looking for.
 
Sangoma said:
Yesterday I took the 5Diii to an allotment with me, the in camera HDR was pretty ineffective (like it is in all cameras I have tried), but merging the same three shots in Affinity, it works well to increase detail in shadows, and also to increase detail in places like the top of trees against a light cloud background (light cloud as in bright, not little cloud).

That is not going to help though with 500 photos to process.

I also set a custom picture style with sharpness at max (the 5Diii's JPEGS are soft anyway), contrast at max, saturation at 75%, and using spot metering well below the skyline, and that helped a lot, but of course the sky detail was lost.
Not as good as a merge, but not too bad.

Out of your potential 500 shots, how many of them would you end up using?
Possibilities could increase if it was a lot less then the 500.

Any of the solutions suggested will have a varying effect depending on what is actually in the picture you want to see.
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Hi Sangoma,

Massive thanks for taking the time to try a few things with your own 5D - I'm blown away by the helpfulness of this community. I've got plenty to try so I'll get my camera out and go through each of the tings mentioned and see what works best for my process. Realistically I probably use around a quarter of the photos I take but obviously if I can use an in camera method then it saves any tweaking. I'll give everything a try though. Thanks again - much appreciated.
 
Hi all - thanks so much for your help and input. I'm blown away by your help and assistance, even getting your cameras out and trying a few things for me - really hugely appreciated.

Now I know there's no simple quick fix and it's not down to limitations with my kit, I'll try everything that you've mentioned, especially the in camera methods starting with Picture Styles and see what works best. If I have to run them through lightroom then so be it - it's not the end of the world! Contrary to GreenNinja67's response, I'm fully accepting of all advice so thank you. Apologies if this is going round in circles - that's not my intention. Advice received gratefully. Thanks.
 
I'm going to display my ignorance here, but would some sort of skylight filter not be a cheaper/faster/easier solution.

Darken the sky and allow OP to up the exposure in the foreground and see the details.
 
taxboy said:
As post processing appears to be ruled out - is there any reason why the iPhone images aren't suitable for the intended use ?
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Essentially this.

At the end of the day if you want to make an omelette you need to break some eggs. And neither is particularly difficult to get started with.
 
Cloudbreak said:
Wow - thanks so much for the experimentation. My hands are tied somewhat as the photos are supposed to be devoid of any tampering. They are supposed to represent exactly what’s there and how visible a new building will be. If I’m out on site for the day I can quite easily have 500 photos so I’m trying to have a solution in camera rather than in software to just boost the shadows a little. All of this is really useful though and I’ve got several avenues to explore so I’ll take my camera outside tomorrow and play with the AEB and picture style functions and see if I can improve on what I currently have.

Thanks so much all - very much appreciated.
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I don't understand how you get over different weather conditions be it sunny -overcast - morning -evening how the sun lights up what you want to take photosots of etc , So nature doesn't tamper with what your looking at?
Forget about not tampering, what you should be after is the best reputation of what you want to photograph irrespective of time of day. If editing produces a far better result to your clients it will impress far more. You could go one stage further and say using a tripod is tampering by being able to keep a camera steady. Using different filters is not tampering then?

Just try taking the same photo different times of the day and they will look different

What I am trying to say is don't get hung up with trying to capture an exact image as seen, in a photograph, Even different sensors/ lens coatings depending on make can make a difference to a photograph
 
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