water/sky exposure and color

[vervor]

posted this for Mr. Mullen, but will copy to here too as it applies and the more comments the better....

Will be shooting several important scenes for a short film that takes place outdoors - one on a dock where I'd like to really get the water to stand out as blue and also not have the sky blown out as it often is with DV in order to have everything else correctly exposed...so what can I do to fix? I'd like the blues in the sky and water to really pop because, in fact, the title is Never Saw Blue and the color is an important motif. I've heard there are sky filters that are super-ND'd or something like that on half of them so if you line it up with the horizon the sky has a chance of coming into good exposure - what are these called and are they avail for, say, my GL2 camera with a 52mm ring? I guess I can fall back on a polarizer, but that seems like it'd be chancy. Could I perhaps expose it consistently and then color correct in post and hope we can get it to work out?

 

[Lazlo]

stay away from the polarizer, or you might make the water dissappear. I don't understand the physics behind it, but it elemenates reflection as you know, and in the past I have accidentally made the lake look empty, don't make that same mistake. It seems most practical to use a graduated ND filter along with maybe an 80A. The rest you can do in post. You may not like the 80A, but just look into it. Just an idea. ANother idea is just to ND the whole thing, but then you'll blow out the sky. Do you have to see the sky? Otherwise, that's what I'd do. If I had no filteration, I would probobly try to keep the sky out of the center of attention in the frame since you're going to blow it out if you expose for the water (which you said was the most important thing). Then I would underexpose the water by a stop, and do the rest in post. Run some tests first. Good luck.