Take great pictures of clouds

I don't know about you, but I think clouds are amazing, and I think that the best way to show people this is through photos. I'm no professional photographer, but here are a few tips on how to take great photos of them.

I suppose this could also be applied to photography of other objects, but I prefer clouds

Step 1 Your camera

It doesn't really have to be that hi-tech, the only things I'd say are important are a good zoom and an option to change the exposure (this will normally be found under manual options).

I use a Canon Digital Ixus 75 for these pictures.

Comments

[Robotrix]

Have you ever looked into trying HDR? I hear it brings out amazing details in cloud photographs, and there's free software for tonal mapping.

[Scott_Tx]

Tricky part about doing HDR on clouds is that you have to take 3 pictures in a row with nothing moving, hard to do on clouds real fast unless your cam does exposure bracketing

[Whiternoise]

Not so hard, with a good SLR that can do around 3FPS it's easy.  You just set it to auto bracket, lock the focus and fire away.

[Scott_Tx]

Exactly what I said

[viviluk]

i heard if you take a RAW picture, you dont have to take 3 pictures (just one)

[Scott_Tx]

No, RAW has 10 bit color but it doesnt have the same effect as taking multiple exposures

[crazy_luck]

You can save duplicat copies of the RAW file and open them in Photoshop (or any program that can adjust the RAW data) and adjust the exposure (leave one normal, one +2 and one -2) and use these to make the HDR. It isn't as great of quality as 3 seperate images taken at 3 seperate exposures, but it does work and still looks pretty good.

[Scott_Tx]

You know thats completely pointless dont you?

[Scott_Tx]

a polarized lens helps a lot too