How to film into the sun?

[Heindrich1988]

I find that I get the best looking footage on sunny days when the sun is quite low, but only if I avoid shooting into the sun. In the above unedited footage, I was trying to take a smooth scenic sweeping shot of a nearby lake/park, when I noticed a speed boat that I tried to follow. However, when I turned around, I ended up flying directly into the sun. Is this an occasion where I should have used an ND filter before I took off on account of the bright sunshine?

 

[slup]

I find that I get the best looking footage on sunny days when the sun is quite low, but only if I avoid shooting into the sun. In the above unedited footage, I was trying to take a smooth scenic sweeping shot of a nearby lake/park, when I noticed a speed boat that I tried to follow. However, when I turned around, I ended up flying directly into the sun. Is this an occasion where I should have used an ND filter before I took off on account of the bright sunshine?

You use a ND filter to regulate your shutter speed ... usually to 2 x the framerate (24fps --> shutter=1/48) ... this to create a natural motion blur while filming equal to what we see with our own eyes.

If your clip had been over exposed all over when turning into the sun it had meant that your cameras shutter couldn't be faster, & by that letting in more light than it should for a correct exposure, then a ND could have been a good idea. In your clip it's instead another problem ... the limited dynamic range of the sensor, it can't capture both the shadows & the highlights at the same time ... instead it averages the scene so it look rubbish all over. With that limited dynamic range you have to chose (in manual settings for the camera) if you want the shadows or the highlights correct exposed as you can't have them both. A ND filter will never fix this as they mainly only are sunshades for your lens. When the sun is behind the camera the scene is much more evenly lit so the scenes dynamic range isn't so large hence the camera sensor can capture all to a correct exposure.