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05/21/2010 01:27:28 AM · #1 |
| The other day i was doing a shoot with a girl wearing a white dress. We did the shoot in the evening light, which was still fairly intense. I kept checking my meter and also the LCD screen. But sometimes its hard to tell on the LCD if its at the proper exposure. When I looked at the images on the computer some were blown out, especially the dress. Any tips on making sure you're not over exposing? Especially in brighter day light. THX! |
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05/21/2010 01:33:15 AM · #2 |
| I always turn the highlight detection on in the camera so they show as blinkies on the camera screen, it really helps to make sure nothing was blown out while you are taking photos and saves a lot of images. |
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05/21/2010 01:40:01 AM · #3 |
| When the subject is white, I use center weighted or spot metering and lower exposure down a full stop. It keeps the brights from becoming the blowns. |
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05/21/2010 01:52:18 AM · #4 |
In those sorts of conditions I use spot metering and expose for a mid tone (normally skin), and if I cannot get one of my focus points over a mid tone I use the exposure lock and then frame the scene.
Using the histogram means you want to avoid anything think touching the right hand side of it (this is the overexposed edge of the graph). I don't think the 30D has highlight blinking, I do on the Nikon D90 and it is very useful.
The other way to do it is with Exposure compensation, so if you have a bright subject and a dark back ground you add some neg EC.
I am sure there are many other ways around it as well. |
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05/21/2010 03:32:20 AM · #5 |
Originally posted by SoulJance:
I don't think the 30D has highlight blinking, I do on the Nikon D90 and it is very useful.
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On the 30D under the image play back menu tab, select highlight warning to set the blown out areas to blink on single image review mode. |
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05/21/2010 04:19:53 AM · #6 |
You could bracket the shots using the AEB setting on the camera to take 3 simultaneous shots set to one stop apart, will take more time editing to decide the correct exposure but can be a good fail-safe.
Message edited by author 2010-05-21 04:20:09. |
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05/21/2010 06:34:43 AM · #7 |
I do find the histogram helpful -- I find it easier to see on the display than the blown highlight blinking. Also, are you shooting RAW? I really recommend it. It's such a space hog, but it allows you to fix over exposed problems after the fact (unless they're very badly over exposed).
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05/21/2010 11:47:03 AM · #8 |
| thank you all for your input. I will start trying some of them out. I haven't shot in RAW yet, do you need a special program to download those onto the computer? |
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05/21/2010 12:27:10 PM · #9 |
Originally posted by bloodrain:
thank you all for your input. I will start trying some of them out. I haven't shot in RAW yet, do you need a special program to download those onto the computer? |
If you still have the original discs canon have software called DPP which can process the raw files, or photoshop will be able to open the files |
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05/21/2010 02:31:12 PM · #10 |
A quick post to amplify on some things already said:
- The highlight blinking is a good warning tool, but it is limited (see below)
- The histogram is a better tool, but the standard (luminosity) histogram is limited. If you have the option of showing the individual color channel histograms (don't recall if the 30D has that option) then do so. The luminosity histogram (and the highlight warning, which is based on luminosity) are inadequate because you can blow out one channel and not get *any* warning. This is a problem when shooting scenes that have saturated primary colors
- Shooting RAW can give you some insurance and I highly recommend it. Do be aware that recovering data from beyond the JPEG clipping point may result in inaccurate color in the recovered information; this is not usually an issue, especially if you are not in the habit of grossly overexposing and pulling back highlights. |
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05/21/2010 05:27:34 PM · #11 |
Originally posted by bobonacus:
Originally posted by bloodrain:
thank you all for your input. I will start trying some of them out. I haven't shot in RAW yet, do you need a special program to download those onto the computer? |
If you still have the original discs canon have software called DPP which can process the raw files, or photoshop will be able to open the files |
Another option (albeit not great) if you have a Mac is iPhoto. It handles RAW Files ok, but the adjustments aren't too good. Digital Photo Professional from Canon is way better, it's what I use to do 80% of my post processing. |
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05/21/2010 09:24:21 PM · #12 |
In the long run, even after you have mastered your histogram chimping and never blow out more than one shot in a series, if this gets you shooting in RAW, you will be glad. The flexibility and color space in RAW more than make up for the extra step in your workflow. Start with the Canon software, then the next step is platform dependant Lightroom v Apature, or get a browser that can convert for you like Breeze browser or a stand alone like Capture One.
Once you go RAW, you never go back. |
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05/21/2010 10:54:16 PM · #13 |
One other note to add. The light meter assumes a certain amount of reflected light relative to 18 % gray.
In general, if you were to allow your camera to meter off something purely white, it will come out gray. If you were to allow your camera to meter off something purely black, it will come out gray also.
To compensate for the extremes, you would have to set the exposure compensation to +1 (generally more) for pure white and -1 (generally less) for pure black.
Now, I'm sure the camera was metering on everything else there. You may have even compensated for some darker regions. Whatever that manual compensation was, realize that pure white will always be +1 - +2 ABOVE what you are metering based on everything else.
If you keep that in mind, you'll be able to mentally remember that a particular shot is going to cause problems. You'll need to whip out a trust fill flash to help.
Having an electronic indicator is nice, but should be secondary to the self-recognition of what is going to happen.
Message edited by author 2010-05-21 22:54:57. |
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05/21/2010 11:31:33 PM · #14 |
To expand on what pgerst said, there are basically 2 kinds of light meters; incident and reflected. Incident light meters are hand-held, typically have hemispherical white domes, and are used by standing at the subject and pointing them towards the camera. They measure the amount of light falling on the scene, and are subject-independent. If you use the exposure calculated by an incident meter, your whites will be white and your blacks will be black.
The reflected light meter, what we have in the camera, measures the light reaching the sensor. In order to give any meaningful result at all, it has to make an assumption. The industry-standard assumption is that the average of all the tonalities being metered by the camera is 18% gray, the standard "zone V" gray.
Accordingly, if you meter a white wall and do what the meter says, it will be rendered as a zone V gray. Ditto for a black wall. In theory, those two frames will come out of the camera indistinguishable from each other. But if you meter a wall that's half black and half white, you'll nail the exposure and have white and black with no gray.
Accordingly, when you meter bright scenes you have to give more exposure (+ compensation to compensate for underexposure): when you meter dark scenes, you have to give less exposure (- compensation to compensate for underexposure). Experience will tell you how much to compensate.
R.
Message edited by author 2010-05-21 23:33:01.
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05/22/2010 12:52:58 AM · #15 |
| thank you all so much for your help! Much appreciated. I suppose a lot of this stuff is learning by trial and error:) I do think I still have my canon cd somewhere, I'll have to do some digging. |
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