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07/06/2003 08:25:42 PM · #1 |
I took a fieldtrip this afternoon to a local historical site to make some photographs. There is an old general store at this location and I saw some things in the window that looked like some possible photo opportunities....
Snapshot of the Window Display
This particular scene offered up a few challenges with exposure control. I had a lot of ambient light coming through the window and not much supporting light coming from within the old country store. As you can see in this image, the ambient window light is overpowering the light coming from the other direction.
After examining this particular window display for about 20 minutes, I decided that this photo is what I really wanted out of the scene:
Stone Ground
So the challenge here was how to expose for bright light on one side of the scene and darkness on the other... The first option was to expose for the light area and keep anything from being over exposed. Doing this created a lot of totally black area in the photo and a lot of lost detail in those dark areas... so much that I didn't even take the photo to start with. Exposing for the dark area created a lot of blowout on the areas with light... so much that I didn't even take that photo either :)
I could not determine an exposure for this in such a way that some areas were not too bright or too dark so I had to make a compromise between the two. The left side of the image is a bit bright, but there is no real loss of any detail. The right side of the image is a bit dark, but the texture of the woodwork on the wall is still visible.
After all was said and done with this particular photo, I was quite happy with the result.
I dunno what I really mean to relay with this post other than maybe an opportunity to practice some exposure control in a light/dark situation... it's well worth your time to try something like this :)
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07/06/2003 08:37:41 PM · #2 |
I had a similar problem with this shot.
I ended up not worrying about the window and concentrated on getting the interior just right. I didn't think about it much at the time, but it was probably just as well since the view through the window could have been distracting.
One thing I would like to ask is if anyone thinks I should edit the window so that it's completely white, or keep the image the way it is.
As for your shot John, I think Ston Ground turned out very well. The lighting gives it that "general store" feeling.
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07/06/2003 08:41:09 PM · #3 |
Lighting is often tough, especially with digital cameras that don't have the exposure and f stop range of film cameras (unless you pay a few thousand dollars). I like both shots, John, and thought the snap shot worked well with the high key at the top, but you show what can be done with a little care to get the best out of a tough situation.
You are right. If you overexpose, you lose details in the light. If you underexpose, you lose detail in the dark areas--as well as add grain to the dark areas. Still, I usually choose to go darker, because overexposed areas are nearly impossible to deal with. |
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07/06/2003 09:30:01 PM · #4 |
| Why would one not make use of the vast capabilities of Photoshop and shoot several exposures with varing degrees of under and over exposure, combine them in a most pleasing way, dodge, burn, blur, color invert,etc, etc until one has a most wonderful natural representation of the scene as they see it and wish others to see. You know, just like Ansel Adams did. |
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07/07/2003 08:40:33 AM · #5 |
It is a lesson in exposure.....
bah.. forget it. I'll not go down this path.
Thanks John! Yet another example to study ;)
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07/07/2003 11:35:19 AM · #6 |
oh definitely! if you have the time to get all the shots and so forth, that's absolutely the best way to go!
Originally posted by David Ey:
Why would one not make use of the vast capabilities of Photoshop and shoot several exposures with varing degrees of under and over exposure, combine them in a most pleasing way, dodge, burn, blur, color invert,etc, etc until one has a most wonderful natural representation of the scene as they see it and wish others to see. You know, just like Ansel Adams did. |
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07/07/2003 11:55:45 AM · #7 |
Ever considered using a fill flash?
Originally posted by jmsetzler:
I took a fieldtrip this afternoon to a local historical site to make some photographs. There is an old general store at this location and I saw some things in the window that looked like some possible photo opportunities....
Snapshot of the Window Display
This particular scene offered up a few challenges with exposure control. I had a lot of ambient light coming through the window and not much supporting light coming from within the old country store. As you can see in this image, the ambient window light is overpowering the light coming from the other direction.
After examining this particular window display for about 20 minutes, I decided that this photo is what I really wanted out of the scene:
Stone Ground
So the challenge here was how to expose for bright light on one side of the scene and darkness on the other... The first option was to expose for the light area and keep anything from being over exposed. Doing this created a lot of totally black area in the photo and a lot of lost detail in those dark areas... so much that I didn't even take the photo to start with. Exposing for the dark area created a lot of blowout on the areas with light... so much that I didn't even take that photo either :)
I could not determine an exposure for this in such a way that some areas were not too bright or too dark so I had to make a compromise between the two. The left side of the image is a bit bright, but there is no real loss of any detail. The right side of the image is a bit dark, but the texture of the woodwork on the wall is still visible.
After all was said and done with this particular photo, I was quite happy with the result.
I dunno what I really mean to relay with this post other than maybe an opportunity to practice some exposure control in a light/dark situation... it's well worth your time to try something like this :) |
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07/07/2003 12:14:04 PM · #8 |
Originally posted by greenem2:
I had a similar problem with this shot. |
I absolutely love that shot, Matt! I really really do!
Thanks for the thread John. I really need to get out and practice how to handle difficult exposure situations - someone once said to me that one of the hardest shoots he did was a really pale white guy wearing a black suit (the groom) and a black woman (with particularly dark skin) wearing a white dress (you guessed it, the bride). Of course, I can't remember now how this person said they approached the exposure decisions...
Sigh!
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07/07/2003 12:39:39 PM · #9 |
Originally posted by paganini:
Ever considered using a fill flash?
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Absolutely not.
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07/07/2003 12:57:44 PM · #10 |
Originally posted by David Ey:
Why would one not make use of the vast capabilities of Photoshop and shoot several exposures with varing degrees of under and over exposure, combine them in a most pleasing way, dodge, burn, blur, color invert,etc, etc until one has a most wonderful natural representation of the scene as they see it and wish others to see. You know, just like Ansel Adams did. |
My thoughts too, but you have to be careful with your "just like Ansel Adams did" comment, if a die hard film user saw this comment, I don't know what would happen. Photoshop and "real" darkroom work are so different. |
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07/07/2003 12:59:28 PM · #11 |
Originally posted by Paige:
Photoshop and "real" darkroom work are so different. |
Different how? In the mechanism? What of the results? |
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07/07/2003 01:40:14 PM · #12 |
'Stop range' : I would say that the range of stop is almost the same with film or camera. It's the latitude you have that's not the same . Digital has to be more accurate. But in both cases the range is 5 stops for the camera and 10 for the eyes.
Things I am going to start to play with soon for those types of situation is :
- Neutral graduate density filter with a soft edge, 0.3 or 0.6. But the area in that case (John's shot) is not very delimited, not purely a corner, but maybe that could help (soft edge, 0.3 for the upper left corner).
- Dodging and burning.
- I started to do a few trys and have been pretty successfull in shooting raw, extract a -1 exp and a +1 exp from the raw file and combine them. I still have progress to make although with the technique.
- last possiblility is to select (select what is the unanswered question .. he h ehe ) the bright area, feather 1 or 2, paste that area in a layer and blend 'Multiply'. Maybe that's what dodging and burning does .. not sure ...
That's what I know about how to fix those situations and .. still working on it ;-) :-)
Going to Marjorca end of this week so .. I want to be prepared for bright skies ;-) :-) although they should be blue so the polarizer will help.
Lionel |
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07/07/2003 01:45:00 PM · #13 |
that's actually not a bad idea. i sometimes use a very small amount of fill flash, just to reduce the dynamic range of the picture and maintain the same feel but still get a good exposure
Originally posted by paganini:
Ever considered using a fill flash?
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07/07/2003 01:49:43 PM · #14 |
John, Mag99, I was just jokeing with you a bit there, however, could you take one shot and copy it lighter AND darker and combine the two (or more) in PS and get what you are wanting? I had the same problem with my AT WORK entry.
Originally posted by magnetic9999:
oh definitely! if you have the time to get all the shots and so forth, that's absolutely the best way to go!
Originally posted by David Ey:
Why would one not make use of the vast capabilities of Photoshop and shoot several exposures with varing degrees of under and over exposure, combine them in a most pleasing way, dodge, burn, blur, color invert,etc, etc until one has a most wonderful natural representation of the scene as they see it and wish others to see. You know, just like Ansel Adams did. |
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Message edited by author 2003-07-07 14:25:08. |
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07/07/2003 02:14:54 PM · #15 |
It works best if you have an external flash unit, i think. the internal ones you really can't control how far to flash. This way, in John's photo, he can expose for the highlights and use the flash (with compensator) to expose the other areas.
The same can be used for say faces in landscape photos. Usually the sun is harsh on the skin, though the landscape looks fine, so with a fill flash the shadows created on the face will be revealed. You can do the same with photoshop, but i have found on the 10D at least that the SHADOW areas have NOISES that are really bad to dodge, probably the biggest drawback for the 10D that i have found so far.
Originally posted by magnetic9999:
that's actually not a bad idea. i sometimes use a very small amount of fill flash, just to reduce the dynamic range of the picture and maintain the same feel but still get a good exposure
Originally posted by paganini:
Ever considered using a fill flash?
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07/07/2003 02:28:26 PM · #16 |
I think any amount of fill would probably ruin this photo. I must be the only one who particularly likes the lighting result in this one.
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07/07/2003 02:31:26 PM · #17 |
Nope. I like it too.. I am not in the camp that believes there are no shadows in real life. I get hammered alot for "shadows". Sometimes there is merit to the critisism, but on the whole, shadows are what add depth - along with light.
Sometimes fill flash is useful.. but only in some cases.
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07/07/2003 02:46:09 PM · #18 |
I think this type of critique is also gonna be different from different people. Most any photo has a 'what if' type of critique available. There is always something that CAN be different about a photo.
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07/07/2003 03:24:52 PM · #19 |
Originally posted by David Ey:
John, Mag99, I was just jokeing with you a bit there, however, could you take one shot and copy it lighter AND darker and combine the two (or more) in PS and get what you are wanting? I had the same problem with my AT WORK entry.
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Yes you can, pretty easily.
This shot was combined that way, using one RAW frame, developed twice, once for the highlights, and once for the shadows, then combined with a mask to bring out the features from each shot.
Can also be done on a tripod with two frames at different exposures, but obviously doesn't work so well if there is things moving between the frames!
The RAW approach works well because you have the larger range to work with in a high bit file. |
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07/07/2003 03:27:45 PM · #20 |
Originally posted by KarenB:
Nope. I like it too.. I am not in the camp that believes there are no shadows in real life. I get hammered alot for "shadows". Sometimes there is merit to the critisism, but on the whole, shadows are what add depth - along with light.
Sometimes fill flash is useful.. but only in some cases. |
There is a real art in using fill flash to lighten shadows, and not totally remove them. I think in general a lot of people use the flash on their cameras at entirely the wrong time. You get the best results with on camera flash when you use it when there is a lot of light - e.g., a very sunny day and faces in shadow, rather than the way most people use their flash to make up for a lack of light, like a dark room or night time. I think also a good understanding on the actual range of your flash can help a lot, as well as knowing how to adjust the power output of the internal or external flash.
Good fill flash should pretty much not be noticeable at all. |
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07/07/2003 04:20:43 PM · #21 |
Originally posted by KarenB:
Originally posted by Paige:
Photoshop and "real" darkroom work are so different. |
Different how? In the mechanism? What of the results? |
yes, in the mechanism and in the results. I am no wiz in either but have experience in both. With the equipment I have, I can make a much better print in the darkroom with the right paper, chemicals, dodging and burning etc. then in photoshop. That has alot to do with my digital camera quality then anything else, but it is a bit frustrating that I have to pay 3-10x as much for a camera to produce the same quality print in the end.
Hoping Digital catches up soon as far as price goes.
Plus, I have to admit that it feels like cheating when I use photoshop, only because I learned in the darkroom first :) Hope that feeling goes away soon, digital is certainly taking over. |
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07/07/2003 04:35:47 PM · #22 |
Exactly. it's not using it to transform the existing lighting structure as much as augment it for exposure purposes.
Originally posted by Gordon:
Good fill flash should pretty much not be noticeable at all. |
I do like your flour bags pic; has a really effective old-timey feel, and good luminosity. I just thought we were discussing options for dealing with contrasty scenes, not critiquing a specific picture....
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07/07/2003 04:39:53 PM · #23 |
Originally posted by Paige:
Plus, I have to admit that it feels like cheating when I use photoshop, only because I learned in the darkroom first :) Hope that feeling goes away soon, digital is certainly taking over. |
is this similar to the way that DOS (and other command line OS's) Heads felt when people were flocking to mac and windows GUI's? that since it was less laborious to get things done, that somehow it's worth less? and does all this go back to the whole 'suffering builds character' ethic? :)
cuz if that's the case, isn't riding in a car 'cheating' when you should be walking? and isn't buying meat and produce from the store 'cheating' when you should be a farmer? etc.
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07/07/2003 04:40:23 PM · #24 |
Originally posted by magnetic9999:
I do like your flour bags pic; has a really effective old-timey feel, and good luminosity. I just thought we were discussing options for dealing with contrasty scenes, not critiquing a specific picture.... |
This is what I was thinking too...
I can't use 'fill flash' with the equipment I have. My flash is basically on or off... lol.. and I can't point it.
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07/07/2003 04:53:55 PM · #25 |
yeah. but what about slow sync with flash compensation turned down? sometimes that gives a pretty subtle result with on cam flash...
can be effective with a backlit subject
Message edited by author 2003-07-07 16:55:11.
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