Dealing with backlit situations

alexkidd

alexkidd

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We shoot weddings generally with one of us at the front and another of us at the other end of the aisle shooting at the couple who are directly backlit.
Question is.. other than flash is there anything else we can be doing to minimise the loss of contrast and detail when shooting the backlit couple or is it just one of those things? :)

Edit: We're almost always restricted with the field of view as well, we can't shoot at them from an angle and the subject is directly sandwiched between us and the window light source
 
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We shot all our weddings the same way as you, but I don't recall meeting the problem you're experiencing despite our using nothing more sophisticated than exposure compensation to deal with the backlighting.

Maybe I'm missing something here. Do you perhaps get a lot of modern churches with more than the normal amount of glass behind the altar? Could it be a lens quality issue? Do you keep a filter on the lens you normally use for these shots?

Struggling here to think of anything else ...
 
A couple of weeks ago I was faced with the worst case of backlit B&G I've ever known.

Only 2 things I can say,

1 loads of exposure comp to ensure they were correctly exposed
2 the de haze feature of Lightroom :banana:
 
alexkidd said:
We shoot weddings generally with one of us at the front and another of us at the other end of the aisle shooting at the couple who are directly backlit.
Question is.. other than flash is there anything else we can be doing to minimise the loss of contrast and detail when shooting the backlit couple or is it just one of those things? :)

Edit: We're almost always restricted with the field of view as well, we can't shoot at them from an angle and the subject is directly sandwiched between us and the window light source
Click to expand...


Spot meter.. learn to love it in these situations. Remember, it doesn't matter if the outside or the background blows out... it can actually be effective if done well.
 
Cheers guys, they're exposed well enough it's just the haze that can be an irritation

A couple of the venues are full glass walls so it's those that I'm moaning about haha. Figured it would be something I'd have to live with but thought it couldn't hurt to check with the brains on here :)
 
If they aren't moving then could you blend multiple exposures very gently for a fine tweak?
 
alexkidd said:
Cheers guys, they're exposed well enough it's just the haze that can be an irritation

A couple of the venues are full glass walls so it's those that I'm moaning about haha. Figured it would be something I'd have to live with but thought it couldn't hurt to check with the brains on here :)
Click to expand...
Then all you can do is clean decent quality lenses, no filters, and as a last resort LR's de-haze.
 
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