Tips for daylight shooting.

[James.Thomas]

Hello everyone.

I'm looking for some help on the best way to shoot out in the main hours of daylight - especially in bright sunlight please?

I realise the best option is to wait until later or earlier hours of the day.
But what about occasions like events during the daytime where you have no choice.

The reason I'm asking this is because my family and I have come back from Portugal recently and I was experimenting taking some shots during the WRC rally with my 70-200.

The pictures came out nice and sharp (for someone of my capabilities at least) but they were mostly blown through the direct sunlight. Apart from a few I used a polarising filter on,which were better but not so good still.

Is it just my settings or technique at fault or do I require someone photoshopping?
As I've seen other photos from the event with beautiful exposures on other forums etc.

Thankyou for any help.

James.

 

[Phil V]

They're tricky subjects with bright spots that are so far from the 'average' of the rest of the shot they're bound to blow.

Exposure compensation should help, check your histogram when shooting cars in sunlight and use exp comp to get the highlights within the rhs of the histogram.

 

[Phil V]

I meant to add, if you're out shooting people in similar conditions, you won't suffer from the same issues.

 

[russellsnr]

James I live in Greece and the only way I have found is to expose to the right without clipping your highlights. I do use a hand held meter but can be done with histogram.
Remember that when you used your pol filter you made the camera use a longer shutter speed I would think around two stops depending on the filter so you would get some of the shadows but a lot more highlights.
Have a look at the Sekonic website there are a few very good tutorials on how to use a hand held meter of course but there are many other tips in between that will help you.
And ALWAYS shoot RAW!!!!!
Russ

 

[James.Thomas]

Thankyou for the replies.

Russell I have recently set my camera to RAW as well as jpeg. So I will have to start experimenting with some editing.

Phil: This will probably seem a very stupid question but in the circumstances we mention above ,would that be negative or positive compensation?

I've been shown in the past that dark subjects require negative and snow scenes etc require positive. But this instance has thrown my inexperienced head now:bonk:

 

[HoppyUK]

Need to see a sample pic really. Just guessing though, I'm thinking this may be more of a dynamic range problem (very bright highlights and dark shadows) rather than exposure as such.

And Russell, yes, you can use the histogram for Expose To The Right technique (it is after ETTR of the histogram ) but what you can't use is a hand meter. ETTR is highly subject dependent and not just a matter of deliberate over-exposure - sometime you can get away with murder, like +3 stops extra, other subjects maybe no more than +1 stop max, but a hand meter (or indeed the camera's meter) knows nothing about that.

 

[Pookeyhead]

And Russell, yes, you can use the histogram for Expose To The Right technique (it is after ETTR of the histogram ) but what you can't use is a hand meter. ETTR is highly subject dependent and not just a matter of deliberate over-exposure - sometime you can get away with murder, like +3 stops extra, other subjects maybe no more than +1 stop max, but a hand meter (or indeed the camera's meter) knows nothing about that.

ETTR when the important thing is retaining highlight detail? The whole premise of ETTR is to push the highlights as far as they can go to retain as much at the other end as well. I'm not sure it's something I'd be recommending to a beginner who's struggling to retain highlight detail in the basics forum.

@James.

Can you post up some examples?... not edited... straight off camera please.

 

[James.Thomas]

Many thanks again for the replies.

HoppyUK and Pookeyhead. I'm currently without a PC and using my mobile app to reply,but I will attempt to upload some when I get home tomorrow evening (hopefully).

I think I get the ETTR idea from your explanations and will have an experiment just to see how things pan out in the mean time.

Which method would you all suggest using as practice - manual mode or AV/TV with compensation?

 

[HoppyUK]

Many thanks again for the replies.

HoppyUK and Pookeyhead. I'm currently without a PC and using my mobile app to reply,but I will attempt to upload some when I get home tomorrow evening (hopefully).

I think I get the ETTR idea from your explanations and will have an experiment just to see how things pan out in the mean time.

Which method would you all suggest using as practice - manual mode or AV/TV with compensation?

David PH is right, ETTR is not a technique for beginners. Though easy enough to do, it has to be done carefully and requires a good level of understanding. Plus you have to shoot Raw and post process the result to bring the overall exposure level back to where it should be.

The exposure mode you use makes no difference. Av or Tv or manual or whatever, are all just different means to the same end. Use whichever one you prefer or best suits the situation.

If the problem is indeed dynamic range rather than simple exposure adjustment, then tricks like ETTR might not help. When the range of brightness in the scene is too much for the sensor then you have a few options: either make the brightest tones darker, eg graduated ND filter to darken a bright sky; or add fill-in flash to brighten dark areas; or use HDR (High Dynamic Range) technique - shoot multiple frames at different exposure levels to accommodate the whole brightness range, then merge in post processing.

 

[Lyonspride]

The reason I'm asking this is because my family and I have come back from Portugal recently and I was experimenting taking some shots during the WRC rally with my 70-200.

The pictures came out nice and sharp (for someone of my capabilities at least) but they were mostly blown through the direct sunlight. Apart from a few I used a polarising filter on,which were better but not so good still.

In the circustances you mention, having the camera set for spot metering (was it?) wouldn't do you any favours. Spot metering does as it says on the tin, it meters a small area at centre frame, virtually ignoring everything else. Not something you want to do if your trying to get the background correctly exposed.

I mention this because im a sod for forgetting to change my metering modes, many a time i've taken a shot and wondered why the background has blown, annoying when I know perfectly well i've done the same shot before with entirely better results.