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nogboy

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Took some pictures of a building against a bright background which resulted in the building been too dark, had a bit play about with the settings but the end results were just as bad, what is the best way to sort it, tried on auto and also on aperture priority. Cheers for any advice. :thinking:
 
try editing with adobe elements or post on here to see if anyone can help
 
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nogboy said:
Took some pictures of a building against a bright background which resulted in the building been too dark, had a bit play about with the settings but the end results were just as bad, what is the best way to sort it, tried on auto and also on aperture priority. Cheers for any advice. :thinking:
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Trouble is the eye can cope with a wider range of exposures than a camera. The two main ways to deal with this are

HDR - taking a range of images at different exposures and combining them.

Use a graduated filter - this works best on a sky above a landscape - you are darkening the sky relative to the foreground so the camera can record the range of tones.

HDR requires some software processing afterwards such as Photomatix, and is best when the camera is on a tripod and there is little or no movement in the scene. HTH! Phil
 
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It would be useful to see an example but as Realspeed has said, expose for the building. This should give you a well exposed shot of the building but the sky is very likely to be blown.

The problem is the dynamic range of the scene too large for the camera to record well in one shot.

An alternative, if you have a tripod or some way of making sure the camera does not move, is to take two shots. One is exposed for the building and one for the sky. The two shots can the be combined with software.

Dave
 
nogboy said:
Had a try with my canon editing programme but couldn't seem to make them any better so deleted them.
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You can probably un-delete them, but the answer lies in camera technique not editing. Though if you shot RAW, there's probably some useful practice to be had with them.
 
If I were posed with a similar situation a simple way around is to lock the exposure on the building and then admittedly the sky will be blown but your building should be fine.
 
Aye, shooting RAW and metering for the mid tone will allow you to a) bring back the Highlights (sky) and b) up the exposure for the Shadows (building).
 
Hi, Some will maybe disagree with this but!!
This is why I like the use of a hand held meter, it sees the light as a whole not the reflected light from a building,sky,ground and any other light that may be in the scene, it measures the light falling on the whole area and it has with some meters the ability to read the light from a selected source when required. I no most cameras have different options of gathering light with matrix,spot etc but they still read it from many sources in the frame.
In your situation I would take the reading/s with the spot meter option on the camera and do one of three things, expose for the what is more important in the frame or as stated above take two frames one sky one building and merge in PP or last take two readings and work out the average.
JMO as still learning myself and seems to be a long road!!!
Russ
 
Tringa said:
It would be useful to see an example but as Realspeed has said, expose for the building. This should give you a well exposed shot of the building but the sky is very likely to be blown.

The problem is the dynamic range of the scene too large for the camera to record well in one shot.

An alternative, if you have a tripod or some way of making sure the camera does not move, is to take two shots. One is exposed for the building and one for the sky. The two shots can the be combined with software.

Dave
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It might be dynamic range, or it might just be that the amount of sky is making the metering overcompensate for the sky. You could try spot metering off the building or simply compensating by adding a stop or two to the exposure. You'll have a wheel or something on the camera.

If it is a dynamic range problem you don't necessarily have to use a tripod. It's not hard to line up a couple of shots if you're reasonably steady or, if you have it, Photoshop's auto align is pretty good. If you have it on your camera, auto-bracket is your friend.
 
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Digifrog said:
Aye, shooting RAW and metering for the mid tone will allow you to a) bring back the Highlights (sky) and b) up the exposure for the Shadows (building).
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You've not got unlimited latitude, so if the sky is really blown there will be no amount of bringing it back. Also bringing up shadows usually brings noise with it.
 
markmullen said:
You've not got unlimited latitude, so if the sky is really blown there will be no amount of bringing it back. Also bringing up shadows usually brings noise with it.
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That is true, but it's a start. Dealing with a high contrast scene always brings with it some extra difficulty, especially when not using filters and not bracketing. I had a similar scene when I was down in Cornwall, dealing with a very high contrast scene...

8027045390_5a5cdae84e_c.jpg

... the sky's still blown a little but I don't think I care too much about that. All 5 images were taken at 2 secs each, I did bracket but decided to work from one RAW for each slice. I had to bring the highlights backs for the sky (I had wished for a little more cloud cover) quite drastically trying not to incur banding and increase the Shadow detail somewhat. Without bracketing and without filters this was the best I could come up with. Is it perfect? I doubt it.
 
Depending on the scene, I would either add exposure compensation or as above, combine two separate exposures.
 
Whenever possible, I would try to do a reshoot when the building was better lit.
 
russellsnr said:
This is why I like the use of a hand held meter, it sees the light as a whole not the reflected light from a building,sky,ground and any other light that may be in the scene, I no most cameras have different options of gathering light with matrix,spot etc but they still read it from many sources in the frame.

Russ
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depends on what sort of meter it is



spot dosen't read from many parts of the frame, it reads from ,,well errr a spot :)
 
The simple answer to all of this is that you use the exposure compensation feature.

You look at the picture and see that what you want to be exposed properly is too dark so you dial in some +ve exposure compensation.
 
Nawty said:
The simple answer to all of this is that you use the exposure compensation feature.

You look at the picture and see that what you want to be exposed properly is too dark so you dial in some +ve exposure compensation.
Click to expand...

It is simple until the scene comprises a greater dynamic range than the camera can capture in one frame.
 
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