Beginner very dark areas on pics

Flying giraffe

Flying giraffe

Suspended / Banned
Messages
1,189
Name
Neil
Edit My Images
No
had to take some people pics Sunday, there was plenty of light although a little overcast, but when i looked at the pics, the faces are fine, but the clothing etc is very dark and underexposed, i dont normally take these kind of shots so dont know what i should have done to prevent this, they where taken as i was walking so no real time to frame and check each shot, should i have set the expo up to allow for the overcast weather?
 
Neil, posting a few example images, would make asking your question a lot easier.
 
There's a lot of bright sky in the shot and although this has blown it'll probably have influenced the cameras metering system and caused a fastish shutter speed to be selected.

If you wanted to be able to see every detail in the lovely and doubtless expensive suits you'd have to dial in some exposure compensation giving you a slower shutter speed. This could cause the highlights to blow even more and could cause the faces to over expose.

You could also boost the shadows a bit in post capture processing. This may give you more noise in the image.

Quick and dirty boost to shadows with no regard to blowing the highlights.

 
Last edited:
Thanks for the advice, it's the new 7d 2 so I can't use ps yet as it's not supported, hopefully soon as I don't like dpp
 
You do not need PS. You can use DPP which comes with your 7D2
 
cant get to grips with dpp after using ps for so long, i will give it another try tonight.
 
im in a similar position as i only have access to LR3 at the moment which won't support my raw 6d shots. As a result I'm having to resort to converting to tiff then into lightroom, not ideal but like you i hate DPP.
 
Flying giraffe said:
Thanks for the advice, it's the new 7d 2 so I can't use ps yet as it's not supported, hopefully soon as I don't like dpp
Click to expand...

Just use the dng converter. Convert ya raws to dng and its job done
 
The PS update with support for the 7D2 is out now.If yours hasn't automatically updates, look in the 'help' bit on Bridge.
 
Rather than relying on PP software to fix it (which is fine) you could check your metering. Were you using evaluative or average? spot metering off their faces would have probably given a brighter exposure. The highlights are blown anyway even though its metered for the brighter bits of the image so metering for a darker bit of the image wouldnt really make a great deal of difference. Just a thought for next time :-)
 
I've just brightened up the lower half of the image without touching the upper. I would crop in closer and possibly straighten.

ps, you need to get your name and phone number in the camera to make sure it appears in the exif if you lose it

eGcq69G.jpg
 
I can understand when you say that you had no time to frame but taking an extra couple of seconds would have helped enormously. If you had put the subjects faces higher up in the frame you would have reduced the amount of sky and would have got an exposure better suited to the subjects.
 
The attached pic was just to show, metering us something I need to look at I think, thanks for all the advice
 
Most cameras will struggle having such a great range between the dark and light areas. Another possible solution would be using your flash to add more light on the subjects, potentially enough to also expose the sky properly without it blowing out to white.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top