taking picture with sun front of us

[tony99]

hi

i have a small question when taking a photo of a subject with sun in front this subject or person becomes black.
or a better example when loooking at aircraft pic gallery taken in the cockpit, with the cockpit is black we can not seem any instrument but we can see outside.

what should be a good way to balance so lets in the cockpit we can the instrument may dark but not completely black and the outside.

[TPF Sponsor]

[AirVenture]

Well, I'm no expert, but it has to do with exposure. Most cameras allow you to adjust the exposure -3.0 to +3.0. 0 being neautral. In your case you'll want something on the positive side. This will lighten up the forground i.e. cockpit. I'll let the experts go more indepth.

Just curious, are you pilot? I'm a private pilot, soon to be instrument rated. Airplanes are great subjects to photograph!

-Brett

[ksmattfish]

The contrast in the situation you describe is way too high for film or digital. You need to lessen the contrast between the inside and the outside. Off the top of my head I can think of two ways to do this.

1) Light up the cockpit better.

You could do this with a flash, although watch out for glare on the windscreen. Set the aperture as recommended by the flash guide number and distance from flash to subject; set the shutter speed to give proper exposure of the sky with the selected aperture.

Or you could just bring in studio lighting (I don't know how much area you have to work with).

2) Shoot two identically composed pics for every single pic you actually want. Expose the first photo for the cockpit. Expose the second for the sky. Use Adobe Photo Shop to combine the parts of each image that are correctly exposed.