Exposure Help Please!!

[smoke665]

Will be shooting tomorrow same time, same place. Full shade using one speedlight. Of the following three which one looks better on exposure???? I'm thinking #2, but my eyes aren't what they used to be apparently. Straight out of the camera with no adjustments other than crop and resized.

 

[Designer]

I like #1 best.

Even a bit higher IMO.

 

[KmH]

#1 - Understanding Digital Camera Histograms: Tones and Contrast
#2 - Understanding Digital Camera Histograms: Luminosity and Color

 

[smoke665]

First time I've attempted to use a speedlight, in shade. KmH, I was looking at the histograms. To me #1 looks over saturated, and the last under. Here are the histograms for saturation and light, which makes me lean toward #2 as more balanced.

 

[smoke665]

And one more.

 

[fmw]

I think #1 is right exposure. I would give it a touch of contrast in post process. The low contrast may be what you dislike about #1

 

[Ysarex]

First time I've attempted to use a speedlight, in shade. KmH, I was looking at the histograms. To me #1 looks over saturated, and the last under. Here are the histograms for saturation and light, which makes me lean toward #2 as more balanced.
View attachment 122574 View attachment 122575 View attachment 122576

Ouch! That's for the histograms. They all have a blown red channel and the luminosity histogram is flatter than a pancake (Fred's got the low contrast right). Raising the contrast on a JPEG with a blown channel is tricky and messy. I took a stab at it:

I agree with Designer that even the lightest of the three still looks dingy (partly due to the low contrast).

These are highly saturated red/yellow flowers. That's a classic known problem for digital camera JPEG processors (channel clipping). The bad things you're seeing here aren't really an exposure issue they're a software processing issue. Got a DNG file?

Joe

 

[smoke665]

Thanks Joe, you're edit looks better than real life!!! Since it's just for practice tomorrow, no need to waste time on it. Thanks to all the comments, I rethought everything. Changed light position, angle, reversed umbrella for bounce rather than through, and adjusted exposure. Made a big difference, it enhanced the contrast, and upped the luminosity across the board. Got rained out before I could finalize but I think I'll be able to setup up and adjust pretty quick tomorrow. Red channel is still blown though not as bad. First is Histogram from photo 1 above, second is after changes in light position and angle. Thanks all.

 

[Gary A.]

I'd convert to B&W.

 

[Tim Tucker]

I don't think that any of them look balanced. I find them all far too red/yellow. I don't agree that the colours are over-saturated, but they (reds mainly) are over-bright.

I do agree with @Ysarex that it is a software conversion issue not really an exposure issue. This is not an great exposure test shot in RGB. If we take yellow for example, fully saturated yellow is light which consists of yellow wavelengths only, it contains no wavelengths of other colours. This is what you see in a rainbow or when you split natural light with a prism. On your RGB screen however there is no yellow, it is always represented as a combination of red/green. And because it is always represented as a combination of wavelengths you can never display a fully saturated yellow on your computer screen (light of yellow wavelengths only). In fact you can't display any fully saturated colour on a computer screen because they are always represented as a combination of RGB.

This is not normally a problem as fully saturated colour is very rare in nature. However when you shoot red/green subjects with the WB a little too far to the red then you can find that some of the reds are just outside the RGB colour (too red for the screen) and so the software turns the red channel up to "maximum volume" for these colours. This is not over-saturation but the brightness of the red turned up to max.

I think it needs the blue to be restored a little for better balance.

 

[smoke665]

I don't think that any of them look balanced. I find them all far too red/yellow.

You and Joe have done a great job of converting my "sows ear into a silk purse". The flowers in question, in real life are not nearly as vivid. I probably wasn't clear enough on the answers I was looking for. The location of the shot is in full shade of a building, which has caused problems with contrast in the past. I've tried reflectors, but wasn't satisfied. Yesterday, I was experimenting with adding a "one light" speedlight into the mix. Thanks to the comments/links I think I have a better understanding of how to set up now.