Best way to get rid of blown out sky

[unpopular]

My first advise would be to avoid over exposure to start with. Perhaps not all of your problem, but take a look at the blown highlights on the little boy's head.

 

[Nettles]

...take a look at the blown highlights on the little boy's head.

If you use a selective histogram reading you'll find there are no blown highlights on the child's head.

For doing this kind of work in this context, especially if I'm using a low ISO, I'd use a little underexposure and target faces and clothes on a layer in software. A very soft flash burst would be ideal -- no ugly shadows or glowing highlights.

 

[unpopular]

I looked at the histogram and you are right. The image is not technically over exposed in the Blue and Green channel. Red is clipped, but this is to be expected.

It is very close to being over exposed, and the specular highlight seems to be extending into lower zones.

 

[Braineack]

yeah, the red channel is clipped just a bit...

 

[Nettles]

I noticed that both of your files, although small in dimension, are very large in bytes.

This is due to saving them in 'high' quality.

That is appropriate for files that are meant to be printed and/or have lots of fine detail but is unnecessary with files that are going to be viewed at screen size on the web. You could save this at much lower quality and reduce the file size by 50% or more without seeing any difference on the screen.

Interesting point. It's true that a little less than the maximum quality setting can have a significant effect on kb size. What I'm not sure about is if it really matters these days when showing photographs online. Do you you think it's that important, even if an image is 1200 or 1400 pixels across? To me it doesn't seem to be.

My feeling on it is, conscientious photographers won't want to risk even a minor visual compromise. The content of images varies and areas of sharp contrast and smooth tones, etc, will be affected when compression is hiked. When we compress we need to watch out for nasty artifacts like halos and pixelisation. 70 ppi covers a multitude of sins, it's true, but if my images are to be displayed on high quality screens of all kinds, I might prefer to err on the side of caution.

Just me?

Typically, download times these days aren't really restrictive and I doubt if hosted storage is a big concern. But I don't use the likes of Flickr and maybe there are costs.

 

[Nettles]

It is very close to being over exposed, and the specular highlight seems to be extending into lower zones.

You're right, and the child's t-shirt is blown. So exposure could have been pegged back a bit. Might have helped the sky a little, but...

 

[unpopular]

Might have helped the sky a little, but...

Like I said, it would be just a starting point. Under these circumstances pushing the subject would have likely been too extreme by itself. You'd likely need to place the shirt in like Zone VII-VII 1/2, pushing up to three(!) stops and pulling the highlights some.

Madison - to do this you'd find the brightest portion of the subject and spot meter that area, increase exposure by 1.5-2ish stops and apply an inverse "S- Curve" to the image, making the darker regions brighter and the brighter regions darker. Be sure that this is done in raw mode.

Likewise try metering the sky and placing it in Zone VIII-VIII 1/2 by increasing exposure by 3 to 3.5 stops and again adjusting in post. That would ensure that there is plenty of data being recorded in the sky but providing some headroom for the subject.

You can check other regions. Ensure your brightest area does not exceed four and one half stops less or greater exposure from null (the zero on your meter when AE bias is zero), and anywhere there is useful detail no less than or greater than 3 stops.

You can do this all with AE, but manual exposure helps a little since you don't normally bias the meter.

One thing to keep in mind is that 90° from the position of the sun the sky is typically at Zone V, or ±0 on your meter reading. So under ideal conditions, regions that are fully illuminated by the sun will be "properly" exposed by metering this part of the sky. You can find 90° zenith by pointing your finger toward the sun, forming a "gun" with your thumb. Where the thumb points is where you can meter from. So you can increase exposure some from this point to compensate for indirectly illuminated subjects, but I wouldn't go beyond three, at most three and a half stops. So if your indirectly illuminated subject is within three and a half stops from the region of sky at 90° zenith, you should have sufficuent latitude to get everything.

The sky will appear washed out, so you'll need to compensate that when processing the files.

 

[drveede76]

1. First, you need a camera with high dynamic range (like: D3200, D3300, D5200, D5300, D5500, D7100, D7200, D600, D610, D750, D800, D800E, D810, D810A, DF, D4s).
2. Second you need to expose the shot to the highlights, not the shadows. The D750 and the D810/A have the new Highlight-Weighted Metering mode, that does that very well.
3. Third, make sure you're uing RAW file to shoot, not JPG.
4. Fourth, in RAW file post-processing, recover the shadows of the shot, whiling keeping the highlights without blowing up, and adjust any other parameters.
5. Last, after you're satisfied, convert it to JPG and be happy.

Or, expose to the highlights and just use a flash to bring up the shadows while shooting.

Good luck!

Lol, must be a Nikon fan. This could be debated for days, but this is a slight advantage at lower ISO 100-200, but as soon as you move away from that low ISO (Higher ISO often needed with sunset shots etc) there is no advantage over a Canon sensor. I am a Canon 6D owner and find that ETTR all but eliminates this advantage. ETTR isnt taken into account where these comparisons are made.

Canon also has Auto ETTR with magic lantern that is easy to activate per shot.