The sky is too bright in photos?

[Devon8822]

Just did my first legit photo session with my new camera (T3i), and I kept running into a problem which I am not sure how to deal with. When the exposure was set automatically on close up subjects, the sky was always overexposed while the rest of the photo turned out great. Is this normal and something we have to live with or is there something I can do to change it? Here is an example.

 

[Ysarex]

You don't have to live with it, you have to deal with it.

Those logs are backlit; backlighting pushes the contrast range far beyond you're camera's capacity to capture and process an image. It's your job to see the condition and then either walk away or apply a correction. You can't change camera settings to correct this -- you have to actually change the light. One answer that would have worked in this case would be to use flash to balance the lighting contrast.

Amateur's look through their cameras and see the subject; pros look through their cameras and see how the subject is lit.

Joe

 

[snowbear]

I'm not a pro, so I may not know the "correct" answer.

For me, photography is a battle of compromises. If you meter for the darker parts of the scene (the logs, specifically the bark), then you take a chance on blowing out the highlights; meter for the sky and the logs (being in shade) will be dark. You can lighten the shadows a bit in post (at the risk of noise) but blown out lights are gone, so my preference is to try to expose for the lights (if I'm really worried about it). You might want to try a graduated ND filter that will darken the top a bit and leave the rest alone. You could also try HDR - expose for lights, then darks (and one or more in the middle) and merge them.

 

[MLeeK]

That's what flash is for. Expose for the sky, use a fill flash to illuminate the subject. Both will then be well exposed.

 

[Sw1tchFX]

This is a digital thing, color negative film not so much.

 

[Ysarex]

This is a digital thing, color negative film not so much.

This is true, using digital technologies there are solutions to this situation so we deal with it, with film it's simply impossible and that settles the matter right there.

Joe

 

[KmH]

Cameras don't 'see' the way people do. Cameras vs. The Human Eye

Your camera's image sensor does not have as much 'dynamic range' as your eyes do - Understanding Dynamic Range in Digital Photography

As mentioned you can meter the sky and use fill flash to add light to the foreground. Neil vN – tangents

You can also make 2 exposures, 1 for the sky and 1 for the foreground, and then combine them post process. Understanding Camera Metering and Exposure

Yet another option is to make 3 or more exposures and combine then into an HDR image (High Dynamic Range), using HDR software. High Dynamic Range (HDR) Photography in Photoshop
HDR photography software & plugin for Lightroom, Aperture & Photoshop - Tone Mapping, Exposure Fusion & High Dynamic Range Imaging for photography

 

[Sw1tchFX]

This is a digital thing, color negative film not so much.

This is true, using digital technologies there are solutions to this situation so we deal with it, with film it's simply impossible and that settles the matter right there.

Joe

LOL

As if human kind has been incapable of creating photographs with more than 5 stops of dynamic range in them until digital took over 10 years ago!

 

[Ysarex]

This is a digital thing, color negative film not so much.

This is true, using digital technologies there are solutions to this situation so we deal with it, with film it's simply impossible and that settles the matter right there.

Joe

LOL

As if human kind has been incapable of creating photographs with more than 5 stops of dynamic range in them until digital took over 10 years ago!

Having spent 35 years as an expert film photographer I'm well aware that film can capture more than 5 stops of dynamic range. The dynamic range of that scene posted above however was well beyond 5 stops and well beyond the limit that film could capture. With film you also have a usability issue -- how will you handle the information that film captures? Scan it? Use digital technologies to get the most out of what the film can produce? Heaven forbid that you'd try and burn and dodge through those tree leaves in a darkroom--how laughable! Digital, as we all know, has a superior ability to capture an extreme dynamic range far beyond the capacity of film. That's just a simple and established fact.

Oh, 10 years? I was using digital cameras that trounced film at least 15 years ago. They were costly then but they did exist. Today my $349.00 P&S puts down 35mm film and, as far as dynamic range is concerned, any film. And I can prove it.

Joe

 

[Fred Berg]

You can meter for the sky and note the numbers, then meter the logs and use the average of the two readings to take your shot. This will help a little in such a situation.

 

[fmw]

Another option, OP is to use a polarizing filter. Unfortunately they only work at certain angles to the sun but you can give one try. If I had to make the image I would probably wait for the better light. Failing that, I would make two exposures - one for sky and one for logs. Then I would combine them in Photoshop. That isn't really a photographic answer but that's what most of us would do in this day and age. The fill flash concept will also work but it won't look as natural.

 

[TCampbell]

Everyone has correctly pointed out that the exposure for the sky and the exposure for the logs are too far apart for the camera to do a good job getting both in a single shot.

If the background exposure and foreground exposure were closer together then your camera would have no problem.

You can't do anything about the background. But you CAN do something about the foreground by adding more light to it (e.g. flash). If you increase the light to the foreground, it'll increase the exposure value and bring it closer to the background.

Was the background sky overcast? I ask because I your exposure was ISO 100, f/4, 1/50th.

The Sunny 16 rule says that "light" shade will be 1 stop down, "medium" shade is 2 stops down, and "dense" shade is usually about 3 stops down. Your setting looks like it's probably medium to dense shade. But your exposure is 5 stops down from Sunny 16. It would make sense if the sky had light to medium overcast conditions. Your wood pile would be about 3 stops away from the sky.

3 stops is still a lot. That means an exposure for the wood pile would render the sky 8 times brighter than it should be.

In any case... you can't do anything about the sky, but you boost light on the wood pile if you have sufficient flash. And if you can bring the two exposures closer you can solve the problem.

Shooting RAW can also help. Your camera can probably deal with at least 2 stops up and down... and maybe closer to 3. That means if you split the difference (allow the wood pile to be 1-1/2 stops under-exposed and allow the sky to be 1-1/2 stops over-exposed) then you wouldn't have a good exposure "straight out of the camera", but you WOULD be within the dynamic range of the camera so no detail would be lost. You could then adjust in post processing (photoshop, etc.) and end up with a good shot in the end. What you cannot do is allow detail to be completely lost to the point that it can't be recovered. If you really exposure for the woodpile and the sky is 3 full stops over-exposed then you'll have blown out area that can't be recovered.

 

[amolitor]

I assume the point which Sw1tchFX is trying to make is that digital's handling of blown out highlights is spectacularly awful, relative to film's handling of the same.

 

[gsgary]

You could get on the phone to him upstairs and ask him to turn it down a bit

 

[Ysarex]

I assume the point which Sw1tchFX is trying to make is that digital's handling of blown out highlights is spectacularly awful, relative to film's handling of the same.

In other words if you're going to make a critical error and ruin the photo, it'll look less ruined if you do it with film.:thumbup:

My point is, since digital has the ability to capture a more expansive contrast range than film ever could, use digital and don't ruin the photo in the first place. Digital expands our tool set and gives us abilities we never had with film. Caveat: it's always best to have the lighting under good control, but when we take photos under uncontrolled conditions (available light) the expanded capacity that digital provides is a valid tool that can make it possible to get the photo that film could not.

I take photos all the time now with a digital camera that I know, and knew, were impossible back when I used film. I took one yesterday afternoon in fact so here's an example:

On the left is the camera JPEG untouched. On the right is my processed version of the photo from the raw capture. If I had been hired to take the photo I would of course have brought in lights and a tripod and lit the machine properly etc. etc., but I was just stopping in for a cup of coffee and thought I'd grab a photo while the beans were cooling. I got a cool photo. I made one exposure and made sure I would hold the highlights in the temperature dial with the spot light glaring on it. You can see the beans cooling in my photo because I used a camera with a 14 bit raw capture capability -- far beyond anything film can do.

So when film must fail, use digital and don't fail. Then you don't have to worry about the relative awfulness of mistakes.

Joe