Overexposed wedding dress

I recently took some weddings photos, most which were very good. One of the

locations for the pictures was a bright red brick wall. The sun was bright

that day and there was no shade to use. I had my light meter set right in the

middle with an apropriate ISO, but the wedding dress was soo bright you could

not see the detail on it. Everything else looked alright. Any suggestions ?

 

Joy<div></div>

How about chopping that image down to a web manageable

size like say less than 200K for us poor folks on dial-up?

Did you shoot RAW, rather than JPEG?

I cannot suggest anything to correct the situation* but for the future I suggest that you expose for the dress, -1 or -2EV perhaps, and adjust in editing.

And I echo the plea for small files, as per site requirements, with perhaps a 100% crop to sho detail ... but your description of your problem is enough.

 

Short of a re-shoot using the correct exposure for the dress.

I truely sympathise with your predicament becuase I fouled up in a similar manner way back.

Check your histogram - an overexposure like that will make it fall off to the right. Digital

dosn't handle over exposure well, so you'd want to set your exposure compensation down a

couple of clicks. If you have time, playing with different metering modes may make the

scene expose better.

 

Even though I'm primarily a jpeg guy for my own stuff, for something important like a

wedding, I'd shoot in raw format for better after-the-fact tweaks. But once it's overexposed,

the detail is lost for good.

Hi Joy. What camera and metering mode were you using?

Depending on what camera, you could use exposure bracketing method of shooting, and select the best exposed picture. This comes very handy with white dresses and harsh lighting, but required more space in the memory card.

Is it too late to resize that photo ?

I didnt shoot in Raw, So i guess thats the best thing to if I think it will need editing ? I am shooting with a canon rebel xt and I dont know too much about metering modes, I just use the one in the viewfinder and adjust my settings to get that right. My apologies about the large photo (my first time)

If you shot jpeg, then no, you're done; you get what you see. If you shot RAW, there is a chance that there is additional recoverable highlight information.

I shot in the evaluative Metering mode. Thank you for all your responses.<div></div>

For "white-with-detail", e.g. puffy clouds, white frame houses, and , yes, wedding dresses, start with an exposure compensation of plus 1 1/2 overexposure, metered on the white object, set that reading in manual mode, then bracket in 1/2 stops

 

I'm thnking here the red wall is slightly darker than 18% gray, and the groom's suit adds to that so the meter opened it up just enough to blow the highlights

The bad news is that since you shot in Jpeg you won't be able to recover the highlights. The good news is that since the photograph isn't sharp they'll probably bin it anyway.

Along with all the excellent suggestions on exposure

compensation from others, you might try lowering the contrast if

your camera has that type of adjustment setting. Look for other

in-camera processing settings that might be labeled natural,

bright, D-lighting or anything similar.

Maybe spot meter off the white dress +2EV next time. Or you might shoot colour negatives in difficult situations.

This is a standard wedding problem - white dress next to black suit. And it is why wedding photographers use(d) to use print film, and why they like fuji S3 / S5 SLRs so much.

 

You need to shoot RAW, check histogram, meter dress and compensate.

A quick look at the histogram in CS2 reveals that the dynamic range you are trying to capture with your settings might be too great: the grey suit looks about right to a touch over-exposed, the brick wall is maybe a bit light & the wedding dress fall off the right-hand side.

 

Setting -1.0ev exposure would have helped, but you would then have needed to bring out some shadow detail. A low contrast setting would have been useful (Nikons can do this automatically!). Also, shooting RAW is essential in these situations, although highlight recovery is problematic at the best of times.

 

I had a quick play in CS2, but there was no additional recoverable detail.

 

Ideally, you would have been able to spot meter off a mid-tone to balance the exposure. An alternative would be to still use matrix metering, but use exposure lock when metering on a neutral scene, re-compose then fire. The main problem when you need to work quickly is that this takes time & you miss shots!

 

Looking at the lighting & using the 'sunny 16 rule', I would have expected an exposure of around f8 @ 1/500th @ ISO 100 (or equivalent) for this shot - I'd be interested to know what it actually was to help determine the degree of overexposure.

The shot is over exposed, and not just the dress; the skin tones are awful. If you want to get shots like this right, then you either check the LCD for flashing highlights (easier to use than the histogram) or a good hand held light meter.

 

And FWIW, the Sunny 16 rule would have worked better than any built in camera metering/auto mode.

It is at least two stops over. RAW won't solve this. Why fix it? Go with the flow. Make it into a high contrast look.<div></div>

I would avoid even showing this one, unless it is the only you took. It would make the others look bad by association.

 

Of course, you could graft some texture from another photograph, but it would be easier to forget it.

for god's sake...hit the delete button... Bert

I used curves to globally adjust for skin and used the history brush to restore the brightness level of the dress. If you have a similar angle on the dress that does show detail, copy and paste it to this photo where you need detail.<div></div>

bert, i am trying to learn here you jerk. If I just go deleting every bad picture rather then asking "what should i have done ?" I'll never get any better. sheesh.

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