Controlling light and shadow

[nicolerenee]

I had the chance to go on a hike recently with my Church family up in the

beautiful Gifford Pinchot State park in Washington. We hiked up the Lewis

river to gorgeous waterfalls and crystal clear pools. I was so exited to take

photos of the place and snapped about 275 shots, falling behind most of the

time.

When I got home, I was bummed out to learn that even though I changed the

light setting several times for most of the photos I took, I still ended up

with blown out hilights and zero detail in the shadows. I dont know if this is

a limitation of my camera (Sony Cybershot DSC-T33) OR my own incompitence or

if its just a problem with shooting in forrest areas during the bright light

of day.

 

I posted a couple of the photos asking for some advice and critiques but I

didnt recieve much help.

 

Is it impossible to get hilights that dont blind you AND detail in the shadows

during mid-day in forrest conditions? I didnt have the oppertunituy to shoot

during morning/evening and had to go with what I could get. Maybe I need

better post-processing software or are the little PS cameras just not capable

of that much range?

 

Anything helps here, I would love to be able to improve the shots that I've

got and get some better ones that would do the place justice next time.

[Ed_Ingold]

The dynamic range of the scene you describe, from light to shadow, is well beyond the capacity of most cameras, film or digital. It is difficult to meter such a scene, since the dark areas predominate. There are a couple of solutions.

 

The best is probably to wait for a cloudy day - not much of a stretch for Washington State.

 

A more general approach is to meter the sunny patches and shadows (where you want detail) separately. A spot meter helps. You then take two or more shots, using a tripod and bracketing the exposures. The sunny readings should be used as is - you want a "normal" well-exposed appearance. Shadows should appear as shadows - use the direct reading minus 2 or 3 stops. If this is more than 5 stops below the sunny readings, take intermediate shots to fill the gap.

 

You can then use HDR Merge in Photoshop so that the entire dynamic range is captured within a 32-bit image. Use Levels and Curves to adjust a copy of this rather flat image to fit in an 8-bit or 16-bit representation, which you can then edit and ultimately print from Photoshop. There's a good HDR Merge tutorial somewhere at http://www.luminous-landscape.com.

 

P&S cameras don't give you much range for manual exposures, if at all, and the metering is problematic. Have a go at it anyway, using manual mode. It is much easier to execute on a DSLR, which has a full range of adjustments. [How many times have you read that "It's the photographer, not the equipment that makes the picture"? So much for banal generalities.]

[nicolerenee]

Thanks Edward, that was some good input! I suppose that most of my problem is stemming then from the time of day and equipment. I have ONLY my little PS and a fairly cheap software. I deffinately cant afford photoshop yet and even the dslr I want is a ways off. I wish I could find a balance, since the dappled sunlight is so beautiful to see but it may just be my lot to wait for clouds until I have some better equipment. I guess since the park will be around for a while its not a total loss.

[Ed_Ingold]

In that case, bracket your exposures. In general, you don't want blown highlights, but a few may be OK if your photo represents the scene in other respects. The deepest shadows are off-limits to you, without Photoshop and HDR Merge. Try to compose in a way to minimize the sunny spots.

[sacha_de_carlo]

Quoting "Is it impossible to get highlights that don't blind you AND detail in the shadows during mid-day in forest conditions?"

 

Provided you can shoot RAW with your Sony, you can correct for this problem in Lightroom. I have had a similar situation lately in Rocky Mountain National Park, and I was very happy with the exposure correction, fill light and recovery commands I could make a decent thing out of some photos that would have been trashed in the past (when shooting in JPEG).

 

Sacha

[nicolerenee]

Since I've learned the manual settings on my camera, I havent used the auto and almost never use the flash since it seems to blow everything and not just the hilights. I have a range of about 12 in the EV mode of the menu to change how much light is coming in but it still wasnt enough to get that range. I've played with some of the photos in my software so far but my favorite shot (loved the comp) looks like its just too blown for my program to recover.

 

Is there any cheaper software than Adobe that has the capablilites to regain the detail and change the exposure? Right now I've got PhotoPlus 9.0...it was only 30 bucks :)

[robertshults]

Edward has pointed you in the right direction. You can blend exposures with layer masks in GIMP, which is open-source software, in a manner nearly identical to the PS method in this <a href="http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/digital-blending.shtml" >Luminous Landscape tutorial</a>.

 

You seem to be rather keen on landscape photography; Luminous Landscape is a site you may wish get to know well.

 

If you chose to upgrade your equipment at some point, a camera with RAW capability might be in your best interest. If you are unable, for whatever reason, to take multiple, registered exposures of a given scene, you may be able to develop the RAW file once for the shadows, once for the highlights (as long as they are not severely clipped in the RAW file)and blend the resulting files.

[James G. Dainis]

Shoot film.<BR>

Expose for the shadows, develop for the highlights.<BR>

Your scene would have called for 50% less development time to bring the highlights down to where they could be printable while maintaining the shadow detail.<P>

 

Shoot digital RAW.<BR>

Expose for the highlights without clipping on the histogram, convert for the shadows as stated above.<P>

 

Shoot P&S with no controls<BR>

Take what you get. Either err on the side of blocked highlights or err on the side of lost shadow detail.

[mike_stemberg]

Nicole, check out

<a href="http://www.hdrsoft.com/download.html"> Photomatix Basic 1.2 </a> which is Freeware.

[albert_richardson1]

Hi Nicole. I think I wrote you a reply several months ago on another topic. I'm glad to see that you have continued developing you photo skills.

 

I looked up the Sony DSC-T33 online to find out a little more about it. I also saw the pictures you posted in the outdoors section of your portfolio. Some of these are the ones you don't like? Overall they look underexposed to me. The countermeasures to take in a program like PS would be to both brighten the picture and increase the contrast to create a more pleasing overall effect. I can't say if this would show much more shadow detail, but it would make the picture look lighter and more natural.

 

I run into two problems using my P&S camera outdoors especially on very bright days. The ambient light shining directly on the camera is so intense that it fools the camera into metering things as if they are brighter than they appear in the finished photo, and the light is so bright that I can't see much of anything in the LCD screen. The result is that my pictures are too dark and I can't tell the difference at the time I take them. A simple effective way to deal with both problems is to shade the camera while taking pictures. I wear a hat with a bill I take off to hold over the camera to block the sun. I want to get a hat with a wide brim I think would be better overall for this.

[nicolerenee]

Thanks to everyone for responding :)

 

Robert: Thanks for pointing to the site, I havent got the chance to go yet but I'm looking forward to what I can learn there. Part of my problem is my camera isnt equipped for a tripod :( Everything I shoot is "from the hip" and getting multiple exposures I can blend is kind of hard.

 

James: Thanks for the suggestions and advice. Film is a longer ways off for me right now that a new DSLR, but that I will keep in mind.

 

Mike: Thanks :)

 

Albert: I am deffinately trying! Hopefully there is visible development :) Strange that they seemed underexposed to you. Its really the hilights that are the problem. I've used the camera shading trick as well and I was actually wearing a baseball cap that day! I also used several different settings to try and get the right ammount light but I guess I just didnt end up with things the way I wanted them.

[frank uhlig]

Go on a less suny day, one with light clouds and less contrast.

[john_macpherson]

I live in a wet damp overcast country - it's perfect for photographing the subjects you describe. With all due respect to the previous advice (which is good) - you dont need to bother with software fixes/HDR/RAW whatever. In a nutshell if you go out on a sunny day your lighting is coming from above - like a spotlight, with big bright spots (sunlit) and huge black bits (shadows). No way to cope with that, and made worse if you try to record white subjects (rushing water).

 

However on a dull day - sky overcast and soft, the lighting appears to come from below, shadows are non-existent, and the white of water does not burn out and it retains some of its texture.

 

Plastic bags and rubber bands are all you need (and a good lens hood).

 

Good luck.

[nicolerenee]

Thanks John :)