how to eliminate hot spots?

jung

Hello I am a newbie to Digital Grin, but I am happy to be here and hope to learn and contribute to the community.

My question is how do you eliminate "hot spots" or bright lights in a photograph? This is important to me because I want to shoot Architectural photographs and more than likely there is going to be artifial lights on the building which create some problems from time to time.

1. Is this something that could be corrected through post processing or better exposure?




Thanks,

Jung

pyry

jung wrote:

Hello I am a newbie to Digital Grin, but I am happy to be here and hope to learn and contribute to the community.

My question is how do you eliminate "hot spots" or bright lights in a photograph? This is important to me because I want to shoot Architectural photographs and more than likely there is going to be artifial lights on the building which create some problems from time to time.

1. Is this something that could be corrected through post processing or better exposure?

Thanks,

Jung

Shoot in raw first of all, that gives you maximum headroom in the highlights and shadows.

Postprocessing has it's limits, you can expose for the highlight, but you will then lose much the rest of the image, if the highlight is bright enough. There is however more information in the shadows than in the highlights. The sample you showed might be best served by shooting an HDR stack.

Hope this helps

And welcome to the forum!

jung

pyry wrote:

Shoot in raw first of all, that gives you maximum headroom in the highlights and shadows.

Postprocessing has it's limits, you can expose for the highlight, but you will then lose much the rest of the image, if the highlight is bright enough. There is however more information in the shadows than in the highlights. The sample you showed might be best served by shooting an HDR stack.

Hope this helps

And welcome to the forum!

I am going to go back and do some bracketing with my wide angle but I wasn't sure if HDR will give me the flexiblity to just adjust the light independantly? I was wondering if PS will allow me to grab the hot spot and adjust the levels independantly?

I love the shot so I am fighting to keep the picture alive.

Thanks for your help!

pyry

jung wrote:

I am going to go back and do some bracketing with my wide angle but I wasn't sure if HDR will give me the flexiblity to just adjust the light independantly? I was wondering if PS will allow me to grab the hot spot and adjust the levels independantly?

I love the shot so I am fighting to keep the picture alive.

Thanks for your help!

You could mask the bright area and put a curve or levels layer on with the mask. If there is detail there it should work.

kwcrow

HDR is your answer. This is what HDR was made for!

pathfinder

jung wrote:

Hello I am a newbie to Digital Grin, but I am happy to be here and hope to learn and contribute to the community.

My question is how do you eliminate "hot spots" or bright lights in a photograph? This is important to me because I want to shoot Architectural photographs and more than likely there is going to be artifial lights on the building which create some problems from time to time.

1. Is this something that could be corrected through post processing or better exposure?




Thanks,

Jung

You eliminate hot spots by recognizing them in advance and planning how to deal with them. It may be as simple as turning off the lights with a light switch if you can. Is this bright area a store window or just a bright light? Is there really any image data there in reality? The is no image or contrast here - it all reads 255,255,255.

Using a tripod and shooting several different exposures may be all that is needed to blend the image of the bright window with the surrounding darker environment. This was being done long before HDR.

bokbaard

I photographed a gate/entrace to a water station once, which was perfect except for this bright lightraping mercury vapour lamp.

So next time round I took a nice piece of white cardboard and cover the lamp

The folks didn't seem to mind, and the little light diffusing through the c/b made the lamp look realistic enough in the image.

But thats me, you cant go and cover lamps (albeit temporary) ANY where.

pyrtek

You can always cheat. (Please note that this is a joke. I would never do this,
or, at the very least, I would put much more effort into it )

jung

Thank you all for your feedback I will have to go and re-shoot the photo.

Thanks again.

Jung

bokbaard wrote:

I photographed a gate/entrace to a water station once, which was perfect except for this bright lightraping mercury vapour lamp.

So next time round I took a nice piece of white cardboard and cover the lamp

The folks didn't seem to mind, and the little light diffusing through the c/b made the lamp look realistic enough in the image.

But thats me, you cant go and cover lamps (albeit temporary) ANY where.