combating "blinkies"

WingsOfLovePhoto

Hey all.... seeking some advice on how to tone down the blinkies while staying in good exposure. Am using a large softbox 3x4 to camera right. Metered to F8, 1/200 with comp of 2-6? background metered to f11 for pure white. rigid reflector to camera left. With the setup...and moving subject children I am always getting blinkies from the softbox which are easily brought back in camera raw. My question is...is this a bad thing to have to keep doing? Should I turn down the light even more so it is truly F8 or do I dial in compensation in the camera? (D3) I left it this way because I am in a really small space and these kids are always all over the place so if they are sitting back farther then I don't want underexposure? Does this make any sense? This lighting stuff is going to be the death of me! All and all the pictures are pretty good but I know they could be better! Any advice would be appreciated.

ziggy53

Sandy,

Are you talking about an undesirable "catch light" reflected in the eyes?

If so then yes, I remove an excess or undesirable catch lights using a photoshop technique. Sometimes I will also just leave an extra catch light if it's not that significant a shot and if I don't think the customer will mind.

WingsOfLovePhoto

ziggy53 wrote:

Sandy,

Are you talking about an undesirable "catch light" reflected in the eyes?

If so then yes, I remove an excess or undesirable catch lights using a photoshop technique. Sometimes I will also just leave an extra catch light if it's not that significant a shot and if I don't think the customer will mind.

Oh no Ziggy, I LOVE catchlights! I am referring to highlight blinkies. You know the ones that signify blown highlights on the lcd or when opening in adobe raw (comes out all red)

ziggy53

WingsOfLovePhoto wrote:

Oh no Ziggy, I LOVE catchlights! I am referring to highlight blinkies. You know the ones that signify blown highlights on the lcd or when opening in adobe raw (comes out all red)

Those are indications of overexposure and you need to adjust the exposure if they are on a critical part of the image. If you shoot in manual mode it should be easy to adjust with either a smaller aperture or by reducing/adjusting the power output of the flash(es).

If you are at the minimum power output level you can "scrim" the light to reduce power further.

If you are using speedlights then an FEC compensation might be applied but to keep the same ratios in the lights you would need to adjust all lights.

Jeremy Winterberg

My suggestion is to dial down the lights. They're hitting your subjects too hot. Maybe a picture to show an example of the hot spots in your photos? Maybe other people could help then, and not be confused like ziggy was lol. (I understand how you could think Sandy was referring to catchlights.)

WingsOfLovePhoto

My camera is set to F8 and I'm metered to F8 ish. (using white lightning strobes) My meter was recently calibrated. And I am still getting blinkies. I have the soft box in vertical postion and often have it turned away from the face so that it isn't a direct flash but am still getting overexposure. Shouldn't I be getting good exposure if I am using a meter? at times when I have accidentally changed the exposure to F9 but left the light on F8 it is under exposed in comparison to the background which is getting F11. Is this not making any sense? Maybe I am wording wrong?

ziggy53

WingsOfLovePhoto wrote:

My camera is set to F8 and I'm metered to F8 ish. (using white lightning strobes) My meter was recently calibrated. And I am still getting blinkies. I have the soft box in vertical postion and often have it turned away from the face so that it isn't a direct flash but am still getting overexposure. Shouldn't I be getting good exposure if I am using a meter? at times when I have accidentally changed the exposure to F9 but left the light on F8 it is under exposed in comparison to the background which is getting F11. Is this not making any sense? Maybe I am wording wrong?

A light meter, either incident or ambient, measures at the equivalent to an 18% gray, or middle tones. It is not designed to measure or guarantee highlights.

The full range of tones in an image are related to the dynamic range of the scene. If the middle tones are correct, and you would confirm this in a studio environment using a gray card included into the scene in a test exposure, and if the highlights are blown then I would conclude that the scene has too much dynamic range for the imager, at least in the upper tones.

I will accept some lightly blown highlights (camera "blinkies") in areas like white shirts or white dresses as long as the affected regions are unimportant to the photo or of insignificant size.

If the white areas are important to the shot I will allow middle tones to be one to one-and-a-half stops low, and then bring the tones back within reason using custom curves in post processing.

So confirm your middle tones with a test shot of a gray card as a first measure of accurate exposure and then adjsut either lights or exposure accordingly.

WingsOfLovePhoto

ziggy53 wrote:

A light meter, either incident or ambient, measures at the equivalent to an 18% gray, or middle tones. It is not designed to measure or guarantee highlights.

The full range of tones in an image are related to the dynamic range of the scene. If the middle tones are correct, and you would confirm this in a studio environment using a gray card included into the scene in a test exposure, and if the highlights are blown then I would conclude that the scene has too much dynamic range for the imager, at least in the upper tones.

I will accept some lightly blown highlights (camera "blinkies") in areas like white shirts or white dresses as long as the affected regions are unimportant to the photo or of insignificant size.

If the white areas are important to the shot I will allow middle tones to be one to one-and-a-half stops low, and then bring the tones back within reason using custom curves in post processing.

So confirm your middle tones with a test shot of a gray card as a first measure of accurate exposure and then adjsut either lights or exposure accordingly.

so do to that I fill the screen with the gray card and if I get no blinkies I must be ok? I usually have alot of light tones in my photos. white background. pastel clothing and props, lots of blonde, paleskined blue eyed babies. Will this affect it much? I appreciate you all helping me with this!

Art Scott

Remember also that your in camera meter will not match the reading of yor SEKONIC.....if you are using the sekonic as an incident meter it should be waaaay more accurate than your cameras reflective meter.......
When I am using an incident meter for shooting I do not even look at the histogram for anything......I know histograms are great at times but for portraiture and weddings...rely on that incident meter......unless it is giving you unreliable readings which then it is time to replace or repair the meter.......for landscapes or other times like doing fine art still lifes and such the histogram is great.....but then a lot of scenes still need the treatment of multi frames to be layered together.........

ziggy53

WingsOfLovePhoto wrote:

so do to that I fill the screen with the gray card and if I get no blinkies I must be ok? I usually have alot of light tones in my photos. white background. pastel clothing and props, lots of blonde, paleskined blue eyed babies. Will this affect it much? I appreciate you all helping me with this!

You just place a gray card in the scene at the same position as the subject and photograph the scene. Then bring the image file into ACR and sample the gray card to see if it is dead-center in the middle tones.

If flash tones are getting bleached then for sure the exposure is not accurate and it is too high. Flash tones for Caucasian skin should be one to one-and-one-half stops over middle gray (unless there is a medical reason otherwise.)

Tim Kamppinen

I have to say that you seem to be overthinking this. The shots you post in the people forum are consistently great and you obviously know what you're doing. If you're getting overexposed shots and you want to lower the exposure, your options are to turn down your lights, increase your aperture, decrease ISO, or move your lights farther away from the subject. If you're getting blown out white backgrounds, don't even worry about it. It's supposed to be white, right? As long as it's not bleeding over onto your subject it shouldn't be a problem. And if you're able to recover everything in camera raw or lightroom, then why worry about it? As long as you're not blowing the skin tones, it should be fine. That can cause some serious problems, because using the recovery slider tends to just make it look worse in my experience (ususally it's the red channel that blows with caucasian subjects).

I used to freak out about blinkies and try to get every shot exposed with no blown highlights... I ended up with lots of underexposed shots that I had to fix in post. I'm starting to learn now to let it slide if it's not an important part of the photo, although this applies somewhat more to natural light photography. If you're lighting everything you should be able to fit the dynamic range of your shot into what the sensor is capable of. It may be as simple as adding some more fill to bring up the shadows if necessary, so that exposing for the highlight will give you good shadow detail as well. Of course specular highlights are always going to blow out, not much you can do there except clone them out if they really bother you.

FedererPhoto

Tim Kamppinen wrote:

I have to say that you seem to be overthinking this.

...

I used to freak out about blinkies and try to get every shot exposed with no blown highlights... I ended up with lots of underexposed shots that I had to fix in post. I'm starting to learn now to let it slide if it's not an important part of the photo, although this applies somewhat more to natural light photography.

Well stated.

A blown highlight is not always so bad. It's a shame it's become so verboten that people sacrifice the quality of the actual subject of the images in order to keep some insignificant part of the image within the dynamic range of the sensor.

rwells

I'm not sure if I read your question/issue correctly or not.

But, on my Canon 5DMkII, if I'm shooting .jpg and I have blinkies, then that area is blown. No data there. If I'm shooting RAW, I consistently find that the (slight) blinkies aren't exactly telling me the truth. When I pull the RAW files up and measure those highlight areas, there is still data there.

So, for me and my camera, if I'm shooting .jpg, I'll pay strict attention to the blinkies.

If I'm shooting RAW, I don't worry about a few of them, for the data is still really there.

NOTE: If you CAN recover those highlights in LR or photoshop, then that tells you right there that the data still exist. You can't recover data that's not there!

I'll second the statement that if an area of a scene is solid white with no details (in real life), then let it go solid white!!! Don't underexpose an image just for the sake of having some grey data in an area that really should be 255.

YMMV

Since you have a good meter, it's a simple process to do a little testing to verify if your Sekonic meter is correct, or if your camera's blinkies are lying to you a bit.

zoomer

Hi wings,
I use this same technique outside all the time.
I adjust my exposures so the blinkies are just going off. This gives me the maximum light I can get on the subjects faces on a sunny shady day.
Just adjust them back down in post if that is working for you.

Or a simple matter to dial down the flash that is producing the light causing the blinkies. Me thinks you are overcomplicating it with the light meters, just go by your blinkies and adjust as required.

WingsOfLovePhoto

rwells wrote:

I'm not sure if I read your question/issue correctly or not.

But, on my Canon 5DMkII, if I'm shooting .jpg and I have blinkies, then that area is blown. No data there. If I'm shooting RAW, I consistently find that the (slight) blinkies aren't exactly telling me the truth. When I pull the RAW files up and measure those highlight areas, there is still data there.

So, for me and my camera, if I'm shooting .jpg, I'll pay strict attention to the blinkies.

If I'm shooting RAW, I don't worry about a few of them, for the data is still really there.

NOTE: If you CAN recover those highlights in LR or photoshop, then that tells you right there that the data still exist. You can't recover data that's not there!

I'll second the statement that if an area of a scene is solid white with no details (in real life), then let it go solid white!!! Don't underexpose an image just for the sake of having some grey data in an area that really should be 255.

YMMV

Since you have a good meter, it's a simple process to do a little testing to verify if your Sekonic meter is correct, or if your camera's blinkies are lying to you a bit.

Thanks rwells... this is making some sense. I shoot only RAW and am always able to pull back the blinkies if they spill on the face. (i process in adobe raw) I want the red areas on the white background noting overexposure but not on the face. I guess as long as I can recover them it should be ok? I am now also realizing that it happens much more when I shoot with all light colors in the scene...white, pastels and fair haired/skinned babies. not so much if there are darker things in the scene.

WingsOfLovePhoto

Tim Kamppinen wrote:

I have to say that you seem to be overthinking this. The shots you post in the people forum are consistently great and you obviously know what you're doing. If you're getting overexposed shots and you want to lower the exposure, your options are to turn down your lights, increase your aperture, decrease ISO, or move your lights farther away from the subject. If you're getting blown out white backgrounds, don't even worry about it. It's supposed to be white, right? As long as it's not bleeding over onto your subject it shouldn't be a problem. And if you're able to recover everything in camera raw or lightroom, then why worry about it? As long as you're not blowing the skin tones, it should be fine. That can cause some serious problems, because using the recovery slider tends to just make it look worse in my experience (ususally it's the red channel that blows with caucasian subjects).

I used to freak out about blinkies and try to get every shot exposed with no blown highlights... I ended up with lots of underexposed shots that I had to fix in post. I'm starting to learn now to let it slide if it's not an important part of the photo, although this applies somewhat more to natural light photography. If you're lighting everything you should be able to fit the dynamic range of your shot into what the sensor is capable of. It may be as simple as adding some more fill to bring up the shadows if necessary, so that exposing for the highlight will give you good shadow detail as well. Of course specular highlights are always going to blow out, not much you can do there except clone them out if they really bother you.

Thanks for the vote of confidence Tim! I probably am just overthinking....expecting perfection in a imperfect science! I'm going to try to think less about them!

WingsOfLovePhoto

zoomer wrote:

Hi wings,
I use this same technique outside all the time.
I adjust my exposures so the blinkies are just going off. This gives me the maximum light I can get on the subjects faces on a sunny shady day.
Just adjust them back down in post if that is working for you.

Or a simple matter to dial down the flash that is producing the light causing the blinkies. Me thinks you are overcomplicating it with the light meters, just go by your blinkies and adjust as required.

Zoomer...you are always there here for me! Thanks so much! I really want to be like Zoomer when I grow up and get better! In the studio I should be able to control the blinkies better.... outside is a different story. I took your advice and do most of my shooting on f4, I keep the ISO on 400 if darker shade and just fool with the shutter speed to figure the right combination. The meter never seems to work outside for me and now that I am doing alot more existing light stuff I find blinkies aren't necessarily a death sentence. The let me get that white creamy baby skin that was mentioned in another thread. But do you bracket the scene for your blinkies or do you shoot and adjust your shutter with each picture? I hope this makes sense?