Help - blown highlights in water

tony0778

:scratch Need your insight on blown highlights in water. I am shooting this week in GSMNP (Cades Cove, Tremont, etc.). During the early morning hours, my exposures have been f8 and 5 to 8 seconds when shooting mountain streams. I used the mirror lock-up on my XSI, tripod, and wireless remote. During playback, I notice some of the water appeard overexposed (flashing) and the histogram "bled over" to the right. Is this something that can be fixed in PSE7? Should I be doing something different when shooting?

If you can respond tonight (Wednesday, Oct. 21) it would be most helpful as I have one more day of shooting and would like to learn from my mistakes.

Thanks, Tony

brvheart

have you looked at them on a computer? Sometime the histo says they are blown but sometimes they are not.

LiquidAir

A polarizer will help. Also, if you are shooting RAW you can often pull the highlights back in post as long as they aren't too hot.

tony0778

I appreciate your feedback. I failed to mention that I am using a polarizer and am shooting in RAW. However, I don't have my computer (desktop) with me.

Could the long exposure times (5 to 8 seconds) contribute to the blown highlight?

Tony

LiquidAir

tony0778 wrote:

I appreciate your feedback. I failed to mention that I am using a polarizer and am shooting in RAW. However, I don't have my computer (desktop) with me.

Could the long exposure times (5 to 8 seconds) contribute to the blown highlight?

Tony

Don't trust your meter for long exposures of moving water as what are point highlights for a short exposure get spread out over a larger area on a long exposure. Set your camera to manual and use test shots.

If you have time bracket everything. When the light lets me keep my shutter time under 30s I usually set my camera to CWA metering and bracket +/- 1.6 stops. Rather than worrying about perfect exposure, I take those 3 shots and blend them to taste in Photoshop.

brvheart

this might or might not be helpful -

I dont know how much motion you are trying to imply - as in how fluid you are wanting the water to look, but have a look at my post here implied motion - waterfall take 2 most of those were taken at F22 with a speed of 1.5-5s and showed blown out, but when looking at them on a computer they were not that bad. Also as the others said, if shooting in RAW you will be able to pull most of the blown portions out in PP.

RuiMLopes

My advice:
Get a ND filter (graduated). Meter as required. Then, try to match the darker parter of the filter onto the water (with so longer exposures it´s impossible to avoid overexposure there).
I believe that you´ll end up with good exposures on the foreground and your water "highlights" problem fixed.