Help with photos indoors

Bowser

Hi,

Can someone please help me, I use a DSLR and took some photos inside yesterday.
My shots had the windows in them and there was no definition at all, they were almost white and looked awful, however the rest of the picture looked fine.

Can anyone help?

Richard

Hi Bowser and welcome to Dgrin . I moved your post to the Technique forum, which is a better place for it. The problem you had is common. Usually, the light coming through a window is much, much brighter than the light in a room, so if you expose properly for the subject in the room the window gets overexposed. There are a number of ways of dealing with this. Using flash and/or reflectors will help to equalize the light. You can just try to avoid having windows in the frame, though this is not always possible. You can also adjust your exposure manually to avoid overexposure, but you do run the risk of making the rest too dark. Sometimes it is possible to restore some detail in Photoshop or other photo editing software, but if the pics are too badly blown, then there's little anyone can do. If you post a sample, maybe we can help.

Art Scott

Could you please post a sample so we can actually see what went wrong? (as large an image as possible please.)

Bowser

Hi, Sorry I have attached a pic, hope this works!

hgernhardtjr

In a stationary almost empty white-room shot like this, and without flash/reflector and similar equipment, here's what I have done on several occasions: simply take two shots ... one exposed for the room, one exposed for the window(s). Then clone the properly exposed window area into the properly exposed room area (or overlay one on the other and erase through). The free EnfuseGUI at http://software.bergmark.com/enfuseGUI/Main.html will also help you with such blending. Either way, this should take under five minutes to do.

Richard

Henry gives some good advice. If you are shooting in raw format, you can also try doing two conversions on the same shot, one dark one (by lowering the exposure) for the window and a normal one for the rest, then combine them in PS or use the Enfuse software that Henry mentioned.

Sam

Another alternative is to light the room to match the brightness of the outside, or like the image below shoot early in the morning so the outside brightness is more consistent with the inside brightness.

Sam