Dealing with White Dresses in Bright Sun

lightdrunk

Shot a wedding this weekend. The bride was wearing a really hot white dress. The outdoor shots were done about 10 AM and already the sun was too bright. I shot everything raw which gave me a certain amount of latitude later with Photoshop, but I still had trouble getting the dress to stop glowing and losing detail. I shot everything at ISO 200 with a D300 and a Speedlight 600. Outside, I used aperture priority and TTL for fill. When we got inside for the wedding things were easier to control. Anybody know how to handle hot light with digital? It seems harder than with film.

tenoverthenose

The simplest answer is just to drop the exposure a bit. If you are losing detail, drop your exposure. Running a speedlight for fill might be adding to the problem. Or you could just look for some shade for more control.

Ken Lapp

I agree that dropping the exposure will help. What metering mode were you using? If you are using Aperture Priority you can try changing to Spot Metering. The D300 will spot meter on the center of the viewfinder - not the focus point, so place the center 'spot' on the dress or the brides face, press the lock button, recompose and shoot.

Qarik

increase your shutter speed and make sure you have hi-speed sync turned on.

lightdrunk

Ken Lapp wrote: »

I agree that dropping the exposure will help. What metering mode were you using? If you are using Aperture Priority you can try changing to Spot Metering. The D300 will spot meter on the center of the viewfinder - not the focus point, so place the center 'spot' on the dress or the brides face, press the lock button, recompose and shoot.

I used all three meters and found the spot to do the best job with the white dress, but no so well with the rest of the scene. I also used exposure compensation with limited results. It was a very bright day.

lightdrunk

Qarik wrote: »

increase your shutter speed and make sure you have hi-speed sync turned on.

Thanks. The highest sync speed I can get on the D300 is 375, so I turned it to auto. Same with the D90.

jcimageworks

lightdrunk wrote: »

Thanks. The highest sync speed I can get on the D300 is 375, so I turned it to auto. Same with the D90.

Technically, the highest sync before entering HSS with the D300 is 320th I believe. But that setting is also one of the HSS settings. This would allow you to shoot a shutter speed as fast as you want and still use flash. Only problem with this is loss of flash output as the shutter gets faster. If your using the flash as fill only, which would be your case, it works pretty well though.

The first thing I would look for though in this situation is shade.

Matthew Saville

jcimageworks wrote: »

Technically, the highest sync before entering HSS with the D300 is 320th I believe. But that setting is also one of the HSS settings. This would allow you to shoot a shutter speed as fast as you want and still use flash. Only problem with this is loss of flash output as the shutter gets faster. If your using the flash as fill only, which would be your case, it works pretty well though.

The first thing I would look for though in this situation is shade.

Yeah if you're using a radio trigger for example, you're stuck at your "hard" (mechanical) limit, which is 1/250 sec for almost every DSLR these days. Any higher than that, and the flash may sync (only within the camera's proprietary system) ...however you're LOSING POWER...

One reason why I hope to buy a used D70 for goofing around someday... 1/500 sync, FTW!

=Matt=

Matthew Saville

lightdrunk wrote: »

Shot a wedding this weekend. The bride was wearing a really hot white dress. The outdoor shots were done about 10 AM and already the sun was too bright. I shot everything raw which gave me a certain amount of latitude later with Photoshop, but I still had trouble getting the dress to stop glowing and losing detail. I shot everything at ISO 200 with a D300 and a Speedlight 600. Outside, I used aperture priority and TTL for fill. When we got inside for the wedding things were easier to control. Anybody know how to handle hot light with digital? It seems harder than with film.

You were most likely bumping into your flash sync limit. I don't think the SB600 has high speed sync.

You simply cannot shoot outdoors in sunlight with flash (below your sync of 1/250 sec.) ...unless you stop down to something crazy like f/16, at which point your flash will probably have no affect on the image anyways.

Personally, I avoid flash altogether, and just try and set up the shot so that sunlight isn't a problem. Put the sun at their backs, and shoot into something a little bit shaded to match the exposure on their face, and you're good to go. Bonus points if you can stand the subjects in front of something like open pavement where light is bouncing into their face more brightly than it is bouncing into a shaded background.

This is basically the "natural light 101" tip that I give people at my natural light portraits workshop. :-)

Flash, bottom line, is not always your friend.
=Matt=

urbanaries

Matthew Saville wrote: »

You were most likely bumping into your flash sync limit. I don't think the SB600 has high speed sync.

You simply cannot shoot outdoors in sunlight with flash (below your sync of 1/250 sec.) ...unless you stop down to something crazy like f/16, at which point your flash will probably have no affect on the image anyways.

Personally, I avoid flash altogether, and just try and set up the shot so that sunlight isn't a problem. Put the sun at their backs, and shoot into something a little bit shaded to match the exposure on their face, and you're good to go. Bonus points if you can stand the subjects in front of something like open pavement where light is bouncing into their face more brightly than it is bouncing into a shaded background.

This is basically the "natural light 101" tip that I give people at my natural light portraits workshop. :-)

Flash, bottom line, is not always your friend.
=Matt=

Matt, I'm a fan of no flash outdoors as well. Occasionally I have trouble getting light into the eyes, however. What are your thoughts?

1. Sun behind them, but camera left a bit


2. Sun directly behind subject

Can you show us one of your famous example shots addressing this?

Matthew Saville

urbanaries wrote: »

Matt, I'm a fan of no flash outdoors as well. Occasionally I have trouble getting light into the eyes, however. What are your thoughts?

1. Sun behind them, but camera left a bit


2. Sun directly behind subject

Can you show us one of your famous example shots addressing this?

There are a couple of things that I explain and demonstrate in greater detail at my natural light portraiture workshop, but it's been hard to schedule any those lately... :-(

The main thing is to simply manage where your light is coming from. If it's coming from directly overhead, it will look like it's coming from directly overhead. However there are plenty of ways you can situate your subjects so that light hits them more head-on, such as going just under the edge of a tree, or just inside a doorway, etc. etc.

ANY object around a location can be used to direct / modify light, when the subject is positioned properly...



...If you're really picky about catchlights, it helps to look for bright patches of pavement or walls or anything of that sort that will show up in people's eyes. I think the light in this subject's eyes was from a white car in a parking lot, and a bit of white sidewalk... They were in the shade of a building, but there was open sky (sunny day) to OUR right...

=Matt=

jdorseydesign

If you have an assistant, one of these is invaluable http://www.adorama.com/FPPR5142.html

Ed911

lightdrunk wrote: »

Shot a wedding this weekend. The bride was wearing a really hot white dress. The outdoor shots were done about 10 AM and already the sun was too bright. I shot everything raw which gave me a certain amount of latitude later with Photoshop, but I still had trouble getting the dress to stop glowing and losing detail. I shot everything at ISO 200 with a D300 and a Speedlight 600. Outside, I used aperture priority and TTL for fill. When we got inside for the wedding things were easier to control. Anybody know how to handle hot light with digital? It seems harder than with film.

Have you tried using your in-camera Active D-lighting. It will compress the whites / highs somewhat so that you get less over exposures when shooting wedding dresses. I leave mine set to normal. Canon has something similar, I believe.

Turn it on and take some practice shots to see if it's for you.

Overfocused

If you don't have the chance to take more pictures, the easiest way for maximum results to fix the whites without lowering the values of the rest of the photo is Shadows/highlights in photoshop. Typically about %5-10 tonal range just to target the brightest tones works best, but it's all subjective to each picture. Its best to experiment and slide the bars to at least see what they will do if you don't know already. Also if you want to just target certain areas, you can actually just roughly lasso the dress, feather it generously, and shadows highlights will do a the job. Different photos require different amounts of the 3 options in s/h, but bars are easy to slide back and forth to test out

Overfocused

Here's a couple samples just from those JPEGs you posted. I'm sure the RAW has the full range of information... but I gotta JET!