Not blowing whites

carmel6942

My wife and I are going to be shooting another horse show in a couple of weeks and most of the pictures are going to be taken in the middle of the day. Alot of the individuals wear white, and have lots of silver on the bridles and saddles. The last horse show the white and silver looked blown out. Due to the clouds we used Aperature Priority set at 5.6 to keep the fastest shutter speeds and not always having to change settings as the clouds moved around.

Here is an example


What is the best way to avoid this next time?

I am thinking maybe using exposure compensation set to underexpose 1/2 step.

Camera info might help so We are using a Nikon D50 with a Nikkor 70-300 ed4-5.6d lens

Thanks for the help

ShepsMom

Do you have a bigger picture? This shot doesn't look blown to me. However, i've learned to use EV compensation due to shooting white birds. Sometimes you have to sacrafice background to compensate the whiteness, or vice versa. I'm sure someone will answer your question her very quickly.

carmel6942

ShepsMom wrote:

Do you have a bigger picture? This shot doesn't look blown to me. However, i've learned to use EV compensation due to shooting white birds. Sometimes you have to sacrafice background to compensate the whiteness, or vice versa. I'm sure someone will answer your question her very quickly.

Here is a link to the larger one. this one is not to bad, I just wanted an example of the white and silver. I did some work in post processing with the raw files using aperature.

Larger Version

and another picture

LiquidAir

Set your camera on manual. ISO 100, 1/400s, f/8 is a good starting point and then tweak it until you are happy. In direct sun the whites are always the same brightness so the exposure should always be the same.

colourbox

Regardless of the setting, use the camera's clipping display to watch for large areas of blown highlights; if they're showing up, drop the exposure some more. Small blown areas may be recoverable in your raw converter; best to do a test in advance to find out how well your camera histogram/clipping display matches up to what is really clipped when you get to the raw converter.

carmel6942

Set your camera on manual. ISO 100, 1/400s, f/8 is a good starting point and then tweak it until you are happy. In direct sun the whites are always the same brightness so the exposure should always be the same.

Thank you for your suggestion. I will definately try it.

Regardless of the setting, use the camera's clipping display to watch for large areas of blown highlights; if they're showing up, drop the exposure some more. Small blown areas may be recoverable in your raw converter; best to do a test in advance to find out how well your camera histogram/clipping display matches up to what is really clipped when you get to the raw converter.

By clipping display, are you referring to my highlights display?

pathfinder

LiquidAir wrote:

Set your camera on manual. ISO 100, 1/400s, f/8 is a good starting point and then tweak it until you are happy. In direct sun the whites are always the same brightness so the exposure should always be the same.

I agree - outdoors in bright sunlight, Manual mode will give more consistent exposure from frame to frame. ISO 100, f8, 1/400 is right out of the Sunny 16 rule.

Be aware that if you are shooting on the shaded side of the the horse/rider your exposure will need about 2-3 more stops of light than when in the sun. I wrote about shooting in outdoor sunlight here - http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=30235

One of the advantages of Av mode, rather than manual - it tracks the ambient light and will correct for shade, but the exposures will vary more unless you are very careful with your metering, because the meter will reset the exposure for each shot based on whatever you pointed the meter at - light, dark or medium gray.

Instead of using Evaluative metering, you might give Spot metering a try if you have it. Spot meter on a white shirt and use +2 stops of exposure compensation, to raise the exposure amount from neutral 18% gray to white. (If that statement does not make sense to you, read it again after reading the link I posted above about the rule of Sunny 16.):D

After getting your meter reading for a white shirt, add 2 stops of light, and shoot in Manual Mode. You will find that your image exposure is more consistent from shot to shot. Unless there are clouds floating by, the sunlight does not change that much from minute to minute.

LiquidAir

pathfinder wrote:

One of the advantages of Av mode, rather than manual - it tracks the ambient light and will correct for shade, but the exposures will vary more unless you are very careful with your metering, because the meter will reset the exposure for each shot based on whatever you pointed the meter at - light, dark or medium gray.

One trick I use is to set manual mode up for the sun and aperture prioity mode up for the shade. Then I can switch modes as my subject moves between sun and shade and still have all my sunlit exposures spot on. If your camera has custom settings modes you can do even fancier things. Currently I have the custom setting on my 5D set for direct sun which lets me use manual mode for the shade.

dancorder

It's not as good as getting the exposure right, but if you're not shooting RAW you should consider that. A good converter will often let you recover 1-2 stops of overexposure.

carmel6942

Thanks Pathfinder and liquidAir, you have given me the slight mental nudge that I needed .

It's not as good as getting the exposure right, but if you're not shooting RAW you should consider that. A good converter will often let you recover 1-2 stops of overexposure.

I am shooting in raw now, but some of the blown whites just don't seem to come back. When I get underexposed enough then the rest of the picture is to dark and I have to lighten up which blows the whites out again.

Phil_L

Use manual exposure.

Set an aperture you want and adjust the shutter speed off a grey card (or the back of your hand) to get a good exposure using spot metering.

Take some test shots and check the histogram/highlight clipping display and adjust the shutter speed till the highltghts dont get blown.

If the lighting or your vantage point dosen't change you can leave the exposure setting.

dancorder

Shooting RAW will only get you back things that aren't blown out too badly so sometimes it can't help.

You say that if you shoot for the whites and then lighten the picture they blow out. Have you tried lightening the image with curves rather than a straight brightness/contrast type control? That way you can lighten the dark parts but leave the whites alone.

That said, it might not be possible to get everything in your image nicely visible. Cameras only have a fixed amount of contrast they can cope with, and if you try to shoot a picture that has more contrast in it than the camera can handle you'll end up with either blown highlights, plugged shadows, or both. I think in this case you might have to accept a loss of detail in the shadows to stop the whites blowing out.

rwells

couple of things to try...

carmel6942 wrote:

Lower your contrast setting in camera. That will lessen the amount of data outside the latitude that the sensor can capture, and it helps your meter make better decisions by not having to deal with as much contrast. Try it out...take a high contrast shot normally, then lower your contrast setting, now review the histogram. You can add some contrast in PS later. (IE:curves, etc) Also, you can use the shadow/highlight adjustment in PS. Here is your pic with just the shadow/highlight adjustments.

carmel6942

Lower your contrast setting in camera. That will lessen the amount of data outside the latitude that the sensor can capture, and it helps your meter make better decisions by not having to deal with as much contrast.

Thanks rwells I will explore that possibility.

That said, it might not be possible to get everything in your image nicely visible. Cameras only have a fixed amount of contrast they can cope with, and if you try to shoot a picture that has more contrast in it than the camera can handle you'll end up with either blown highlights, plugged shadows, or both. I think in this case you might have to accept a loss of detail in the shadows to stop the whites blowing out.

thank you dancorder

Set an aperture you want and adjust the shutter speed off a grey card (or the back of your hand) to get a good exposure using spot metering.

Take some test shots and check the histogram/highlight clipping display and adjust the shutter speed till the highltghts dont get blown.

If the lighting or your vantage point dosen't change you can leave the exposure setting.

Thank you Phil_L I am definately going to try this.

The reason I did aperature mode was because of the clouds constantly moving in and out. With all the great suggestions from everybody here I am going to do the next show all in manual.

davidweaver

Manual is reasonable but clouds can quickly change the exposure. Lowering the contrast is a good suggestion. Shooting RAW is a must. Having settings for Manual and for A-priority is interesting if you are always looking at the light.
Checking for clipping on test shots is very good idea. This is why we used to bring polaroids along to check exposure. Take advantage of this.

Have an SB600/800? Set it up and use TTL with the flash exposure set to -3ev during the day ISO200-400, -2 1/3 during the golden hoursISO200-600, and -0.5 to -1.0 at nightISO800+. Not sure how this works on the d50. On the d70 and 200 it works really well when shooting A P or S. Again YMMV, but check the display and look at the histogram and clipping/highlight views. (yeah, yeah, I know max sync speed may be limiting- but it 's a useful technique if you know what you're doing and it rocks my world when I do event photography.

Underexposiing everyting 1/3 of a stop is an old Velvia trick but you will spend more time post processing the digital images that are underexposed.

In PS, learn how to use layer masks with screen and multiply layers. I wonder if someone has done a tutorial.

Check out the I2E plug in if you are looking for a very good post processing solution for 80% or more of your images - faster than layer masks, generally great results, BUT you need to have the image information there. If it's blown out it's gone.

Cheers!

carmel6942

Have an SB600/800? Set it up and use TTL with the flash exposure set to -3ev during the day ISO200-400, -2 1/3 during the golden hoursISO200-600, and -0.5 to -1.0 at nightISO800+.

I thought of using the flash but I am afraid that I will spook a horse. When I asked the arena master about usig a flash he told me not to. He said most horses won't mind but you dont want to take a chance in ruining a show for even 1 rider.