Photography – Controlling Highlights?
I’ve only been into photography for close to two years, I have just came off of an Olympus E510 to an EOS 50D.
Most of what I do is outdoors/landscape, low light indoors, architectural, evening city-scape shots etc. One of my biggest gripes with the E510 (other than the nasty white balance control, in which Custom WB mode was no better), was it’s noise factor and high light clipping. I have found that my new Canon exceeds the Oly in these areas but high light clipping is still something the photographer battles (even with full frame cameras).
What are some your best methods for controlling high lights if you are an amature with no metering gear ?
I use a Canon EOS 50D, and like the 40D, there is a high light tone priority mode but this reduces my ISO expandability option and I cannot shoot in ISO 100 when using this mode. Most people I have talk to do not use this feature. Is there a more preferable method for reducing high lights? I have found, that under exposing wasn’t always the solution, as I would also end up with too dark a scene/subject while doing this. For example, if I took some shots along the coast on a foggy/cloudy day and light being as poor as it is on those days, underexposing would only resul in too dark a scene, yet grays in the sky become too white, loosing the detail in the clouds. The closest thing I have found was spot metering but this delivers me a mixed bag of results, perhaps because the meter jumps around like crazy and I’m not exactly sure where I should be locking the exposure in on. HDR is great but are there any more “on the fly” solutions? Perhaps tweaking out contrast settings?
Obviously you didn’t give the 510 a good chance cause you have the same problems going to a Canon… 510 also has a highlight mode but anyway to help yo with the problem…. try pointing at something around medium gray if possible and AE lock on it and take your picture… I too had/have trouble with the 510 on white balance… but I found most of it operator error.. another photographer with one took a picture of the same thing I was trying with my camera after he did the white balance and it was like night and day. Felt stupid
Try taking a reading from a neutral gray card.
I always shoot in RAW mode and found that this way I can always recover highlights. The RAW possibilities in Photoshop are amazing.
You sound like you really know what your doing. I am a REALLY amateur photographer but I found this program by google that will let you fix the highlights and contrast and stuff. Try this out, its free too
There really is not a solution to your problem. The basic problem is you are using DIGITAL. it is just an unfortunate truth that digital has MUCH LESS dynamic range than negative film. The highlights are the worse to overexpose with a digital sensor. That is why the HDR thing is catching on so much, though agreed, it is not a useful feature in general shooting. You just can’t always be on a tripod and take the time to do several shots at various exposures.
You may want to get a graduated neutral density filter to help control blowing out skys or other extremely bright areas. It is all you can do except expose for the highlights, but then you will often have much too dark midtones and lost shadows.
Basically, you are dealing with a technology that is just not there yet in broad dynamic range.
steve