Hi, I took the photo yesterday and I really like the look the man had and overall concept itself. But I think the background is too bright. What could I have done to make this a better photo while taking the photo or can this only be fixed in PS?
Your aperture of f4 and ISO of 200 seem fine choices. (I'm assuming you wanted the background oof like that) The slowish shutter speed of 1/100 could be part of the issue. This is a pretty high contrast image with a dark subject in the foreground and a very light background. Even your foreground subject is slightly overexposed. This indicates that the shutter speed was a bit too slow. It probably would have worked well to set the exposure to underexpose by .3 to .7. (That would have made the shutter speed faster)
Software can fix some of the overexposure, but the blown out areas aren't recoverable. HDR processing might have been a good choice here as well due to the large dynamic range.
See the big white area in the upper right hand corner? That area is literally pure white, meaning that the camera's sensor recorded no data at all, which means that, try as you may, you can never get that data back.
I'm not sure what kind of camera you're shooting with, but some P&S cameras and almost all DSLRs will show you a funky little image that shows you if your image has any "burned out" (or "blown out"?) areas that are simply too bright. Some show this by overlaying a zebra pattern on the white areas, and some show this by making these areas flash between black and white. Alternately, some cameras will show you a histogram, but I'll leave that explanation to google, unless you want to slide me five or ten bucks.
Typically, especially if you do a lot of post, you want to avoid burning out, because it leaves you with no data to work with. This is how HDR works, by allowing you properly expose for the highlights and the shadows, and then merge them all together so you have all usable image data, and no burning out.
Am I suggesting you try to HDR this? Hell no. I would never suggest that in a millions years, plus it's already over, so unless you have a time machine, you won't be able to.
But, what I am saying is if your camera has such a function, use it. It is very helpful. If it doesn't have this function, then eyeball your photos and ask yourself if there are any areas that are pure white (usually areas where direct sunlight is hitting, or other bright areas in an overall dark photo, such as this one).
If that's the case, take the shot again and intentionally make it darker by making your shutter speed faster. This way, you will lesser the amount of data that is burning out, and therefore unusable in post, and maintaining or creating more usable data, even though it's dark.
Remember, it's usually better to UNDERexpose, because if you have the data, you can work with it. If you overexpose, you end up in this situation with a blinding splotch of white that you simply can't do anything with.
In other words, it's easier to make a dark image brighter than it is to make a bright image darker. Also, if your image burns out, you can only change the burned out areas from white to black, which is why in Simon's fix above the burned out part of the stadium is gray instead of a darker off-white. Of course, with a little more post work, this can be fixed, but it'll take a lot of elbow grease to make it perfect and not obtrusive.
I hope that all made sense. If not, let me know, and I can elaborate, or whip up an analogy with animals or mythical creatures or something.
@mikehamm HDR processing will not be able to fix this. The image is blown out, and HDR needs the data to make changes. If there's no data, it can't do much of anything.
I'm not preaching (yes, I am), but this kind of misconception is what leads to all sorts of ugly, nasty, foul HDRs that are created solely for the "processing" and not for the purpose of making a final image with a high dynamic range.
Of course, there's always the artistic side to consider, but a lot of people that go the HDR route do so in very poor taste. I do my best to prevent the spread of disease whenever and wherever I can.
Tam, I recall reading several things that indicate that it can be a challenge to shoot people with darker skins when there is too much contrast in light or color tones. So to property expose the darker skin you can sometimes over expose the lighter areas. It looks like this happened here, because the tones on your friend have a real look to them.
1. i like this photo - the light adds a kind of day-dreamy feeling which reflects the man's expression.
2. if it were my photo, in post-process, I would have increased the contrast and decreased the brightness globally, just a tad. maybe also add a little temperature increase to add some yellow in to balance out his skin tone, it's a little blueish.
3. the shutter speed of 1/100 with f/4.5 is never perfect for a bright day. if you want more detail, change to 1/200 and maybe f/8 for shots like this.
Thank you for all the comments, I was using flicker to begin with and couldn't find the right community to ask all my dumb questions and get good responses too. Now I have found it! Cheers!
What is the purpose of ISO 200 ? With an ISO of 100 you should have reduce this burnt area and the noise of the sensor (not visible here, though).
General question to anyone : Does it make sense to use more than 100 ISO in a picture like this one, with such luminosity ?
@chupon Personally, I rarely shoot on anything but 100 when outdoors in light like this. I always shoot on the lowest ISO that the shooting situation will tolerate, but that's me, and I'm certainly no expert, so for all I know, I'm fracking it up. :) I also shoot on film quite a lot, and I've become a fan recently of shooting on even lower ISOs, like 64 and 50.
@gurry - Gary, sorry for the confusion. I meant to take bracketed images to then put through HDR. Not to try and fix this particular single image with HDR.
Again, sorry for the confusion.
However, I do agree with your rant. I just should have been more clear in my answer.
This is a little overexposed generally but the blown area has been caused by your camera's sensor being unable to cope with the dynamic range of extremes of light and dark. You often get the same effect with a bright sky in a landscape.
The answer (in the landscape) is to take two identical shots, one exposed correctly for the sky and the other exposed correctly for the land, then merge them in software.
You could have applied that technique here provided your subject didn't move AT ALL between shots which is a bit unlikely.
Because you couldn't expose correctly for both light and dark areas, a good compromise would have been to aim for an exposure setting somewhere between the two. One that would leave some detail in the sky but at the expense of underexposing the man.
It's far easier to retrieve detail from underexposure than overexposure and in this case, the sky's so overexposed as to be completely blown.
There would, however, have been plenty of detail in the underexposed area, ie, the man, that could be recovered in software.
Were you shooting RAW?
Hope this helps.
A little bit of what I was referring to. Not HDR, just some software tweaks.
ETA - The bit of haloing around the red hat seems to be a 365 display/compression deal since that doesn't show in my photo editing software.
@tamle - I use Nikon Capture NX2 so I don't know if the terms are exactly the same in PS. Anyway, I set a black control point to add a bit of contrast. Midtones were darkened just a bit. Darkened the trees on the right just a smidge. Removed that triangular shaped bit in the upper right. Very slight unsharp added. (Might explain part of the haloing issue with the hat, although it doesn't show up in my software). Also, slightly warmed the entire image as I thought it seemed a bit blue (cold) to my eye.
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I had ago in photoshop using the dodge and burn tool, and adjusted the brightness a little and exposure.
Software can fix some of the overexposure, but the blown out areas aren't recoverable. HDR processing might have been a good choice here as well due to the large dynamic range.
Ah, Simon's example shows what I was saying.
See the big white area in the upper right hand corner? That area is literally pure white, meaning that the camera's sensor recorded no data at all, which means that, try as you may, you can never get that data back.
I'm not sure what kind of camera you're shooting with, but some P&S cameras and almost all DSLRs will show you a funky little image that shows you if your image has any "burned out" (or "blown out"?) areas that are simply too bright. Some show this by overlaying a zebra pattern on the white areas, and some show this by making these areas flash between black and white. Alternately, some cameras will show you a histogram, but I'll leave that explanation to google, unless you want to slide me five or ten bucks.
Typically, especially if you do a lot of post, you want to avoid burning out, because it leaves you with no data to work with. This is how HDR works, by allowing you properly expose for the highlights and the shadows, and then merge them all together so you have all usable image data, and no burning out.
Am I suggesting you try to HDR this? Hell no. I would never suggest that in a millions years, plus it's already over, so unless you have a time machine, you won't be able to.
But, what I am saying is if your camera has such a function, use it. It is very helpful. If it doesn't have this function, then eyeball your photos and ask yourself if there are any areas that are pure white (usually areas where direct sunlight is hitting, or other bright areas in an overall dark photo, such as this one).
If that's the case, take the shot again and intentionally make it darker by making your shutter speed faster. This way, you will lesser the amount of data that is burning out, and therefore unusable in post, and maintaining or creating more usable data, even though it's dark.
Remember, it's usually better to UNDERexpose, because if you have the data, you can work with it. If you overexpose, you end up in this situation with a blinding splotch of white that you simply can't do anything with.
In other words, it's easier to make a dark image brighter than it is to make a bright image darker. Also, if your image burns out, you can only change the burned out areas from white to black, which is why in Simon's fix above the burned out part of the stadium is gray instead of a darker off-white. Of course, with a little more post work, this can be fixed, but it'll take a lot of elbow grease to make it perfect and not obtrusive.
I hope that all made sense. If not, let me know, and I can elaborate, or whip up an analogy with animals or mythical creatures or something.
(Edited for details and typos.)
I'm not preaching (yes, I am), but this kind of misconception is what leads to all sorts of ugly, nasty, foul HDRs that are created solely for the "processing" and not for the purpose of making a final image with a high dynamic range.
Of course, there's always the artistic side to consider, but a lot of people that go the HDR route do so in very poor taste. I do my best to prevent the spread of disease whenever and wherever I can.
Here is a tutorial
http://www.nyip.com/ezine/people-and-pets/peopleofcolor.html
here is a forum
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=731557
Also there was a discussion on here last year and you may want to search for it.
2. if it were my photo, in post-process, I would have increased the contrast and decreased the brightness globally, just a tad. maybe also add a little temperature increase to add some yellow in to balance out his skin tone, it's a little blueish.
3. the shutter speed of 1/100 with f/4.5 is never perfect for a bright day. if you want more detail, change to 1/200 and maybe f/8 for shots like this.
General question to anyone : Does it make sense to use more than 100 ISO in a picture like this one, with such luminosity ?
And nice picture ;)
Again, sorry for the confusion.
However, I do agree with your rant. I just should have been more clear in my answer.
The answer (in the landscape) is to take two identical shots, one exposed correctly for the sky and the other exposed correctly for the land, then merge them in software.
You could have applied that technique here provided your subject didn't move AT ALL between shots which is a bit unlikely.
Because you couldn't expose correctly for both light and dark areas, a good compromise would have been to aim for an exposure setting somewhere between the two. One that would leave some detail in the sky but at the expense of underexposing the man.
It's far easier to retrieve detail from underexposure than overexposure and in this case, the sky's so overexposed as to be completely blown.
There would, however, have been plenty of detail in the underexposed area, ie, the man, that could be recovered in software.
Were you shooting RAW?
Hope this helps.
ETA - The bit of haloing around the red hat seems to be a 365 display/compression deal since that doesn't show in my photo editing software.
Thanks everyone, I definitely played with shutter speed and exposure levels more today and saw differences.