Overexposed Pic & Attempt to Fix

[lorimart]

Here is a pic I took of my little girl. I love this pic but its way too bright and I took it before I new about RAW images etc so I had a lot of difficulty adjusting the exposure without making it look worse so here is the original

ISO 200
60mm
f/5.0
1/60 sec



then I adjusted the brightness, changed to B/W, did some selective colouring and added a slight vignette.... nothing to exciting :-) but this is the end result



I would love to know how I need to adjust my settings on my camera on a sunny day to avoid this? or some adjustment recommendations for brightness and exposure editing suggestions. I'm sorry if this is a silly question but I'm still learning and am really struggling with this.

I greatly appreciate your feedback and thanks for taking the time to look :-)

[Vagebond]

Hi Lori, I have a couple of questions.
Did you use the default evaluative (the whole sensor) light metering, or did you use spot metering? And is the girl's costume really as black as in your edited version?

The reason I ask is that spot metering is centered in the middle of the frame, and there's a lot of black there and some red. The camera attempts to average everything it meters out to 18% grey. In this case it would mean that it tries to lighten up the black, which in turn means over exposing the rest. For the same reason, if the costume had been white the picture would be underexposed, bringing the white down to grey.

Here's a post by kencelano that explains it a bit better than I can: http://digital-photography-school.co...644-post9.html

What it boils down to is that spot metering can be great but when the spot is at or near the extreme dark or light ends you're going to get results like you got, so you'll have to compensate for that.

If you used the default evaluative metering please pretend I didn't post this

[Father Bob]

Nice save on the photo. I like the way some of the colors (hair and trees) seem to be undersaturated and she has an interesting expression.

Might consider lightening the black leotard as there may be more detail.

I agree with vagebond above. If you are using spot metering try placing the spot on her face. Also, try bracketing one or two half stops above and below the auto setting. You can pick the best one or parts af different ones and blend them in using layers.

Shooting in raw will give you more options in post production, but blown out is blown out. There is no data to recover. It is usually possible to recover detail from an underexposed part of the image (ie. the leotard) in post but the result can sometimes be noisy.

You also might have been able to crop to a head and shoulders portrait high key shot. Just an alternative.

Al

[lorimart]

thanks for both responses and my apologies for not replying sooner :-) These pics were taken in full auto so you kinda answered my question with your questions lol. I will do some more practicing with the metering function, I also picked up a filter which I didn't have before.

Her clothes are quite black but I did adjust the lighting the best I could which do make them appear darker but I will try and find a better balance.

Thanks again for you input I really appreciate it!

[sedetweiler]

i think you did a great job on this. I do have a suggestion, in eliminating the vignette and just letting the background go wherever it wants to go. Your recovery on the face and the body are what counts. The background is fine as it was, and I actually find the black vignette alien to the image and therefore distracting. If the image wants to be high-key, let it go and just focus on the recovery of the girl. Great composition, you did a great job capturing the moment.

[lorimart]

thanks I'll try that. I thought the vignette would mask the poor exposure but I'm learning and that's why I'm here I can picture how removing the vignette would help make her stand out from the pic too

thanks again

[sedetweiler]

if the background is not the focus of the image, I will often let it do whatever it wants as long as it is not distracting. In fact, the white texture on the steps could be used to texture other areas of the image. The goal here is to get the girl perfect, which you are really close to doing.