Newbie questions on today's daily article

[Naurien]

I have a question on the section 'Clouds Reflected', and 'Zooming in'.

He says:
"1. This could be tricky to expose, I’d better go a stop under the metered exposure to avoid burning out the sky. I can pull the bottom half back up in Lightroom. So, lets put those windows around the bottom third line."

Question 1: I understand that burning out the sky means it's too bright. How would one 'go a stop under the metered exposure' on a P&S? Would I adjust the ISO setting?

Question 2: What does 'pull the bottom half back up in Lightroom' mean?

Thanks!

__________
Canon PowerShot A560

[wulf]

It depends what controls you have. I don't know about your Powershot camera but I do know that, using Auto mode on my D40 (ie. letting it pretend it is a point and shoot) that I have the option to ask it to expose the picture more or less than it's internal calculations suggest. In face, even my old point and shoot did that although I hardly ever used that option because it was so inaccessible (via menus rather than buttons and dials).

You can also trick the auto exposure settings. If you compose your shot so that the sky fills most of it, the camera will meter for that. Half press the button and you should then be able to reframe the image before taking the picture. Whether this will get good results or not is more open to chance but does often work.

Finally, "pull the bottom half back up in Lightroom" means use post processing to make the darker part of the picture appear lighter without affecting the sky.

Wulf

[Naurien]

So he took the shot with the bottom half of it too dark and lightened it with photo software? *hmmm* I've noticed that when I lighten things with software that I shot too dark, it gets grainy; so in the case of this photo, either my software wouldn't be good enough, or I'd have to shoot it with not as severe of a contrast as black and white, so maybe I could pull the bottom up slightly and pull the top down slightly and balance the whole thing together... or...?

Is that an accurate summary?

My camera is like you mentioned, with an option to change the exposure itself by going through menus to get there, and it takes a while. I have done the 'half-pressed button' maneuver before, with some success, so it's good to know that's related to what he's talking about.

Thanks, Wulf!

[wulf]

There is a difference between "recoverably dark" and "way too dark". I suspect that because you don't have such fine-grained control over exposure you are sometimes ending up with the latter. Also, Point and Shoot cameras are generally more noisy than DSLRs because they have smaller sensor chips inside.

Experiment with how much you can get away with. You might find that, for example, starting with the sky filling about 2/3rds of the frame is enough to get the camera to properly expose it without making the foreground so dark it gets grainy (because the camera will be trying to find a compromise includes light and dark areas rather than just exposing for a perfect sky).

Wulf