2 Light Sources

[geode]

Dear All

I hope you can help me with my problem. One sunny afternoon, when I woke up from my nap, I saw this light coming towards my window. At the same time the sky was so blue and I want to experiment how to capture both. However, it turns out that its an either/or situation. If I meter on the sunlight that is projecting on my wall cast from outside, the blue sky will be overexposed. On the other hand, if I meter on the blue sky, the light will not appear. Any suggestions on how to do it?

[clockdoc]

Hi. You pose an interesting question. It sounds like tyou are trying to capture a range of tones that exceed the camera's capability to register them. While the human eye can 'record' such images with shadow and highlight detail, you only other choice may be to use the high dynamic range or HDR technique. If you have never heard of this before, do a Google search on the phrase and that should provide lots of reference matter. Can you post a photo of what you were trying to capture?

[SinnedCBU]

Maybe there should be something about HDR in this Forum...im also interested

[clockdoc]

Do a search of the Forums with "high dynamic range" and you will find quite a collection of postings.

[ditch_azeroth]

you can go HDR or off-camera strobe, or both. either way, trial and error is the best teacher.

[geode]

whoa! thanks very much for this comments... I will try HDR but are there other methods that I can use?

[sk66]

Originally Posted by geode

whoa! thanks very much for this comments... I will try HDR but are there other methods that I can use?

Expose for something other than either of the "two subjects"; a median exposure. Sometimes a graduated Neutral Density filter can work in these situations, holding back the sky exposure in this case. You might also be able to adjust for a long exposure (tripod) using a very small aperature and then manually block some of the sky for a portion of the exposure.
And then there are always PP techniques. I generally find for PP an underexposed image is better than an overexposed image with highlights blown out...

[indigoboo]

If you have an either-or choice of over or underexposing, always underexpose. It is still possible to lighten areas in the pic with Photoshop, but once they are blown out with an overexposure, it is imposible to recover the details in that area.