High contrast photographs

[romenshah]

I own a canon 350D camera.Camera Light meter fails me in taking a high contrast photograph, especially a brightly lit sky with mountains or monuments in shade. Photograph is underexposed in the dark areas and overexposed in the sky area.

Kindly give tips to resolve this problem.

[RainPacket]

I hate to tell you this, but from what I've read and learned so far... almost no form of camera metering is going to solve this particular problem.

This is a classical photography problem; those shots of the moon above houses at night? Are almost never taken easily. The moon, for instance, is so bright that if you shoot with conditions that make the houses visible, the moon will be an undifferentiated solid disc, with no features. Shoot in conditions that make the craters of the moon visible, and the houses will be far too dark. The way photographers used to solve this problem was with a gradiated polarizing filter; you'd have a polarizing filter with a clear half. Hold it up, block the moon with the polarizing bit (dropping it a stop or two) and leaving the houses behind the clear bit. Tada!

Now, you can try to work around this in digital. There are in-camera contrast tools that'll let you overexpose the picture and manually 'force' the contrast lower. You can turn the contrast down and tweak the brightness/exposure in a digital photography editing tool, to try and equalize the exposure somewhat. But there's really no magic guaranteed-to-work-in-all-cases solution to this in-camera, with any camera model that I'm aware of. It's simply one of the "interesting challenges" of photography!

I don't know if that helps at all...

[wulf]

It sounds like what you want to do is emulate the high dynamic range of the human eye. Search for that term (or HDR) and you'll find plenty of ideas, both here and elsewhere on the net.

In essence, you take two or more photos exposed for different areas of the subject matter and then combine them digitally. Sometimes the effect can look very strange; here is a relatively subtle one from my collection:



What you can't (yet) do is press the shutter once and have the camera take care of getting detail across the whole picture (although it wouldn't surprise me if one or more manufacturers are working on it!).

Wulf

[steevdavis62]

For the basic begginer's answer, that doesnt really solve the problem, but can aleviate some of it... Face your camera at the darker part that you want to be well exposed, and half press your shutter. This should make it read a correct exposure for the thing you want to photograph. But will obviously over-expose any other part of the photo in brighter light. But often you can then crop around this... Just a simple tip, that might help

[hsroxas]

Wulf : ]
Just want to say nice application of HDR, the image really looks neat. You just gave me a new application for HDR, always thought that it is only best applied to landscapes. Thanks for the learning.
Romensha:
In addition to the earlier suggestions made, this is a crude attempt that I have always used in balancing uneven exposures. When unable to capture the range at the time of exposure and there is no more chance of re shooting as is the norm in travel photos, I try to simulate what should have been done using HDR. In post processing, I create layers to expose for part of the images I need to adjust lighting, say 1 layer for the buildings and another 1 for the sky. I use layer masks so that only the particular part of the image receives the adjustment. Then I will do the same process for the other part of the image. Once I get the effect that I want, I now merge the layers or flatten the image. For adjusting exposures, I use either or a combination of levels,brightness & contrasts or shadow & highlights. Very crude, but works for me most of the times.
Additionally, another thing that can work for you is to use the auto bracketing feature of your 350 D. It has helped me a lot.

[romenshah]

Originally Posted by steevdavis62

For the basic begginer's answer, that doesnt really solve the problem, but can aleviate some of it... Face your camera at the darker part that you want to be well exposed, and half press your shutter. This should make it read a correct exposure for the thing you want to photograph. But will obviously over-expose any other part of the photo in brighter light. But often you can then crop around this... Just a simple tip, that might help

Steeve,

I probably can zoom in to a darker subject , press the shutter half way and then zoom out to cover the brighter areas of a noon sky. Clicking after this may enable to have a balanced photograph? Not sure, what do you opine?

Romen Shah

[romenshah]

Steve,

I probably can zoom in to a darker subject , press the shutter half way and then zoom out to cover the brighter areas of a noon sky. Clicking after this may enable to have a balanced photograph? Not sure, what do you opine?

Romen Shah

[wulf]

Originally Posted by romenshah

I probably can zoom in to a darker subject , press the shutter half way and then zoom out to cover the brighter areas of a noon sky. Clicking after this may enable to have a balanced photograph? Not sure, what do you opine?

That won't give you a balanced exposure: it will ensure that you can see the details in the shadows.

Your choices are:

1. Use filters on the camera to reduce the overall contrast across the frame.

2. Decide what the most important parts of the picture are and expose for them.

3. Get in closer so that you don't have such a wide range of light and shade in frame.

4. Take several shots and fix the exposure in post-processing.

Wulf

[steevdavis62]

Well firstly my camera is very average, and one you have an exposure lock it wont allow me to zoom. So i cant say really what would happen, from experience... But like i said, it is only a small time solution, it doesnt solve the problem, it just moves the problem, to a less important part of the photo... All of wulf's suggestions are better if you can do them, do them.
I found the best way, is to find another object in similar light, and expose on it, and then move the camera back to your shot... correctly exposing the main part, but blowing out anything lighter... it is a simple tip to avoid the problem if your in a hurry. But if you can find a better way, definatly use it