Newbie Needs Some Help with Bright Backgrounds

[Steve_R]

So I popped out this morning to have a wander around my home town of Warwick in the UK.

I have had my Nikon D60 for a while now, but have always just kept it in 'auto' mode for fear of getting home to a load of useless photo's.

So I've been reading through the helpful tutorials on here, and I am definitely starting to improve, however I am struggling with one main area, and that is bright backgrounds. Whenever I seem to get enough detail on my subject, the back ground is all washed out. But if I twiddle with the settings, and get a little detail in the background, the subject ends up being too dark.

Where am I going wrong?

One more thing, I try painfully hard to get my photo's straight and level, but whenever I get back to the computer, they are always wonky. I'm sure both my legs are the same length.......

Hopefully the image below highlights both my problems.



EXIF Info here

[navcom]

What you are dealing with is something called dynamic range. This is the range between the brightest and darkest spots in an image. Your eyes can see about twice the range your camera can. When that range is very great, your camera cannot duplicate what your eyes are seeing.

In this case, the sky is very bright and the foreground is relatively darker. Your camera needs to make a decision and it really only has two choices. Expose for the dark areas and get a washed out sky or expose for the sky and get a black foreground. It determined to expose for the foreground and wash out the sky.

But even in manual mode, you will still have to deal with dynamic range issues. The camera is limited regardless. There are a few options for you to deal with high DR.

First, try shooting at a different time of the day. Very early or very late will reduce some of that in this particular scene.

Second, try using HDR techniques (google HDR for details). This is where you take several shots using different exposures (bracketing) and then combine them in post processing to get a higher dynamic range photo. This might be an option for you here.

Third, you could manually change the exposure of certain areas in post-processing. For this, it would be best to expose for the sky and "bump up" the foreground. This may work depending on how much "bumping" you need to do. Too much and image quality will suffer.

The traditional way of dealing with HDR is by using a graduated neutral density filter, but in this case that wouldn't work too well.

Hope that helps!

[Krusty79]

To address the issue of keeping your images level, you should get a tripod with a bubble level. I have learned on this site that I should always use a tripod. Like navcom said, you generally don't want to shoot in the middle of the day. A sunset or interesting cloud formation in the background will add interest to your images, much better than a washed-out sky (I've had my share of those).

Keep shooting and evaluating,
Greg

[navcom]

Forgot about the level question....

Krusty is right...get a tripod and use it always (when possible). A bubble level is great too.

One other thing that might be messing with you in regards to this particular shot. In order to get perfect vertical lines, you need to position yourself as close to the centerline of the front of the building as possible. If you are a few feet left or right, the building will not be symmetrical and will look crooked.

In your case, I think there is a bit of that but also the camera is not level with the horizon as well.

Just a couple quick thoughts.

[Gaurav Prabhu]

To prevent the sky from washing out or building from darkening you'll need to create an HDR(High Dynamic Range) image on computer which is a mixture of two pics. In first pic, expose for the sky & in second expose for the building.

You can even use AUTO Exposure Compensation in Semi-Auto modes like Shutter Priority or Aperture Priority which will take 3 pics(even 5) varying exposures for creating HDR later on.

[cowgrlsheart]

Another issue with bright backgrounds is where you have your subject and what time of day it is. Mid-day portraits tend to have washy backgrounds because its so bright outside. This can be really bad on cloudy days because there's literally no color. Evening is a great time to take shots, and placing your subject with the lighting on their face (so long as their not squinting) will define their features and give your background richer color. Correct me if I am wrong. Everyone has different opinions...