When Whites are Too White

[quinceandquilt]

Hi there:

I recognize this is not a great photo, (and you don't even need to look at it to answer the question) but my question is, when the whites are too white if everything else is ok, what should I be adjusting on the camera? This was this morning--it was bright but not sunny, and I had very little time to spend composing the shot. The white clothing was too white.

THE OLYMPIC TORCH yfrog is taking too long so here is the fir... on Twitpic

This was taken with f/3.5 and 1/100 sec. on Auto with a Canon SX 120 IS

Thanks

[dakwegmo]

When you're whites are too white, and losing detail, it means the image is overexposed.

[SriMesh]

Here is tutorial for photoshop in case you want to fix it. Here is a good tip for where to get a light reading. or this one about EV (Exposure Value) As it is such a treat to have gotten such a photo of the olympic flame, I would try some sort of exposure fix in photoshop or gimp.

[quinceandquilt]

Thank you very much, and I'll study that. I have the impression that with this camera if it is on auto most everything is somewhat overexposed. My frustration is that sometimes if I get the exposure correct on the bright or white parts, then the darker parts of the photo are too dark. So with the after-processing software is it easier to make something too dark, lighter? or something too light, darker?

thanks

[dakwegmo]

When post procssing, you'll get a much better quality image by taking a bright image and making it darker. When you take a dark image and make it brighter you often add a lot of noise which never looks good. However, once you've blown the highlights there's no detail informaiton being recorded, and it's impossible to recover without making up detail. When shooting, the general rule is to "Expose to the Right". Basically what this means is you want as much data on the right side of the histogram as you can get without flattening the graph on the right. If you're up next to the right edge, you've blown the highlights.

If your camera is blowing highlights when on full auto, it may be that it's metering from a spot in the image that's too dark. For example, if you're using a spot meter, it could be measuring the light from the greenery right in the center background, which is a dark color and in shadow, if the exposure is set for that, the highlights in the image will be too bright. Check your camera's manual, or just experiment with different metering modes, to see if changing those help with the problem.

[SriMesh]

If you have the camera settings to take the capture in RAW format it is easier than in other post processing formats. However, a google search, will bring up even more than the photoshop tutorial about ideas folks have tried to address a photo with exposure issues. Layers Levels and curves If you don't have photoshop, do a search for the post processing program you do use...There was talk of a freeware program like photoshop available but I don't remember the name. It must have been exciting getting an Olympics shot!! You can use the select tool to mask areas which you want to address lighter or darker, and you can also use layers, and then use the vector mask to bring out areas from the background layer or the foreground layer using either the black or white brush respectively

Did you want to see my first attempts with photoshop? The gentleman holding the flag on the left was the biggest challenge, but the gentleman on the right and the foreground people were a bit easier.