Blowen Out Skies....

[Tyler138]

One thing i hate when looking back through my pictures are blown out sky. I take a lot of mountain biking photos and hate it when i have a picture with them going of a jump and the background for them is all white.

Any tips of avoiding this, is it something a polarizer will help with?

Thanks,

Tyler

 

[seriousrikk]

Sadly the only way you can really help would be to add more light to your main subject to bring it closer to the brightness of the sky. There are no filters that can selectively reduce the brightness of a scene (Grads are no use as I expect the biker is against the sky!)

Maybe have a look at a decent flashgun instead?

 

[Tyler138]

Sadly the only way you can really help would be to add more light to your main subject to bring it closer to the brightness of the sky. There are no filters that can selectively reduce the brightness of a scene (Grads are no use as I expect the biker is against the sky!)

Maybe have a look at a decent flashgun instead?

I have just bought a 430EXii ( still fiddling ) is it the case of exposing to the sky and then light the subject..?

 

[seriousrikk]

I have just bought a 430EXii ( still fiddling ) is it the case of exposing to the sky and then light the subject..?

Spot on!

To achieve this you are generally best using manual exposure and dialing in settings that keep the sky exposed nicely - maybe go a bit over exposed as this will give your flash less work.

With the camera in manual ETTL flash should to a pretty good job of exposing the rider with default settings. As you get mode comfortable with the idea you can start heading towards manual flash as well for 100% consistent exposures.

 

[HoppyUK]

You're well on the way there Tyler. Flash works brilliantly with bikes, but try to get some practise in when the light level is a bit lower than bright sun. It just makes everything a lot easier

One of the problems with bright light is the shutter speed you will need to darken the sky will be quite high, which brings you into x-sync problems when that gets over 1/200sec on your camera. The way around that is High Speed Sync flash, with your 430 has, but there are issues around that too (mainly range and power).

And then there's other stuff you'll be wanting to get into, like dragging the shutter and second curtain sync. All of which is actually really good, looks fantastic, but might add unnecessary complications at first

 

[Tyler138]

Spot on!

To achieve this you are generally best using manual exposure and dialing in settings that keep the sky exposed nicely - maybe go a bit over exposed as this will give your flash less work.

With the camera in manual ETTL flash should to a pretty good job of exposing the rider with default settings. As you get mode comfortable with the idea you can start heading towards manual flash as well for 100% consistent exposures.

Ok cheers, have had a look at manual flash but not really any luck yet, still need to look up a few things really.

You're well on the way there Tyler. Flash works brilliantly with bikes, but try to get some practise in when the light level is a bit lower than bright sun. It just makes everything a lot easier

One of the problems with bright light is the shutter speed you will need to darken the sky will be quite high, which brings you into x-sync problems when that gets over 1/200sec on your camera. The way around that is High Speed Sync flash, with your 430 has, but there are issues around that too (mainly range and power).

And then there's other stuff you'll be wanting to get into, like dragging the shutter and second curtain sync. All of which is actually really good, looks fantastic, but might add unnecessary complications at first

Yeh i have had some issues with the shutter at 1/200th not being fast enough so will look into dragging the shutter and such, cheers

 

[vaizki]

As above. Manual mode will keep your ambient light exposure locked and letting the flash go at e-ttl will (try to) take care of varying subject lighting if you are moving about etc.

I have to admit this was a bit hard for me to grasp at first, that on Manual mode the flash output would still be automatically metered and adjusted by the camera. Makes perfect sense but seemed counter-intuitive to me.. :bonk:

 

[Photodiva]

One thing i hate when looking back through my pictures are blown out sky. I take a lot of mountain biking photos and hate it when i have a picture with them going of a jump and the background for them is all white.

Any tips of avoiding this, is it something a polarizer will help with?

Thanks,

Tyler

A way to fix that in PS is to add a selective color adjustment layer, select the whites, play with the blue and cyan sliders to make the sky blue. then mask out anything else that you want to remain white. Add some cloud effects with brushes. Not a perfect solution, but often better than a white/grey sky.

 

[odd jim]

...or use two layers, one with the normal exposure, the other layer lowing the exposure significantly bringing out the blown sky. You can then selectively increase the blue saturation then tinker with contrast, highlights and shadows to bring out the clouds.

You have to shoot RAW of course as the jpegs will filter this valuable recovery data out!

Let us know if you dont know how to use layers (if you use Photoshop or its variants), its pretty easy when you know how!

 

[Tyler138]

A way to fix that in PS is to add a selective color adjustment layer, select the whites, play with the blue and cyan sliders to make the sky blue. then mask out anything else that you want to remain white. Add some cloud effects with brushes. Not a perfect solution, but often better than a white/grey sky.

Yeh i some times do this but dont really like putting clouds in.

...or use two layers, one with the normal exposure, the other layer lowing the exposure significantly bringing out the blown sky. You can then selectively increase the blue saturation then tinker with contrast, highlights and shadows to bring out the clouds.

You have to shoot RAW of course as the jpegs will filter this valuable recovery data out!

Let us know if you dont know how to use layers (if you use Photoshop or its variants), its pretty easy when you know how!

I actually tried fiddling with this the other day, came across a lot of problems around tree branches, shows a lot of white around them.

Thinks its just the case of messing with it more.