Beginner Blown out skies and how best to handle it.

Crotal Bell

Crotal Bell

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Keith
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Here are two pictures taken one after another of the local church,
The first shot had the clouds blown out,
The second shot I dropped the exp comp to -1 and raised the shadows by 30% in post edit to try and re-capture the look.
Is this the best tactic? or is there more I can do? Would paying for a top grade editing software help also?

Image 1 - Aperture priority F3.5 with the clouds blown out.
Blown out clouds.jpg

Image 2 - Aperture priority F3.5, but Exp Comp -1 and then shadows raised 30% in post edit.
EXP Comp and Shadows.jpg
 
that's the only tactic with what you have.

Burned highlights are non recoverable. there's a function to show a histogram of the picture where you can see if your highlights are burnt.
There's also a function that has the burned highlights flashing, indicating the affected area on a picture.

There's no software that can recover burned highlights because there's no information to recover.

remember to always expose for the highlights, because with modern cameras you can easily recover shadows up to a certain point.

and as @L320Rio said, if you're shooting jpeg switch to raw. With raw you get to recover more highlights and shadows. But still even with raw, burned highlights is still lost detail.

Marino
 
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I tend to photograph wildlife and BIF is always a compromise regarding exposure, get the detail on the bird and blow the sky or lose detail on the bird for a better sky. Personally I use spot exposure (-1 adjustment) centred with spot focus and concentrate on the subject. I use manual settings for Shutter and Aperture and set ISO to manual with 100 steps.
Shoot in RAW and PP can help but IMHO best to try and get it right in camera....

Best advice that was given to me ' try all the settings and more importantly enjoy the journey, it is often more rewarding than the destination' or something along those lines !
 
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Whilst it's true that you can not recover blown highlights sometimes when they look blown in camera and even if the blown blinkies are flashing it is still possible to recover the highlights post capture.

My advice is to shoot raw and use the in view histogram as a guide and shoot a series of pictures of the same scene at different settings and see if you can get a feel for when recovery is still possible even after the histogram goes off the right hand side. You don't get as much play with MFT as with larger format systems but there is still some play.

Sometimes it is maybe a good idea to forget about small blown areas that don't matter in the final picture and sometimes even large areas can blow, for example when a person in the frame is the real main subject.

Just a little example.

Here if you look at the histogram in the top right you'll see that it's showing that the whites are blown.

hf5saTx.jpg


Here the exposure has been reduced a bit and the recovery slider moved, also added some fill light and the blown whites are no longer indicated on the histogram.

aRDraMI.jpg
 
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Also, I often use a graduated filter, which would have been worth a try there
 
Sangoma said:
Also, I often use a graduated filter, which would have been worth a try there
Click to expand...

I tend not to use them post capture as it can create an unreal effect. I prefer to use the brush and paint on a reduction in exposure but I didn't want to complicate things here as the point wasn't to produce a perfect picture, the point was just to demonstrate that highlights which the camera thinks are blown or which may look blown when the picture is first imported into processing software may still be recoverable.

As above, you don't get as much scope for recovery with MFT as with larger systems but there is still some scope.
 
woof woof said:
I tend not to use them post capture as it can create an unreal effect. I prefer to use the brush and paint on a reduction in exposure but I didn't want to complicate things here as the point wasn't to produce a perfect picture, the point was just to demonstrate that highlights which the camera thinks are blown or which may look blown when the picture is first imported into processing software may still be recoverable.

As above, you don't get as much scope for recovery with MFT as with larger systems but there is still some scope.
Click to expand...
This is the software I use :)

It works quite well
sw.jpg
 
My personal approach to skies, based on the equipment I've chosen, is to expose for the sky in a way that retains detail, then lift the darker areas below in a way that balances them in post. It is the digital equivalent of using a filter, but allows precision in application, rather than darkening everything that falls under the filter.

To me, filters were fine when I had pictures printed at Boots where there was no control, but once I started printing my own pictures I couldn't go back. Likewise 30 years on I prefer to control the image in post, and only see the original photo as a starting point. Others like to use filters, and that's fine too.
 
woof woof said:
Whilst it's true that you can not recover blown highlights sometimes when they look blown in camera and even if the blown blinkies are flashing it is still possible to recover the highlights post capture.

My advice is to shoot raw and use the in view histogram as a guide and shoot a series of pictures of the same scene at different settings and see if you can get a feel for when recovery is still possible even after the histogram goes off the right hand side. You don't get as much play with MFT as with larger format systems but there is still some play.

Sometimes it is maybe a good idea to forget about small blown areas that don't matter in the final picture and sometimes even large areas can blow, for example when a person in the frame is the real main subject.

Just a little example.

Here if you look at the histogram in the top right you'll see that it's showing that the whites are blown.

hf5saTx.jpg


Here the exposure has been reduced a bit and the recovery slider moved, also added some fill light and the blown whites are no longer indicated on the histogram.

aRDraMI.jpg
Click to expand...
As the pictures are identical, I assume you moved the histogram slider in editing and recovered the clouds?
 
ancient_mariner said:
My personal approach to skies, based on the equipment I've chosen, is to expose for the sky in a way that retains detail, then lift the darker areas below in a way that balances them in post. It is the digital equivalent of using a filter, but allows precision in application, rather than darkening everything that falls under the filter.

To me, filters were fine when I had pictures printed at Boots where there was no control, but once I started printing my own pictures I couldn't go back. Likewise 30 years on I prefer to control the image in post, and only see the original photo as a starting point. Others like to use filters, and that's fine too.
Click to expand...
So basically I did the right thing? Dropping the Exp Comp until the sky has detail then lift the darker areas after?

I guess you have better range to do this and retain detail with bigger sensors?
 
If I have time tonight I'll try to post something a bit more useful about my approach to balance and recovering shadows. Not that I'm a master, but it may be helpful.
 
ancient_mariner said:
My personal approach to skies, based on the equipment I've chosen, is to expose for the sky in a way that retains detail, then lift the darker areas below in a way that balances them in post. It is the digital equivalent of using a filter, but allows precision in application, rather than darkening everything that falls under the filter.

To me, filters were fine when I had pictures printed at Boots where there was no control, but once I started printing my own pictures I couldn't go back. Likewise 30 years on I prefer to control the image in post, and only see the original photo as a starting point. Others like to use filters, and that's fine too.
Click to expand...
I fully agree, especially in this case where there was no almost straight separation like a horizon, but they often do help and make it easier to adjust later.

I would still personally prefer multi exposure HDR as the way not to lose anything.
 
Crotal Bell said:
As the pictures are identical, I assume you moved the histogram slider in editing and recovered the clouds?
Click to expand...

A as above and you can see the settings on the right hand side. I dropped the overall exposure a bit then moved the recovery slider and added some fill light.

It's not a great example but all I wanted to show was that areas which the camera or the software think are blown may not be truly blown.
 
If you shoot RAW, the RAW conversion often typically has ability to dial down Highlights, and crank up shadow area of a photo.
 
It's all down to knowing how to expose at the time and making those decisions.

I tend to expose to the right. Typically, I know i can go right up to flashing zebras on the A7Riii and 1 stop over flashing zebras on the A7 and still just retain highlight detail. From there is a case of deciding if the shadows/histogram looks okay or whether I need a brighter, separate exposure for the foreground to blend in. I won't use HDR methods, manually blend or mask.

Sometimes though I do shoot for blown highlights but that's very image and scene dependant.
 
LeeRatters said:
It's all down to knowing how to expose at the time and making those decisions.

I tend to expose to the right. Typically, I know i can go right up to flashing zebras on the A7Riii and 1 stop over flashing zebras on the A7 and still just retain highlight detail. From there is a case of deciding if the shadows/histogram looks okay or whether I need a brighter, separate exposure for the foreground to blend in. I won't use HDR methods, manually blend or mask.

Sometimes though I do shoot for blown highlights but that's very image and scene dependant.
Click to expand...
some good advice from Lee, use the zebras to help gauge how far you can push it. Just remember you can push lower ISO images more than the higher ones
 
use filters if possible, and if you have mirrorless then expose the sky so that it is almost blowing out but not quite
 
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