Beginner i keep blowing highlights

bledyn125

bledyn125

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bleddyn
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hi having a couple of problems at the moment i keep blowing highlights over exposing images.i tried a bit of street photography today in real bright sunlight i put the camera in av mode
with auto iso and evaluative metering but i pretty much overexposed every image.im going to give it another go tommorow useing centre weighted metering.is there anything else i could do to stop this happening its getting frustrating now.i would put a couple of pics up but i havent a clue how to get them off flicker anymore.

thanks

bleddyn
 
Get out of auto ISO for a start. Set your own ISO, what ISO do the pics you've taken have? What aperture are you using? Basically you're allowing too much light in, either shutter speed (doubtful) ISO or Aperture.
 
after looking at the exif i think your right ill try it out of auto iso tommorow i realy dont know how i have started useing auto iso i always used to set it myself
thanks for replying so quickly.

bleddyn
 
Bright conditions you shouldn't really have to go any higher than 100 ISO, are you shooting in RAW format, there is much more flexibility in the file to recover any blown highlights. Dial in some negative exposure compensation, I usually use around -0.7 or a third of a stop.
 
And make sure your exposure compensation dial has not been knocked or dial in by accident :)
 
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thanks for all the advice i will pop out tommorow to see how i get on i will definatley be shooting in raw and not with auto iso

thanks again

bleddyn
 
Take a look at the histogram after you take a shot don't wait until you get home and it's to late. Forget about looking at the image on the screen to see how it's exposed, that's for checking composition not exposure.
 
i use a canon 60d sorry i binned the images from today i will post some tommorow when i have had another try thats if i can work flicker out


cheers
 
Did you notice the highlights were blown only when you got home? If so turn on exposure highlighting in the menus, it'll flash black on the picture preview after you take a picture.
 
Blown highlights is the fashion at the moment....:banana:

Joking aside. Id avoid auto iso. It will make you lazy and you won't learn the exposure triangle. With practice you will be able to walk into a situation and roughly know what your camera settings will need to be.

As people have said if it's super bright....keep the iso as low as possible and use the exposure comp to get a correct exposure.
 
simonblue said:
And make sure your exposure compensation dial has not been knocked or dial in by accident :)
Click to expand...
This for me as he said pretty much every image was blown out. Even if he's used auto iso the camera should get the exposure right / almost right, so it might be incorrectly metering, dialled in compensation or perhaps using f1.4 on a very bright day.
 
This sounds like an exposure adjustment question, and auto-ISO is irrelevant to that. As mentioned above, switch on blinkies - Canon calls it Highlight Alert. That will tell you which areas of the image are blown, or on the brink of blowing. Adjust with exposure compensation.

But I'll take a punt and say actually this is a dynamic range issue - very common in bright sun that naturally casts heavy shadows against very bright highlights. If that is the case, then it's quite likely that no exposure settings will be able to put good detail in both the darkest and brightest areas. So you either have to compromise, or use another technique like HDR (High Dynamic Range - shoot say three images at different exposures and blend them in post-processing) or a graduated filter, or maybe fill-in flash, depending on the situation.
 
Like Hoppy says. Blown highlights and over exposure are two related but slightly different things.

To post you flickr pics click the > arrow on flickr at the bottom right of your pic, click on BBcode then cut and paste the address into here.
 
surfg1mp said:
Blown highlights is the fashion at the moment....:banana:
Click to expand...

Yup. You see this everywhere and people seem to like it or just not notice or care, I don't know which. I recently took some shots of my GF at the park and they're blown to bits as I intentionally let it happen and everyone's been saying how good they are :D

And to the OP...

If your street shots involve someone or buildings with strong light behind them the camera may over expose the highlights and dialling in exposure compensation may retain the highlights but make your subject a little or even excessively dark, I suppose ways around this could be...

- Shoot your subject or frame the scene in such a way that the lighting is more even / uniform and you therefore avoid the problem.
- Expose for the highlights and boost the shadows post capture.
- Use fill flash.
- Stop worrying about it and if challenged say it's your artistic choice :D and it may well be.

PS. I think that spot or centre weighted metering may well exacerbate the problem as I assume you'll be metering mostly off your subject which I assume will be darker than the highlights. Maybe you'd be better with evaluative if you want to retain the highlights even if this could make the subject darker.

I'd stick with auto ISO though, IMVHO it's great.
 
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