Subject in dark shadows and harsh sunlight

[mmanda]

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Yesterday I was trying to photograph a dance troupe. They were marching up a narrow path way in full shadow, then in the top of the frame i had full sunlight.  Looking at my images when I got home, i exposed the background ok but not the subject (stupid me, was so excited focusing and hitting that shutter I didnt even check the exposure at the time)

My question is two fold.. 1 how do I expose in these conditions when I have a subject that is moving?  I know flash would have helped but didnt have one on me. I feel i'll either have blown background or nicer subject exposure.  Is there anything I could have done better>

2nd question is - yikes this was very hard to post process. This is where I ended up,  I would love any tips and tricks anyone can provide for the future and how I can end up with better results. I feel the dancer ended up with a different whitebalance or blue hue vs how the background looks. I did try to fix it but not sure if I did or not  

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Thanks if anyone made it this far

Edited Sunday at 04:32 AM by mmanda

[erl]

IMO: Decide on what is the subject. The dancers. So make a manual exposure reading of them and blaze away with that setting.

That will 'lose' the background. Not important. Can be easily recovered (up to a point) in post by moving the highlights slider to the left.

With your image above, as you have processed it. Increase the Yellow saturation. That will fx the skin tone and improve the Red of the outfits.

You didn't do too bad anyway.

[danielfrimley]

I think doing what you’ve done is the best way to get the MOST to work with in a scene lit light this. If you expose for the bright point it’s easier to pull detail out of the shadow. Exposing for the subject will blow highlights and then they’re gone for good. Horses for courses 🙂

[fotomas]

I would say you have exposed correctly and save the highlights.

My aim is always to keep as much information as possible. You can easily discard them in post processing if you want.
Unfortunately the dynamic range of digital cameras haven't increased as much as the megapixel or ISO and situations like this pushes it to it's limits.

So the way to go is to expose for the highlights and brighten up the shadows afterwards, as you did.

The light in the shadow is always blue compared to the sunlight. Our brain compensates these color casts automaticly, but the camera shows it as it is.
In PP you can adjust this with layers and masks. So you can also put a bit more contrast to the shadows.

A flash wouldn't have helped you much here. Only the closest person would have been better exposed. The rest would have stayed nearly as dark as now.

[Bliz]

On a static subject you can bracket 2 exposure at a difference of for example 3 stops and combine them in post. On a moving subject like your picture you pretty much did what you could, I would have maybe exposed at +1 to gain a bit more information in the shadows and have a easier time in post without blowing up the sky.

Edited Sunday at 06:13 AM by Bliz

[mmanda]

Thanks everyone.  I had a lot of fun, so I always try and come back to that first and foremost

 

Edited Sunday at 06:28 AM by mmanda

[evikne]

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I always expose manually to preserve the highlights. If you shoot in RAW and use Lightroom, you can increase the exposure a lot in post before the highlights become blown out, especially if you choose a low-contrast profile such as Adobe Standard, or even better: Adobe Neutral.

Afterwards, you can lower the exposure of the sky if you wish. LR lets you automatically select a mask for the sky, and you can manually add or subtract areas if desired.

[mmanda]

1 minute ago, evikne said:

I always expose manually to preserve the highlights. If you shoot in RAW and use Lightroom, you can increase the exposure a lot in post before the highlights become blown out, especially if you choose a low-contrast profile such as Adobe Standard, or even better: Adobe Neutral.

Afterwards, you can lower the exposure of the sky if you wish. LR lets you automatically select a mask for the sky, and you can manually add or subtract areas if desired.

oh thank you, great tip re the Adobe profiles  I'll have a play with that now.  

[Derbyshire Man]

I think you did a great job. It’s always been like this, slide film had -3 to +3 stops and anything outside of this was gone for ever. Print was much better at recovering highlights at -3 to +6 or 7. Digital is pretty much the opposite, so better than -7 to +3 but with the addition latitude placed at the shadow end.

When I used my Canon T90 and use my Canon 1v they both have multi spot metering and I expose for shadow, highlight and then subject, finally use exposure compensation to move things around so I know what I’m going to get and shoot from there. On the M11 series I just select highlight priority and I’m done!

If you’d shot this on slide/print you’d never have got this dynamic range. As someone who didn’t see the actual scene this shot looks perfect.

Edited Sunday at 08:24 AM by Derbyshire Man

[Stuart Richardson]

I agree, I think you did well with a tough situation. It is generally better to expose more for the highlights and push the shadows when it comes to modern digital cameras, as if you blow out the highlights there is generally no hope of recovering them, whereas most modern digital cameras can push the shadows quite a bit if used at low ISO. In general, however, I would say that you can't really fight the light. Rather than try to fix things in post, I think your best option would have been to try to find a better position. Perhaps that was not possible, but bad light is bad light. Without a fill flight, it is going to be a struggle. Other options would be to frame out the sky and cut closer in on the dancers, exposing more for them. Black and white can also be a bit more forgiving of blown out skies, so you could expose more for the dancers, let the sky blow out and convert to b&w. But ultimately I think the lesson, if there is one, is that not all scenes can be pleasingly photographed. You've got to work with the light, not against it. 

[Chris W]

Subject in shadow with a bright background is the toughest thing to photograph.

For me I probably point the camera down and take the exposure for the main subject and accept my sky is going to be a bit blown out. Or you can take an overall reading and use exposure compensation to bring up the foreground a little before taking the shot. Or you can take an average exposure reading, giving you a little brighter sky, but a less shadowy subject, then adjust to taste in post.

[mmanda]

33 minutes ago, Stuart Richardson said:

I agree, I think you did well with a tough situation. It is generally better to expose more for the highlights and push the shadows when it comes to modern digital cameras, as if you blow out the highlights there is generally no hope of recovering them, whereas most modern digital cameras can push the shadows quite a bit if used at low ISO. In general, however, I would say that you can't really fight the light. Rather than try to fix things in post, I think your best option would have been to try to find a better position. Perhaps that was not possible, but bad light is bad light. Without a fill flight, it is going to be a struggle. Other options would be to frame out the sky and cut closer in on the dancers, exposing more for them. Black and white can also be a bit more forgiving of blown out skies, so you could expose more for the dancers, let the sky blow out and convert to b&w. But ultimately I think the lesson, if there is one, is that not all scenes can be pleasingly photographed. You've got to work with the light, not against it. 

Looking at the images, I think the dancers/troupe were in full shade - so wasn't really any better vantage point. The only think I can think of now that rather than the wider 28mm I was using something a bit longer like my 50mm might have isolated the subjects better and removed some of the sunny background.  That would have allowed for a better exposure for the shadows.  Oh well, next year  

[DenverSteve]

Suggestions are pretty good but I think in this case since your objective is to expose for your subject, you can either use your exposure compensation and live view to dial up your exposure as you see they are dark or set your exposure to center-weighted or multi-field. Also, shoot from a higher perspective (standing) and eliminate most, or all, of the sky.  

Edited Sunday at 07:05 PM by DenverSteve

[250swb]

Expose more for the shadows because nobody knows what you are seeing on the day other than yourself. And if the background and sky come out a higher value than you saw then I or anybody else don't know anything different do we? Just keep an eye on your exposures, but clearly in this situation exposing to contain the highlights mantra hasn't worked because the shadows are two or three levels beyond tweaking. There is the 'HDR' button in ACR, and the 'Auto' button isn't bad either, but you can only properly use those with a RAW file.

Edited Sunday at 08:37 PM by 250swb

[willeica]

Good advice from all above. Even if you have not compensated in the field the latest versions of Lightroom have the ability to identify the main subject, the background and/or the sky. You can then adjust the exposure and other features at will. You will find this in the broken circle called 'Masking' beneath the histogram at the top right hand side. You have done a nice job, but you could do a bit more adjustment to the sky. The feature I have mentioned is like an AI masking feature for subject identification, but the exposure etc adjustments can all be done manually. I find this very useful for a number of applications. 

William 

[Luke_Miller]

I find applying a linear profile helps in processing images with high dynamic range.