Help with correcting this overexposure.....

[lputtbach]

Hey all - you all have always been a help to me. This past wedding - this sunny spot was way too bright and sunny with no shady spots. The couple really wanted shots in the garden. I have more sample shots if you need more! :confused:

I was shooting with a Nikon D40x on manual or apeture, with a SB800 external flash for fill.

2 questions:
1) What could I have done to prepare for this shot knowing it was too bright?

2) Is there anything in Photoshop Elements that I can do to correct these photos after the fact?

Thanks in advance. I am really stressing.
P.S. Yes, i know, interesting wedding gear - you should have seen the rest!
~Lisa

[lputtbach]

p.s. I realize this is not the most interesting thread to comment on and really......my work does not always suck!!! I just seem to have this problem often in the bright sun. Thanks!

[cdifoto]

Did you shoot RAW? If all you have is a JPEG there's nothing you can really do. A RAW would probably still be unrecoverable completely but it would have a lot more latitude than you have as a JPEG.

Next time meter for the background and use flash to fill in. Preferably off-camera.

[cdifoto]

BTW since her face is exposed pretty well you could just make it an "artsy" B&W. ;)

[lputtbach]

Yes, tried the b&w right away in hopes of recovering. No luck (well, to my taste.)

No, did not shoot in RAW.

And the flash I used was a recent upgrade - I thought I was doing all of the right things using a flash for fill!

[cdifoto]

What happened is you did not set your flash for High Speed Sync, and therefore your camera defaulted to sync speed...blowing out your entire background.

Here's a cheesy arty version of it she might like. *shrug*

271814

[lputtbach]

ok, well that is better than my try! thanks!

and thanks for the info on the flash - i will check out the settings before the next one!

[kirkt]

read lighting 101 here:

http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/03/lighting-101.html

[lputtbach]

Thanks for the link, Kirk. I could get lost in there for hours I am sure! :)

[René Damkot]

1) What could I have done to prepare for this shot knowing it was too bright?

Didn't you check the display / histogram after the shot???

Also, the camera probably gave a warning indicating overexposure (flashing shutterspeed).

Next time, as said, enable high speed sync (FP flash), use lower ISO and / or stop down.

Get to know your equipment before you do a wedding...

[egordon99]

Did you charge for this wedding? This is "Fill-flash 101" which I would hope any wedding/photography professional (going by your nice website) would have a good grasp of.

Anyway, like others said, set the flash to HSS to increase your shutter speed so the background doesn't blow out.

And SHOOT RAW!

[rammy]

Other posters have said what the issue was etc, here is some detail for you:


2 questions:
1) What could I have done to prepare for this shot knowing it was too bright?

2) Is there anything in Photoshop Elements that I can do to correct these photos after the fact?



1) Prepare: Set your ISO to 100, you don't need 400 in bright light. Normal sync speed using flash is 1/250. That means that the camera WILL NOT let you go above 1/250 shutter speed with a flash. So in this case, your shot has over exposed because of the relative slow shutter speed compared to the bright day. You can go above 1/250 by setting the flash to HSS mode.

Do a test shot first WITHOUT the flash switched on to gauge the optimum shutter speed. If it is above 1/250 then set the flash to HSS.

Do another test shot: Coerce a test subject. Switch on the flash, expose for the subject and do another test shot. Chimp the histogram and check for any blinkies in the picture. Either change camera exposure or dial down/up the flash power.

If you don't know much about the histogram then learn to read the histogram and what it means.

2) Unfortunately no. The histogram is stacked to the right and there are too many blown pixels to recover. RAW would have had a difficulty recovering this also, although you would have got some detail back.

[tim]

Watch your histogram in future, it will have told you the shot was WAY blown. If it's RAW you may be able to save it. JPG nope. In this case the background and white dress look similar brightnesses so doesn't much matter what you meter. Expose for the background and flash for the subject is a good principle though.

[james_in_baltimore]

also, I probably would have metered the background first. You can meter just off the sky, or off of grass at -2/3 stop. But yeah, in bright sunlight, like the other have said, even at ISO 100, you still might have needed to enable HSS, particularly if you are shooting wide open to blur the background. I know I keep my canon on it all the time as it just does regular flash whenever your ss is below 1/250 and only switches to hss when it reaches 1/250 and above. I am not sure if Nikons do the same thing, but I would guess they do. I am not a pro, so I find wedding dresses pretty tough, but that's what's so great about digital, you can take a test shot and review and adjust as necessary. between flash exposure compensation and regular exposure compensation, you get a lot of control.