Overexposed photo help

I took a team photo tonight and I thought the 30D was in shutter priority...but was in manual, 1/200, F4.0...ISO 400 and this is the result my 70-200mm IS L lens gave me. I took it in raw as well as high JPG....I tried to fix in the Canon RAW editor but the left sides of their faces are still washed out. I need to know if it's salvagable, or if anyone could fix this. I was crunched for time and rushed the shot. Dohhhh!

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If those highlights are blown out even in the raw, then you're doomed, I'm afraid.

But where there's detail, there's hope (to coin a phrase).

When you're processing the raw, address the histogram, and do whatever it takes to get that highlight detail in there, even if it means taking the contrast and brightness way down. Then use Photoshop as best you can - perhaps some careful use of the Shadow/Highlight filter as a starting point?

When using Adobe Camera RAW and you use the exposure slider, you can get about 1 full f-stop before you run out of recoverable data - any clipped detail beyond that is hard clipped (gone forever).

why iso 400 on such a bright day? id go iso 100 but again why f4? id have aimed for f8 to make sure they are all in focus. try darken the image and see if there is any detail in their blown out faces.

If you post a link to a RAW file, someone may give it a hard look.

On the posted copy, the detail is gone.

Believe me, I said the same thing after I took it...it was an inpromtu shot...and I didn't have a whole bunch of time...they just won a District championship and were itching to get out of there! I thought it was on ISO 100.

Here's the raw file...10mb...have at it anyone! Thank you!
http://www.propointmed​ia.com/raw/IMG_4474.CR​2

Ooooh ... that detail's really gone, isn't it ...

Maybe you need to reach for the big history palette in the sky, and go back to the step where you took the photo!

Gave it a try and theres really no data under all that white to save. its realllly blown out.
bummers....

Damo77 wrote in post #3529579
Ooooh ... that detail's really gone, isn't it ...

Maybe you need to reach for the big history palette in the sky, and go back to the step where you took the photo!

Yeah, my thoughts too...lesson learned there. Thanks.

howzitboy wrote in post #3530155
Gave it a try and theres really no data under all that white to save. its realllly blown out.
bummers....

I got off 5 shots in about 15-20 seconds and this is the result. The first shot I took in shutter priority mode at 1/60 thinking the aperture would be set accordingly, but that ended up being F20.0 on that one, at ISO 250. It was taken early evening around 7pm.......Thanks for trying anyway....

This is such a classic example of Hard Clipping. Once the highlights are more than 1 full f-stop, I call that Hard Clipping, as opposed to soft clipping, which is still present in the RAW file.

Using Adobe Camera RAW you can keep on sliding the exposure slider to the left until it has no effect on the Red areas - the amount that is still shown in Red is the amount that has been Hard Clipped.

DPP users will notice a different behavior. In DPP, for all practical purposes, whatever is clipped at all is hard clipped - nothing is recoverable. However, it is difficult to make a comparison between DPP and ACR, because the tools do not work the same, and the real differences may be only in the way the two programs interface with the user.

The image is overexposed and light on the sides of their faces has gone beyond the exposure of the camera sensor. The is no detail recorded in their faces to recover. There is the best I can do in Lightroom using the recovery tool. All the information recorded is recovered.

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nice try, i tried that too but it was too bright for my tastes. then i tried to clone the dark side of their faces, flip it and past over the too bright side, but there still was a hot spot down the middle of their faces lol.

dcyphert wrote in post #3528200
I took a team photo tonight and I thought the 30D was in shutter priority...but was in manual, 1/200, F4.0...ISO 400

A good lens without good technique doesn't go far. Even if you thought you were in a different mode, why didn't you review the histogram after you took the shot? You should have your camera set to display the histogram during it's shot review display. You should have checked the histogram, saw how horriblly shift to the right it was, and said "don't move yet" while you check your camera to see what you had set wrong and reshoot.