S95 - Blown Highlights

This maybe just the nature (seriously, no pun intended) of outdoor shooting, but I try to slighhtly underexpose everything and even in shots where I drastically underexposed my photo, the highlights often just go pure white. I shoot raw and do a significant amount of PP but I still don't like the results often times.. Would a polarizer filter help? I was looking at a comparison of the s95 vs the LX3/5? and the LX seemed to do a much better job of keeping the information intact. I'm totally new to this so go easy on me.

You can't really do anything about it. It's because of the very small sensor in compact camera's. It has a very limited dynamic range. That's why highlights are very easily blown out.

Well, you can try to shoot in soft diffuse light but highlight clipping is common with small sensors in bright light... even with the sensor on the S90/95.

Post an example of the your shots in this thread with exif intact.

I always thought this was because it's digital... 255,255,255 is as white as it gets in digital and it's a straight shot up to that point as opposed to film, which approaches that limit more gradually. Wrong?

Are you shooting in RAW?

Also, when you are seeing blown highlights, are you seeing blinkies on the camera's LCD screen? If so, I would not go by that too much. Instead, look at your images on your computer and then judge. Oftentimes, the computer screen is a better reference to the true colors and exposure than the LCD on the camera. In time, you will learn the difference.

I believe the OP is shooting RAW. I've started shooting to the right with good results. A slightly over exposed RAW image can recover nicely in editing software

tmwag wrote in post #11004042
I've started shooting to the right with good results. A slightly over exposed RAW image can recover nicely in editing software

Right, I see in his original post that he's shooting Raw.

TMWAG is correct on this. Technically, the reason we want to shoot to the right on the histogram is because the sensor captures more data in the lighter tones as compared to the darker tones. With the additional data, there is a greater chance of recovering details in a slightly overexposed file when doing post processing. By contrast, darker areas will have less data, so it is much more difficult to reclaim detail there.

tgara wrote in post #11004290
Right, I see in his original post that he's shooting Raw.

TMWAG is correct on this. Technically, the reason we want to shoot to the right on the histogram is because the sensor captures more data in the lighter tones as compared to the darker tones. With the additional data, there is a greater chance of recovering details in a slightly overexposed file when doing post processing. By contrast, darker areas will have less data, so it is much more difficult to reclaim detail there.

I will try this next time. Thanks for the info! I've def been trying to shoot on the left in my histogram..

Change your metering. The default tends to give white skys.

tgara wrote in post #11004290
Technically, the reason we want to shoot to the right on the histogram is because the sensor captures more data in the lighter tones as compared to the darker tones. With the additional data, there is a greater chance of recovering details in a slightly overexposed file when doing post processing. By contrast, darker areas will have less data, so it is much more difficult to reclaim detail there.

Hmm. I must say that I'm finding the exact opposite with the S90. Blown highlights stay blown, there's little there to recover. Whereas the shadows seem to have quite a bit of detail that isn't too hard to get back. I'm no expert or professional photographer, but I'm experiencing about 1/2 a stop recovery in highlights, and closer to 1-1/2 to 2 stops from shadows.

If it was a better camera, with a better sensor, yes, I'd agree. I've seen some shots from 1D & 5D and the like where there's a HUGE amount of data recoverable from the highlights, but the S90 doesn't have an APS-C sensor, and the blown highlights don't seem to contain a heck of a lot of data at all.

tgara wrote in post #10996586
Also, when you are seeing blown highlights, are you seeing blinkies on the camera's LCD screen? If so, I would not go by that too much. Instead, look at your images on your computer and then judge. Oftentimes, the computer screen is a better reference to the true colors and exposure than the LCD on the camera. In time, you will learn the difference.

In limited testing on the S95, I've found the blinkies to be rather accurate. If an area is blinking on the camera, it will be blown out when viewed on the monitor. Is your experience different?

In general, though, I agree with your statement. The LCD is indicative, but things look different on a computer screen. Pictures certainly look sharper on the LCD (for the obvious reason).

I've had the best luck exposing to the right, but not so far as to get blinkies in key areas, in raw. I've had better luck in trying to avoid high contrast scenes.

richarddd wrote in post #11019509
In limited testing on the S95, I've found the blinkies to be rather accurate. If an area is blinking on the camera, it will be blown out when viewed on the monitor. Is your experience different?

In general, though, I agree with your statement. The LCD is indicative, but things look different on a computer screen. Pictures certainly look sharper on the LCD (for the obvious reason).

I've had the best luck exposing to the right, but not so far as to get blinkies in key areas, in raw. I've had better luck in trying to avoid high contrast scenes.

My experience has been that the blown highlights shown on the LCD screen are usually not as bad and frequently recoverable when viewed on a computer monitor. My point was that although you may have blinks indicating blown highlights, in many instances, you can recover some details, especially when shooting Raw.

tgara wrote in post #11021839
My experience has been that the blown highlights shown on the LCD screen are usually not as bad and frequently recoverable when viewed on a computer monitor. My point was that although you may have blinks indicating blown highlights, in many instances, you can recover some details, especially when shooting Raw.

The camera histogram and the blinkies (and the LCD image) are based on a jpg of the picture, rather than the underlying raw file directly. If any color channel is blown, you'll get blinkies. However, it may be the case that one or two channels are blown, but the other one or two are not. In that case, ACR can usually recover the seemingly blown highlight. If you have blinkies and all three channels are blown, then meaningful highlight recovery is much less likely. Raw is better than jpg for recovery. At least that's what I could tell from looking this afternoon.

Are there different metering modes on your camera? You could also try exposing for the sky and using AE lock (not sure if it has that feature) - this will underexpose everything but the sky, but you might be able to bring back those details in PP.