Blowing highlights: it's allowed you know.

[J.D.]

A mate of mine wants to shoot bands in pubs with his dSLR so I was trying to advise him on some of the quirks of shooting RAW in that scenario.

Pubs have the advantage of being really close but the disadvantage of getting a spotlight straight down the lens. How do you control it?

I'm going with correct exposure for the subject. Let's say you get a great action shot but the histogram shows the spotlight in the background has blown the highlights in that part of the picture. The cognoscenti will doubtless say "Highlights are blown" as soon as it goes up on the 'net. These sort of mindless responses don't help. They might be technically correct but contextually on another planet. Even with the capabilities of RAW, it's not really possible to keep every pixel happy in some situations.

Good processing would be essential. You can pull them back with the recovery slider - though of course, there are limits because you're pointed at a light source.

Blown highlights - 256 on the grey scale - means no detail. But how much detail do you need in a light source? Probably none.

If you were going to expose so that the highlights were not blown in that situation, you'd end up with a very dark image which would be more difficult to process. The more you boost the level, the more noise you introduce. Same applies to a sunset. How many people would shoot that without blowing the highlights? Probably nobody.

So in that scenario, I'm going with the best exposure possible for the face of the performer and let the highlights go.

Opinions anyone?

[Swain OHaw]

So in that scenario, I'm going with the best exposure possible for the face of the performer and let the highlights go.

I shoot theatre, dance and sometimes music on stage ... I do what you said in the quoted sentence, but you probably have to let the shadows go a little too - simple fact is the dynamic range from unlit portion of the stage to bright light source is too big, you have to aim for the thing in the light source to be correctly exposed and whatever the rest does, it does. The performer's face and clothes are the most important things, that's what the show is and what I want to photograph and presumably what people want to see, not a well exposed lighting rig.

That said, I am usually shooting 'underexposed' according to the camera because generally the performer (in the focus of the big bright light source which, if it's in the photo will blow out) is considerably lighter than the unlit portion of the stage and you need to under-expose slightly to get them within a recover-able range - it's basically a big bodge job of exposure and if you get something that looks good, a few clipped highlights and shadows don't really matter.

I'm fairly sure very few gig photos featuring lights have a perfect histogram (POTN/Fred Miranda Porn) but you go for a good balance, and the focus of that balance has to be getting the performer right, the rest usually does fall into place, pretty much ...

These were shot in a gig bar, albeit one with a nice lighting set up (better for the first set) ...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/owainshaw/ ... 234897039/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.flickr.com/photos/owainshaw/ ... 608971094/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[J.D.]

Totally agree Owain, especially with the bit about bits at the ends being clipped; you can do it.

I've seen stuff with a performer standing directly under a hard spotlight, probably 1-1½ stops over and it looked great. I've seen stuff that far under with exceptional results. It's all about context.

Do you mind if I post those links to my friend?

[DexterPunk]

High contrast situation. You just can't capture it all. These days the amount of detail you can pull back in RAW is amazing, so it's far easier than trying to get it right on 35mm slide. I'd suggest over exposing the subject by about 2/3 of a stop. You can pull exposure back down and still bring out some more shadow detail without getting excessive noise in those areas. As you said the lights can be blown, that really doesn't matter in this case. I tend to lean towards over exposure in high contrast scenes with digital. You will hear people arguing the reverse. I disagree.


Sent from Han Solo using TK-421's phone.

[Swain OHaw]

Totally agree Owain, especially with the bit about bits at the ends being clipped; you can do it.

I've seen stuff with a performer standing directly under a hard spotlight, probably 1-1½ stops over and it looked great. I've seen stuff that far under with exceptional results. It's all about context.

Do you mind if I post those links to my friend?

You can, and sometimes you have to ... it's the same as people who talk about High ISO noise like it's the plague - sure, it's there and the image won't look as smooth, but I'd rather get the image than miss it because I was afraid of a few nasty pixels ...

In normal conditions, obviously you'd aim to preserve as much as the scene as possible, but when you've got an extreme of light compared to the subject of the photograph, something has to give and it's much better to lose the highlights than to lose the point of the image ...

Post away ...

Dex, I under-expose for Theatre and Dance because usually even the "correct" camera exposure is two stops over, sometimes three, for the part of the scene I care about - the performers ... if I didn't under-expose it would be too far to pull it back, sometimes even then it requires recovery ... shadows are usualy about right, especially because in Theatre photographs there usually should be areas that are totally black, because that's how they are ...

[DexterPunk]

Yeah that makes sense, the reflected metering system will often try and expose correctly for the shadows being so prominent in the scene. But what I meant was relative to the correct exposure of the subject.


Sent from Han Solo using TK-421's phone.

[Swain OHaw]

Ahh, in that case my subject is probably still a stop or so over-exposed, because I want it to be brighter (as that's how it is) ... it's like a simplified Zone System. I don't want it to be Zone 7 because it's not, but I want a detailed white rather than a total white - this naturally means that anything brighter (such as lights) will be at least a few stops/zones up from there. And the shadows will be the other way ...

[Speed]

I never worry about blowouts when I'm shooting so long as my subject & overall scene look the way I want. Going by the camera metering in evaluative mode I find that I often over expose by 2/3 to a full stop.

The main instance where blowouts bother me is when I'm printing....white paper with no ink looks awful. I have an Epson 4880 which doesn't have a clear lacquer.

I try not to use recovery in Lightroom because I hate the way it affects the image overall.
If I'm printing something that has blowouts, I duplicate the layer & apply "average blur" then invert the layer by pressing "Control + i ", (which has the added effect of reducing a colour cast), then reduce the opacity of that layer to between 1 & 3 percent.

[J.D.]

You can, and sometimes you have to ... it's the same as people who talk about High ISO noise like it's the plague - sure, it's there and the image won't look as smooth, but I'd rather get the image than miss it because I was afraid of a few nasty pixels ...

Like the retard on Whirlpool who told me I should never have shot my 300 f/2.8 at f/20 because it was a crime and I don't deserve to own one because I don't know what I'm doing and here are the MTF charts to prove the image degradation due to diffraction and I should never shoot it above f/8 because when you look at it at 100% in Photoshop... :yawn:

I think this sort of thing is becoming a problem. It's absolutism and it's discouraging people from trying things.

If the difference between getting the shot and not getting the shot is a few small areas of no detail, then so be it. Exposure is very often a compromise. The key point is making sure it's the photographer who is compromising and not the camera.

[smithcorp]

I love coming to the forum and realising that folk here have deep knowledge about a topic I have no fucking idea about.

#respect

Sent from my GT-I9300T using Tapatalk 2

[wobblysauce]

What about something like this?

[Swain OHaw]

You can, and sometimes you have to ... it's the same as people who talk about High ISO noise like it's the plague - sure, it's there and the image won't look as smooth, but I'd rather get the image than miss it because I was afraid of a few nasty pixels ...

Like the retard on Whirlpool who told me I should never have shot my 300 f/2.8 at f/20 because it was a crime and I don't deserve to own one because I don't know what I'm doing and here are the MTF charts to prove the image degradation due to diffraction and I should never shoot it above f/8 because when you look at it at 100% in Photoshop... :yawn:

I think this sort of thing is becoming a problem. It's absolutism and it's discouraging people from trying things.

If the difference between getting the shot and not getting the shot is a few small areas of no detail, then so be it. Exposure is very often a compromise. The key point is making sure it's the photographer who is compromising and not the camera.

Likewise, these same people will probably have a 300 f/2.8 but "never use it below f/4.5 because it's sharper there, upto f/8 and then I don't use it beyond f/11" ... of course the lens has an optimal performance window, but that doesn't mean it won't work elsewhere ... and yes, I know my f/2.8 lens is sharper at f/5.6 but if I'm using it in a dark room then the image won't be sharper, it'll be darker or blurrier because of the effect on my shutter speed. Also, f/5.6 isn't quite so useful if I want a shallow depth of field ... but oh no, my subject won't be quite as sharp as that Dollar Bill against a BBC Emergency Broadcast photo.

I think the sheer number of opinions copied straight from technical manuals and pasted all over the internet, thereby perpetuating others into thinking the same is a shame ... the same as things like the "rule of thirds", all of these kinds of rules or ideas for taking good photographs inhibits people from going and taking good photographs. However, all of us seem to have managed immunity to it ...

Chances are some of my photographs will feature the rule of thirds but I have never consciously sat and organised my view-finder into thirds - I compose with my eye and what looks good to me ...

I think every exposure is a compromise, technically, it's just that some are easier to reach than others - the camera always wants to make things 18% grey and a lot of times that is a good compromise, but you have to know when it's not going to be, and what compromise you want to make for your photo ... it's one reason why I shoot Manual, so that every time I have to think about lining up that exposure bar, I have to think whether I should be lining it up in the middle or somewhere a bit to one side.

[DexterPunk]

Spot on guys, everything in photography is a trade-off. That doesn't mean you can't shoot outside the optimal, it's just good to be aware of it.

There needs to be a bit of a balance, it's fine to be picky about quality, but if you never ventured outside ISO 100-400 and f/5.6-11, you'd miss a lot of good shots. Almost all of my shots from Galapagos were shot at ISO800. Bit of extra noise, but it reduced the chances of subject movement blur and hand shake at 400mm coming into play. Yes, f/20 will suffer from a fair bit of diffraction, but if you want to extend DOF without any lens tilt, there isn't much choice. I don't have the energy to argue with those gear head pixel peepers. They need to learn how to get out and enjoy photography.



Sent from Han Solo using TK-421's phone.