How to handle outdoor light that blows highlights?

[willdoak]

I've attached (part of) a picture of an "audience" inside a building that has very bright outside light streaming through the rear windows. I'd like to photograph the people without large patches of blown highlights at the back.

Any suggestions on how to handle this situation?

Thanks,

Will

[Ant]

fill flash and/or ND filter

[Frank Lopes]

Set the camera as if you were photographing the windows.
In another words, set the aperture and speed for the bright areas of what you want to shoot.

This will cause the highlights to be saved but the rest will be dark.

Afterwards, adjust the shadows/highlights to bring out people's faces.

Originally Posted by willdoak

I've attached (part of) a picture of an "audience" inside a building that has very bright outside light streaming through the rear windows. I'd like to photograph the people without large patches of blown highlights at the back.

Any suggestions on how to handle this situation?

Thanks,

Will

[willdoak]

Thanks. I've been shooting in what Ken Rockwell calls "idiot mode," so I'll have to RTFM a bit.

Will

[Frank Lopes]

What kind f camera do you use?

Originally Posted by willdoak

Thanks. I've been shooting in what Ken Rockwell calls "idiot mode," so I'll have to RTFM a bit.

Will

[willdoak]

A Nikon D80 with the kit zoom lens, upgraded firmware.

[Frank Lopes]

Your camera, if I'm not mistaken, supports both "spot" and "matrix" metering.

In matrix mode, the camera samples several points of the image to judge what the best aperture/speed combination is. I think that is the default mechanism.

In this case, I would try the "spot" metering scheme measuring the light from the windows instead of the people's faces.

Originally Posted by willdoak

A Nikon D80 with the kit zoom lens, upgraded firmware.

[willdoak]

Yes, you're right. And I think I can select any of the seven or so "spots" to be the active one. So I could set one near the top of the image (the bright area) to set the exposure. I'll give that a try and post the results.

Thanks!

[garibaldi]

Thats tricky, digital cameras dont have the dynamic range (Yet) that can really allow a proper exposure with such extremes in lights to darks. So if your windows are a couple of stops or more brighter than the other subjects, they are going to blow out. If you meter off the window and expose, the crowd will be very underexposed. HDR blends suck and look chintsy IMO, besides people move. Using the shadow highlight pallette can only get you so far before it looks artificial. You can shoot raw and have a bit more latitude to try and recover the highlights and boost up the fill, but again, go too far and you will start seeing noise, wierd contrasts, color casts, etc. I split filter would help, but that physically limits you in terms of composition since you have to position the gradient properly. Basically in a situation like that, your fukd if your looking for something great straight out of the camera bc its not going to happen. Film would give you more range, but then again, .....its film. You could bracket the shot and post it with masks. But bottom line, your exceeding the mech limits of the sensors range

[garibaldi]

Another option....Light them from the front, even strobe the crowd from the front and set the exp to be equal or within a stop of the windows.

[SwampDonkey]

I would avoid metering the windows and then lightening the crowd later. The main reason for this is one of noise. Digital cameras always contain much more noise in the shadows and it's for this reason that you often hear guidance to 'expose to the right', which would effectively over expose an image but you then darken it down in post processing. I've tried this recently with some sunrise shots and the difference in the quality of the shadow areas between a normally-exposed shot, and a shot that been over exposed by an amount and then had the exposure brought back down by the same amount in Lightroom, is considerable. Sure they look very similar from a first glance but a closer look reveals better details.

So for me, the alternatives are the already mentioned use of flash or ND grad filters or you could even consider bracketing shots and then adding the windows from the lower exposure shot to the windows of the shot exposed for the audience.

Pete

[garibaldi]

swampass is right, digital shadow noise sucks!

[LQQKER]

I would have simply shot several photographs quickly from the same position, probably at a higher iso than normal to help reduce any blur. Not to the point where you have high grain. Expose a couple for back lighting and a few for the crowd, keeping the camera to the near original position and zoom consistant (if hand held). Take it into photoshop, mask, cut, layer, opacity etc. and adjust the images together using various portions. I've done this before and the results were fine.

[AFrazier]

I actually had this same issue. You don't shoot people in sunlight ... of course. So my subjects were set in the shade. However, I wanted the building in the background behind the shrubs and trees to show.
So I metered the exposure for the sunlit building, noted the aperture and shutter speed, then focused on my subjects in the shade, reset the aperture and shutter speed for the longer exposure.
Then I shot the clean shot of the subjects, reset to the noted aperture and shutter speed for the sunlit building, and blended the two images together in Photoshop, fixed the hue in the shrubs, and added a little saturation. Both were properly exposed on half the picture. Two halves make a whole.

See the attached image for an example of the mentioned photograph.

[willdoak]

Thanks for all the suggestions!

[MrAlexajlex]

Inside a building like that it is tricky.

I'd say shoot a few frames and bracket them to create an HDR like composition.

If you shoot in RAW you have 1 stop either way so you can export 3 different frames (EV -1, 0, +1) and combine them for a final pick (granted a real HDR with 5-6 frames can get better results).

If I'm outside and have control of the subjects I always nearly use the sung to their backs as a kicker and light the subjects with the flash (meter for sky and play then underexpose -1EV). Don't be afraid of the sun (having them in the shade is nice but not always an option. Besides having them face the sun creates more problems than it solves (their squinting, they are getting sweaty, the sun is a huge softbox and it gets a bit hard to shape that light (if not impossible) when they are facing it).