Exposure

[cichlid]

Hi,

I took this photo this afternoon under bright sunlight. My question is whether the photo is under-exposed.

If I "slow" down the shutter speed, won't the sky area be over-exposed. What is the best exposure for this type of situation w/o having to pp?

f8
1/200 sec exposure time
ISO 100
Center Weighted Average
Manual exposure

 

[Kit]

There is no best exposure. This is a contrasty scene and there is only so much your camera can record in terms of the range of tones. If you don't want to post edit, wait for more light to fall on the shadowed area.

 

[psychobiologist]

Hi,

I took this photo this afternoon under bright sunlight. My question is whether the photo is under-exposed.

If I "slow" down the shutter speed, won't the sky area be over-exposed. What is the best exposure for this type of situation w/o having to pp?

f8
1/200 sec exposure time
ISO 100
Center Weighted Average
Manual exposure

an alternative is for you to lift shadows by a little in PS, i.e. abt 10%

over lifting will kill your picture, but lifting the right amount will increase the DR of your image

 

[noob117]

use the highlights/shadows tool
contrasty pictures are good for black and white pics.

 

[J-Chan]

for me I would expose more.. prob +1/3EV cos most of the scene is in shadow whereas the sky only takes up a small portion in this composition..

OT: hmm, the block looks familar.. quite near where I live..

 

[chjing]

IMO, best exposure : spot meter the sky, the flaty and the shadowed area and take the average exposure and snap.

 

[cichlid]

Thank you all for your advise.

(Kit) Its good to know that there is no perfect exposure for this contrasty scene, if not I would be blaming myself a lot for taking a lousy pic ;p

(chjing) I will try the spot metering of different areas and do an average exposure and see how the photo will turn out.

(J-chan) Usually when I am taking photos on a bright day like that, i would usually do a -EV instead of +. Because I am afraid of over-exposing it. But there is no harm experimenting with +EV as you mentioned the sky is only a small portion of the pic only. Oh ya, the block is a Hougang, near Xin Min Sec Sch.

(psychobiologist & noob117) I guess 1 can't escape from PP to improve a photo. I usually use Nikon Picture Project's Delighting feature for such scene. Seldom use my Elelment 5 as i find it not intuitive.

 

[Azure]

Yours is a case of metering. And the sky isn't your mid-tone. There is a deep green on your lower right of your frame. Try metering or AE-Lock on that.

Since you are using a dSLR, you do not necessarily need PhotoShop (nor to shoot RAW for that matter) to save this. The following image is take around 12.30pm with harsh overhead sun, should illustrate my point clearly enough (pls do not view using a LCD monitor).