How to prevent overexposed white top .
- Thread starter melvyn83
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3. Shoot in RAW and you may be able to recover some of the overexposed areas...but learning how to meter with the Camera is a MUST
Ask the subject to take off her dress. Then she will become overexposed, but not the white top. :bsmilie:
Seriously... for portraits, a good place to meter is the face. If you know the perculiarity of your camera's meter, you will know what meter value to expect for each skin tone with some experience. For example, when I meter my daughter, who is a pale Chinese baby, I will expect a reading of +1/3 or +2/3 in Manual mode. If I get that right, the exposure is usually good. Shooting RAW helps a lot because you get about 1 stop of play in post processing. If the face is correctly exposed, but the details of the dress is muted because of too much light, then you will have to use Photoshop to help you. A quick and dirty way is to use the burn tool and burn the highlights.
Another very useful way is to apply the blue channel as another layer and choose 'luminosity' as the blend mode... Then use layer mask to apply this only to the dress. But this is quite 'cheem' and not for everyone... but if you are interested, read the book 'Skin' by Lee Varis.
Seriously... for portraits, a good place to meter is the face. If you know the perculiarity of your camera's meter, you will know what meter value to expect for each skin tone with some experience. For example, when I meter my daughter, who is a pale Chinese baby, I will expect a reading of +1/3 or +2/3 in Manual mode. If I get that right, the exposure is usually good. Shooting RAW helps a lot because you get about 1 stop of play in post processing. If the face is correctly exposed, but the details of the dress is muted because of too much light, then you will have to use Photoshop to help you. A quick and dirty way is to use the burn tool and burn the highlights.
Another very useful way is to apply the blue channel as another layer and choose 'luminosity' as the blend mode... Then use layer mask to apply this only to the dress. But this is quite 'cheem' and not for everyone... but if you are interested, read the book 'Skin' by Lee Varis.
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Hi,
I will assume that you are metering from your camera and not an incident meter.
1. If you are consistently getting overexposed whites, you are essentially metering from DARKER areas or the scene is dominated by DARK areas.
2. If you actually fill your whole viewfinder with the white shirt, it will come out GREY...between 15-18% GREY depending on your camera.
3. It is difficult to control fully if you are using "advanced" matrix metering modes etc....ie you actually have no control.....either u trust your cam meter or not. You need to spot meter (in camera if u have this mode) or use a separate incident meter if you really want to be sure of your whites coming out white. If you spot meter, point at something with the TONALITY of 18% grey and your whites will be correct.
This is a very very short summary of exposure basics....i apologise if i have not fully explained all the statements above. I can recommend "THE SIMPLIFIED ZONE SYSTEM" by Bahman Farzad if you want a introduction to proper exposure.
Squall
I will assume that you are metering from your camera and not an incident meter.
1. If you are consistently getting overexposed whites, you are essentially metering from DARKER areas or the scene is dominated by DARK areas.
2. If you actually fill your whole viewfinder with the white shirt, it will come out GREY...between 15-18% GREY depending on your camera.
3. It is difficult to control fully if you are using "advanced" matrix metering modes etc....ie you actually have no control.....either u trust your cam meter or not. You need to spot meter (in camera if u have this mode) or use a separate incident meter if you really want to be sure of your whites coming out white. If you spot meter, point at something with the TONALITY of 18% grey and your whites will be correct.
This is a very very short summary of exposure basics....i apologise if i have not fully explained all the statements above. I can recommend "THE SIMPLIFIED ZONE SYSTEM" by Bahman Farzad if you want a introduction to proper exposure.
Squall
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