How to take this pic....

[dinomax]

Erm... Let say if I'm inside a shady area and behind me is an open field. It's a bright sunny day (very sunny).

How can i take a good exposed pic of myself without exposing the background??? Cos if I set the shuttle too high, the foreground (me) will be underexposed. If set too low, the background (scenary) will be over exposed.

What can i do to this situation?? Do i adjust the Aperture?? Use flash??

 

[SniperD]

If your camera has a metering system, meter on yourself and do an exposure lock to ensure that the camera dun meter on anything else brighter.

A small aperture setting (ie f8 - f22) should b good to aviod over exposure and a fill flash is good to have

 

[SzennyBoy]

The trick will be to use a fill-in flash. You'll also need to meter off the subject you want to take (ideally centre-weighted or spot metering depending on the subject to background area ratio) and not of the entire composition (i.e. matrix metering).

 

[alvin]

Is it something like this? Just finished it yesterday, appreciate you guys can give comments...

~Alvin

 

[dinomax]

Originally posted by alvin
Is it something like this? Just finished it yesterday, appreciate you guys can give comments...

~Alvin

ya! ya! like that! eheh.. u get gd expose pic of the foreground and over exposed pic of the background.

btw, guys, i'm using a Fuji 602z.

 

[espn]

What I can suggest is use a ND filter maybe ND4 ND8, use fill-flash on the subject with slightly lower shutter speed. Works for me.

 

[Kira]

Originally posted by espn
What I can suggest is use a ND filter maybe ND4 ND8, use fill-flash on the subject with slightly lower shutter speed. Works for me.

Whatever he says.....

If I'm not wrong, ND filter will reduce the possiblilty of the background going overexpose.... Fill flash is to make the foreground brighter.....

 

[dinomax]

if using the ND filter and a lower shutter spd, won't the possibility of having a blur pic higher??

 

[patch17]

might i suggest a reflector to bounce some of bright background light onto the subject. That way you could stop down the lens or use a faster shutter speed as your foreground would be sufficeintly lighted. (you may want to use centre weighted metering pointed on the foreground.)

 

[ToMyself]

All that the ND filters does is it cuts down light level across the entire picture. It WILL NOT selectively cut down bright background light and leave your shadow areas untouched.

The background light will be reduced, and so will the foreground respectively. In other words, you only simulate ISO 400 to 200, 100, 50. Light differences from high to low of the scene remains at a constant ratio.

By reducing the shutter speed, the aperture has to shut down smaller too to maintain at that EV. Although the ND filter fools your camera's AE into widening the aperture, it is because your camera now thinks it is on low ISO setting. But it also means your simulated new film speed is now less sensitive to light, thereby also cutting down the effective flash working distance. If your flash isn't strong enough to beat the new simimulated low film speed or smallish aperture, say goodbye to your foreground. You're back to square one.

Several ways of overcoming this.

Use a half gradual ND filter so that only the bright areas are darkened to balance off the foreground light.

Set the shutter to the highest flash sync speed possible. In doing so, the aperture will widen. Your weak portable flash would have a better chance filling-in the foreground darkness. You have a longer flash working distance to your subject.

When filling-in during bright daylight, remember not to defeat your purpose by using the Stofen plastic cap over your flash as it will effectively reduce the power shortening the flash working distance to subject.

 

[Pegasus]

Originally posted by alvin
Is it something like this? Just finished it yesterday, appreciate you guys can give comments...

~Alvin

Alvin, apology to you for copying this directly from your website:-
Remember, the key points here are

1.Spot Meter Enabled
2. Flash Enabled (Flash intensity depends on how far you are from the subject)
3. Manual Focus, choose a focus distance closely approximating that of the subject
4. Point your crosshairs at the brightest part of the scene, i placed mine on the puffy white clouds
5. HALF PRESS the shutter. This is important as it makes the camera retain the exposure settings for that particular point in the image.
6. RECOMPOSE the image. Frame the image while *keeping* the shutter button half pressed.
7. Engage the shutter. Make sure that you do not obstruct the flash! I tried a few times wondering why the scene was so underexposed, ends up my index finger was covering the flash =)

On point 5, when you half-press your shutter, it locks the focus or exposure? Or both? I thought half-press the shutter is to lock the focus only?

 

[Pegasus]

Hi, I follow this procedure most of the time.

1) Use spot metering or centre-metering.
2) Meter the background and note the shutter speed (S) and aperture (B).
3) Meter the foreground with shutter priority and check what's the aperture setting (F).
4) Set the camera to the shutter speed (S) and set the aperture to (B).
5) Set the external flash to manual, select aperture (F).
6) Fire the shot

 

[alvin]

Hi Pegasus!
Glad someone read through it

Well if I am not mistaken the P9 will lock both the autofocus and the exposure if you half press. This was the problem I encountered. Hence to counter this, I used manual focus (pt. 3), so the camera will only lock the exposure, then recompose, and snap!

~Alvin