Steve this is the swan i meant to post

[gsgary]

Hi Steve i think this photo of the swan is better
Regards
Gary

http://gsgary.smugmug.com/photos/19607516-M.jpg

[Steve Cavigliano]

Gary,

This is nice. Very sharp and good contrast and color. :thumb :thumb But the area right behind the neck (in front of the wings) is a bit over exposed. If your camera has the ability to shoot RAW, this is easily corrected during post processing, It's almost impossible to fix it in a jpg. All you can do is use something like Shadow/Highlight adjustment to take down the brightness. But, you'll never recover the detail in the over exposed areas.

This is one of the toughest issues many people face with exposure. It's like shooting in Auto mode. Nothing wrong with that and it'll work well for maybe 75% of your routine shots. For those other 25% you have to help the camera. Either by handheld metering when possible/practical, or by judging what sort of compensation the shot should need. Experience shooting in difficult lighting, or with difficult subjects (like white birds) teaches you how much and which direction EV comp needs to be applied (you can manually compensate if in M mode).

Your swan shot looks to me like about - 1/3 EV's of compensation would have been in order.

This takin pitchas stuff isn't as easy as it looks.......lol

Steve

[gsgary]

Gary,

This is nice. Very sharp and good contrast and color. :thumb :thumb But the area right behind the neck (in front of the wings) is a bit over exposed. If your camera has the ability to shoot RAW, this is easily corrected during post processing, It's almost impossible to fix it in a jpg. All you can do is use something like Shadow/Highlight adjustment to take down the brightness. But, you'll never recover the detail in the over exposed areas.

This is one of the toughest issues many people face with exposure. It's like shooting in Auto mode. Nothing wrong with that and it'll work well for maybe 75% of your routine shots. For those other 25% you have to help the camera. Either by handheld metering when possible/practical, or by judging what sort of compensation the shot should need. Experience shooting in difficult lighting, or with difficult subjects (like white birds) teaches you how much and which direction EV comp needs to be applied (you can manually compensate if in M mode).

Your swan shot looks to me like about - 1/3 EV's of compensation would have been in order.

This takin pitchas stuff isn't as easy as it looks.......lol

Steve
I will try again after the weekend his mate is sitting on eggs http://gsgary.smugmug.com/photos/19607577-S.jpg

Gaz

[jthomas]

Gary,

This is nice. Very sharp and good contrast and color. :thumb :thumb But the area right behind the neck (in front of the wings) is a bit over exposed. If your camera has the ability to shoot RAW, this is easily corrected during post processing,

Steve
Please tell how! I've seen this stated several times on this forum, but I've never seen an explanation. I've tried searching the forum w/o luck.

I use Rawshooter Essentials (cause it's free!).

Thanks.

[gsgary]

Please tell how! I've seen this stated several times on this forum, but I've never seen an explanation. I've tried searching the forum w/o luck.

I use Rawshooter Essentials (cause it's free!).

Thanks.
Where can it be downloaded from

Regards
Gary

[Steve Cavigliano]

Please tell how! I've seen this stated several times on this forum, but I've never seen an explanation. I've tried searching the forum w/o luck.

I use Rawshooter Essentials (cause it's free!).

Thanks.Your camera creates a jpg from the 12, or more bits, of RAW data captured and applies whatever sharpening, white balance, contrast, etc to the image before compression into an 8 bit format. RAW files, are exactly that. The image as the sensor captured it, in all of it's 12 bit, or greater, glory :D No sharpening, contrast, or any other in camera tweaks have been applied. Because you have so many bits to work with, you can easily change white balance, tone and exposure levels during RAW conversion. You can usually add, or subtract a full stop to a RAW image and recover lost shadow or highlight detail. All the RAW sw I've worked with have a control or slider for increasing or decreasing exposure. If you blow out highlights, you can decrease exposure and regain detail in the blown out areas (within reason). Similarly, if you under expose some areas, you can increase exposure and gain back lost shadow detail (again, within reason).

This is a very non-technical explanation (but, that's my story and I'm stickin to it :wink )

Here's a visual example:

Dark background and a dunce behind the VF resulted in a blown out parrot
Original cropped jpg right from the camera
http://www.pbase.com/slo2k/image/26116647.jpg

After taking the RAW image version's exposure down by a stop, or so.

http://www.pbase.com/slo2k/image/26117111.jpg

Big difference in the blown out areas huh? He's still OE, but you can see detail in the head, face and chest area that you would have never been able to recover using the jpg version. I believe I also "pushed" the shadows during the RAW conversion which made the already under exposed BG, noisier.

Hope this helps clear up your question :):

Steve

[jthomas]

Where can it be downloaded from

Regards
Gary
Google "Rawshooter" !

http://www.pixmantec.com/products/rawshooter_essentials.html

Good luck.

[jthomas]

All the RAW sw I've worked with have a control or slider for increasing or decreasing exposure. If you blow out highlights, you can decrease exposure and regain detail in the blown out areas (within reason). Similarly, if you under expose some areas, you can increase exposure and gain back lost shadow detail (again, within reason).

Steve Yes, I've seen that slider in RSE and tried it, but with minimal improvement. Maybe some other ($$$:wxwax) programs are better.

[jthomas]

Tried it again last night on an obviously underexposed shot, and it worked wonders. I'm more impressed with Rawshooter now. Can't beat the price!