Paging David Bailey or the Photoisti

What am I doing wrong when taking pictures outdoors. I always seem to lose a
lot of detail in shadows etc. Here is a link to a couple of examples.

http://www.photobox.co.uk/album/thumbnails.html?c_album=6364935

Camera is a Fuji s5000.

Mark

 

Have you made this album public?

 

Needs a login. **** that!

 

Oops! Try this.

http://www.photobox.co.uk/album/6364935

 

You need to take account of the metering seeing the sky and setting the
exposure for that, thereby underexposing the main subject. You just get
to know what's likely to happen and the LCD on the back gives you an
instant result, so you can correct for it.

In those two pics you'd probably have needed to open up the aperture by
a couple of stops - on the F5000 (assuming it's the same as the 7000)
hold down the +/- Exposure Compensation button and turn the Command Dial
until you get a +2 reading on the Exp Comp scale in the viewfinder.
Remember to cancel it afterwards.

For the group in front of the building, the quick and easy way is to
sling the camera on manual, meter off the grass in the shade and take
your shot. Takes 2 seconds.

For the chopper, it's a question of being prepared - if you know you're
going to be taking stuff in mid-air against a bright sky, you just set
it up to compensate beforehand.

Bear in mind you can do some post-processing but it never brings out the
same quality as the originals would have had if exposed properly.
--
Dave
GS850x2 XS650 SE6a

Teach a man to fish and he and his pikey mates will have the
river cleaned out in a day.

 

Looks like your camera's metering's set to average over the entire frame,
see if the Fuji has a "Spot metering" option, if so then (if it's like a
proper Chemical Camera[1]) you should be able to part-press the shutter
button to lock the focus and exposure re the spot in the centre of the
frame, then compose (eg put the 'chopper so it's approaching the centre of
the image) and click the rest of the way - it'll white out the the sky
though, as it'll be hideously overexposed, but that may be an advantage as
you can adjust in Photoshop / equivalent or cut the white / bright areas and
drop the remaining image over something else - helicopter rising out of the
lav, perhaps?

Both subjects in the pics you show are backlit, too, so they're inherently
darker than their surroundings, but at the distances involved fill-in flash
is going to require a small nuke... 10KT or so should do, airburst of
course, as the colour spectrum of a ground-zero detonation will be way off.

--
Dave H.
(The engineer formerly known as Homeless)

"Rules are for the obedience of fools, and the guidance of wise men" -
Douglas Bader

[1] at least, that's how the Pentaxes work, since about 1969...

 

That's better.

The chopper is underexposed due to the brightness of the sky, similar with
the house.

You could try a few different options, depending on the capabilities of the
camera:
- set to "backlit image"
- zoom in until the subject fills more of the frame, set "exposure lock"
and zoom out again.
- bracket the exposure (up/down) and see what works best - depending what
you want to achieve.

Alternatively you can tweak the image with PSP/Photoshop etc but there's a
limit to what these can achieve if there's limited data in the dark areas.

 

Something really simple will help a lot with the example shots - shoot
with the sun behind you.

 

Thanks to all. The chopper pic was already at full zoom so I guess it's
experimenting with a few exposure stops and go from there.

Mark

 

Use a polari[sz]ing filter and/or a skylight filter to tone down the sky a
bit. If the sky is important in landscape shots, maybe use a grad ND and
meter for the foreground. If the sky isn't important, just meter for the
foreground and let the sky wash out. A lot of cameras offer a meter lock
facility for just this very purpose.

 

Don't you think the shutter speed's a bit too fast for the helicopter shot?


--
Beav

VN 750
Zed 1000
OMF# 19

 

All this technical stuff is fine but it doesn't matter how good you are
if there is a lack of the aesthetic and there are much more photogenic
helicopters around than that one.

 

Nah - egg beaters are supposed to be lumpy and ugly. They're only
kept aloft by being repulsed by the ground.

 

Where did you take the chopper pic then? I saw that in Cornwall, I
recognise the playing card.