In the last
section, we’ve looked at the great advantage of exposure compensation. Even
though it does a good job at adjusting the correct exposure for many subjects,
there are also times when this handy feature cannot help you to capture detail
in both the highlights and shadows due to the larger brightness range of your
subject. In other words, you are facing with a wider dynamic range scene than
your camera can deal with. It’s one of the most common problems you’ll
encounter as a photographer.
So, you need
to cope with it. Firstly, you should know the limit of your camera’s dynamic
range, since it does vary among different camera models. Each time after taking
a shot, check the camera’s highlight warnings and histogram. Basically,
exposure compensation feature can solve the problem. But sometimes, it cannot
be fixed clearly when dealing with wide brightness range of a scene, no matter
how you set the exposure.
Quite
often, you will be able to spot these conditions after practicing in many
times. Begin with taking a shot and reviewing your shot. Make sure to activate
the highlight warning display on your camera. The camera might not be able to
catch the brightness range in the scene, if there are highlights without any
detail. It’s often indicated by the blink of highlight warning display. Luckily,
there are many ways to solve this problem.
Catching the Detail
Do your
prefer JPEG or Raw format? It’s often difficult to choose one of them, since we
know the obvious different benefits between those two. But when it comes to
capture more shadow and/or highlight detail in high-contrast scene, you can
rely on raw format. Comparing to JPEG, raw files withstand a larger dynamic range.
For this reason, it’s possible to capture as much highlight detail as you wish
by shooting in raw format and recovering the detail later on with photo editing
software.
Use the Filters
Alternative
way when dealing with high-contrast scenes is to use graduated neutral density
filters (ND grad filters). These filters can control the light levels of the
scene with huge range brightness, so detail doesn’t get lost and the resulting
image is far closer to what you actually look with naked eyes. Most of photographer
professionals use these filters to capture a large landscape area with two-separated
light levels, such as the sunset in the sea. However, you cannot use them for
subjects in narrow bright areas, such as sunlight through windows.
HDR Photography
HDR or
known as High Dynamic Range is a popular photograph technique to simply recover
detail in both the highlights and shadows in high-contrast conditions. It’s also
known as the solution if you don’t have ND grad filters. You can start by capturing
at least three images at different exposures, which are one over-exposed, one
well-exposed, and one under-exposed. To get true HDR images you need to use the
Merge to HDR tool in Photoshop to combine these images.
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