What happened here? HELP!

I went to the Boeing Museum of Flight today in Seattle, and was preparing a brand new gallery. I took 50 photos- when I came home to look at them, they were all awful. You see, the Museum of Flight is a building made of 80 percent glass windows from floor to ceiling. Outside it was overcast and rainy. What would be the best way and settings on the G2 to shoot these kinds of photos with a high degree of quality- without the blast out whites and overexposures? Thanks!





http://www.stereografx.com/184.jpg--Clint
http://www.pbase.com/moviebear

A Polarizer or an ND Filter may help.

Movie Bear said:

I went to the Boeing Museum of Flight today in Seattle, and was
preparing a brand new gallery. I took 50 photos- when I came home
to look at them, they were all awful. You see, the Museum of Flight
is a building made of 80 percent glass windows from floor to
ceiling. Outside it was overcast and rainy. What would be the best
way and settings on the G2 to shoot these kinds of photos with a
high degree of quality- without the blast out whites and
overexposures? Thanks!







--
Clint
http://www.pbase.com/moviebear

Click to expand...

Or what may have happened is that the camera just plain metered the situation wrong. You could meter on the bright areas and have the camera bring down its exposure level and maybe use a flash. Or try to balence with spot meter and exposure lock, or make two seperate exposures and combine.

Movie Bear said:

I went to the Boeing Museum of Flight today in Seattle, and was
preparing a brand new gallery. I took 50 photos- when I came home
to look at them, they were all awful. You see, the Museum of Flight
is a building made of 80 percent glass windows from floor to
ceiling. Outside it was overcast and rainy. What would be the best
way and settings on the G2 to shoot these kinds of photos with a
high degree of quality- without the blast out whites and
overexposures? Thanks!







--
Clint
http://www.pbase.com/moviebear

Click to expand...

Clint,

I would say, on the basis of what the camera and its meter are designed to do, that these shots are not particularly overexposed. That is to say the overall image is not overexposed - parts of two of them definitely are. The hardest thing to learn about photography (IMHO) is to evaluate the dynamic range or latitude of a scene, and relate that to the film or digital sensor you are using. Its not something you can learn out of a book.

Every film or sensor has a limited range between the brightest and the darkest intensity that it can register. This range is much less than your eye. If the difference between the brightest part of your scene and the darkest part exceed the range capacity of your film/sensor, you will have to decide which end of the scale is going to suffer. Either you are going to overexpose the highlights or underexpose the shadows. The meter of the camera is designed to render the area metered at the equivalent brightness of 18% grey. Sometimes this means highlights are overexposed AND shadows are underexposed. It depends on the scene.

If you had reviewed the second and third images using the histogram view, you would have seen the overexposed areas flashing at you. You could then have compensated by underexposing until you got the flashing to stop. Then, however, your shadows would probably have been too dark. The only way to get everything perfect is to bring your own light and use multiple strobes - hardly practical in a museum.

The trick is to remember events like this and learn from them. Learn what brightness range the camera can handle and don't try to exceed it. The hard part is learning to evaluate the scene. With a digital camera you only have to learn one range. With film you have to learn the ranges of different types of film. Negative film has a wider range than slide film for example.

Based on the brightness range of the second two images I would have tried to get the light source behind me, ie stand between the windows and the airplanes. Using flash will often help in these situations because the lens will close down to underexpose the backlighting while the flash illuminates the subject. Well worth a try, even if you're not sure the flash is strong enough - no film is being wasted.
Cheers--Happy SnappingDon McVee http://www.pbase.com/mcveed

Judging from the existing conditions I think your camera did very well..Shooting into that bright light...tough shots.
Ivan
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Movie Bear said:

I went to the Boeing Museum of Flight today in Seattle, and was
preparing a brand new gallery. I took 50 photos- when I came home
to look at them, they were all awful. You see, the Museum of Flight
is a building made of 80 percent glass windows from floor to
ceiling. Outside it was overcast and rainy. What would be the best
way and settings on the G2 to shoot these kinds of photos with a
high degree of quality- without the blast out whites and
overexposures? Thanks!

Clint
http://www.pbase.com/moviebear

Click to expand...

All of you have been most helpful. This photo shoot was a tough test-- not only for hardware but for common sense. This is where the gear needs to rely on the photographer- and not the other way around.

I do plan on a retake next week- and take the advice of all of you with me. I can only get better by practice. Stand up tall and do it again!

Thanks guys!

--Clint http://www.pbase.com/moviebear

Like a previous poster said, this situation is almost impossible unless you bring your own lighting along. One thing you could try would be to shoot at dusk when the museum lights are on and it's darker outside. Use manual white balance. The outside of the museum will color shift to blue if the inside lights are incandescent, or magenta (I think) if the inside lights are flourescent. Could make a nice dramatic effect. The problem you will have is slow shutter speeds and deeper shadows.

Good luck

Alan

Movie Bear said:

I do plan on a retake next week- and take the advice of all of you
with me. I can only get better by practice. Stand up tall and do it
again!

Thanks guys!

--
Clint
http://www.pbase.com/moviebear

Click to expand...

downloaded the Corsair and went to Photoshop and added about 26% fill flash and it came out a lot better.