G9 and blown highlights

I've had my G9 for about a month now, and while there's so much to love on this camera, I am having more problems with blown highlights with the G9 than with any other canon I've ever owned. Even the recovery slider in ACR isn't able to recoup everything, most of the time.

I always keep exposure compensation set down to - 2/3, and I've tried every metering mode. It's true that I live in FL, where there is a punishing dynamic range in the middle of the day, but I don't have this problem to anywhere near the same extent with my old A6x0 cameras, my s400, or the rebels. I've tired all metering modes. Spot metering usually doesn't blow out, but it also massively underexposes the rest of the shot if I aim for a highlight, so the end result is the same--by the time I bring things up to where you can see anything, the highlights are blown in the PP.

Does anyone have any suggestions for how best to cope with this? As it is, I would need to do HDR to get any decently exposed images.

Sorry that you are having that problem. I've never experienced this with mine but will give you the settings I use and hope they help.
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1010&message=24414537
--
Russ

Conchita,

I am new to the G9, and just learning the ropes, but maybe i can be of some help. Spot metering will meter the selected area and expose the shot as if it were "middle grey". With spot, you have to dial in exposure compensation. If you spot meter on a cloud, try +2 ev. This will bring the clouds closer to their actual brightness. Read up a little more here : http://www.spotmetering.com/
--
http://www.dustandrust.com

Thanks, Russ. I've tried all that, and the camera seems just absolutely determined to blow out. For instance, if I use the zoom at all, even to the second or third stop, if I leave it on Auto ISO it jumps to 200, even in blazing sunlight, making it that much harder to throttle back to avoid blowouts.

I'm used to fully manual controls, but even when I go into manual mode, ISO 80, say f6.3, 1/1000th to 1/2500th of a second, on a bright day, bright areas of petals, etc. will be too blown to recover except by complicated channel swapping in PS.

Now I will say that the pics look great in small sizes where you can't get close enough to see detail. It's only when I need to crop that this becomes a serious problem.

Conchita, I doubt your other compacts did much better, this is just a limitation of digital photography. Any digital camera, especially a small sensor digicam will not yield good results in mid-day sun. If you can, shoot during the golden hours - just after dawn and just before dusk.

You said when you reduce exposure then brighten up the image in pp, you still get blown highlights. Instead of bringing up the exposure on the whole image, you need to selectively bring up the areas that need it using the Curves tool. That way you can recover some of the shadows and mid-tones without blowing-out the highlights. Also, always shoot RAW in high-contrast situations. It offers more latitude than JPEG.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For the millionth time, a digicam is NOT a digital SLR!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'The primary purpose of any business is to make a profit.'
Canon CEO Fujio Mitarai

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home ;jsessionid=GX90G0k1Qp!1508707039?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=186095&is=REG&addedTroughType=search

Conchita said:

on a bright day, bright areas of petals, etc. will be too blown to recover except by complicated channel swapping in PS.

Click to expand...

This sounds like the job for a Polarizing filter.

Jim
--
Digital Photography is liberating.

Yes, I'm thinking that may be the answer. I've ordered a lensmate, so we'll see. Thanks.

Hello,

I kind of had the same problems - until I started using the live histogram. No more blown highlights!

I now follow these guys for exposure: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/expose-right.shtml

Basically they say, always meter as far to the right as possible without blowing any color channel. One can still darken the image afterwards, which gives more detail than shooting "darker" in the first place.

This means manual metering without having to fiddle with exposure compensation.

Is anyone else doing it like this?

Hi, Guerito. Well, according to ACR, they don't blow out as much, FWIW (you can open jpegs in current versions of ACR). The problem is that according to the raw converter, there is no data there to manipulate. Recovery in the basic tab usually will do quie a bit if it finds any data, but even curves isn't going to bring back what isn't there.. You're right though, that loss of shadow detail (if I reduce exposure enough to keep highlights, blacks are thoroughly clipped), is less troublesome than the highlights, so if a polarizer doesn't help, I guess that's the solution.

Conchita, have you tried turning down your contrast? I live in Florida also and have good results with my S3 with my contrast at -2.

You know, that hadn't occurred to me since I'm shooting RAW and I wasn't sure it would respond to that setting. I do keep contrast dialed down for jpeg shooting, so I'll definitely give that a try. Thanks.

Can you post a sample?

I always key in -1/3 exp compensation and I shoot RAW and I do not have blown highlights in general.

Some scenes are extremely contrasty and in that case it is possible, but for general shooting, I do not have much of a problem.

Here is my G9 gallery
http://www.pbase.com/rameshpkumar/canong9

Out of all the pictures, only on this I wished more dynamic range.



--
Thanks
Ramesh
My gallery: http://www.world-of-photos.com

Funny, I also was thinking that the g9 is great (also compared to many other cameras), except the highlight problems, was never bothered so much by blown out hightlights with any camera before. I actually did try HDR, but with AEB, the 3rd expsure is totally useless, almost evenly blown out, did not yet figure out the best way to do this with g9...

Conchita said:

I've had my G9 for about a month now, and while there's so much to
love on this camera, I am having more problems with blown highlights
with the G9 than with any other canon I've ever owned. Even the
recovery slider in ACR isn't able to recoup everything, most of the
time.

I always keep exposure compensation set down to - 2/3, and I've tried
every metering mode. It's true that I live in FL, where there is a
punishing dynamic range in the middle of the day, but I don't have
this problem to anywhere near the same extent with my old A6x0
cameras, my s400, or the rebels. I've tired all metering modes. Spot
metering usually doesn't blow out, but it also massively underexposes
the rest of the shot if I aim for a highlight, so the end result is
the same--by the time I bring things up to where you can see
anything, the highlights are blown in the PP.

Does anyone have any suggestions for how best to cope with this? As
it is, I would need to do HDR to get any decently exposed images.

Click to expand...

--

It is very hard to fight the laws of physics. According to the CCD Primer:
http://www.roperscientific.de/CCD%20primer.html

"The dynamic range of a CCD is defined as the ratio of the full well saturation charge to the system noise level. Saturation charge is limited by the well capacity of the CCD and varies with device architecture and pixel size. Small pixels have small potential wells and low saturation charge. The saturation charge level scales more or less linearly with pixel area and is independent of system noise level."

Since the G9 has relatively small pixels (very small well capacity) compared to your other cameras, your dynamic range will be compromised and the histogram will probably be clipped when lighting is extreme. Shooting in raw will help a little, but probably never equal the results you will get with the Canon A610, A620 and DSLRs.

The only way I am aware of improving dynamic range (for static scenes) in a poorly designed CCD like that in the G9 is to bracket your exposures and construct a HDR image with Photomatrix, etc.
See: http://mstecker.com/pages/test_hdr.htm

Mike
http://mstecker.com

who tells you that they are practically "relatively" small in the g9, how about S3/s5 (or other brands superzooms...) e.g.??

Michael Stecker said:

Since the G9 has relatively small pixels (very small well capacity)
compared to your other cameras

Click to expand...

--

Michael Stecker said:

It is very hard to fight the laws of physics. According to the CCD
Primer:
http://www.roperscientific.de/CCD%20primer.html

"The dynamic range of a CCD is defined as the ratio of the full well
saturation charge to the system noise level. Saturation charge is
limited by the well capacity of the CCD and varies with device
architecture and pixel size. Small pixels have small potential wells
and low saturation charge. The saturation charge level scales more or
less linearly with pixel area and is independent of system noise
level."

Since the G9 has relatively small pixels (very small well capacity)
compared to your other cameras, your dynamic range will be
compromised and the histogram will probably be clipped when lighting
is extreme. Shooting in raw will help a little, but probably never
equal the results you will get with the Canon A610, A620 and DSLRs.

The only way I am aware of improving dynamic range (for static
scenes) in a poorly designed CCD like that in the G9 is to bracket
your exposures and construct a HDR image with Photomatrix, etc.
See: http://mstecker.com/pages/test_hdr.htm

Click to expand...

Agreed. That, and the photographer choosing to pick his or her targets accordingly, such as during late day or early morning. There are scenes in mid day, high noon sun or bright cloudy days that will give a DLSR a run for the money.

--
5D and G9
Happy together.
My day job: http://www.techsign.com