Anyone know why these photos are overexposed ?

GaryDeM said:

they are not overexposed in terms of overall brightness. what is overexposed is the sky. it is simply so much brighter than the dark water and ground that the camera and its meter has no way of making a exposure that is correct for both the sky and the dark water/ground. what the meter did was split the difference-the sky is too bright while the ground/water is too dark.

they are ways of taking the pic. one is to simply decide what is the subject and meter and shoot for that. the other method is to use a graduated neutral density filter on the lens so as to cut down the brightness of the sky to something the meter can handle.

there are scenes and yours is one, that have a dynamic range, the difference between the brightest and the darkest, that is greater than what a sensor can handle. if such a scene is encountered then it is up to the user to decide what to do. that is how to take the pic with different techniques and equipment.

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mosswings said:

GaryDeM said:

they are not overexposed in terms of overall brightness. what is overexposed is the sky. it is simply so much brighter than the dark water and ground that the camera and its meter has no way of making a exposure that is correct for both the sky and the dark water/ground. what the meter did was split the difference-the sky is too bright while the ground/water is too dark.

they are ways of taking the pic. one is to simply decide what is the subject and meter and shoot for that. the other method is to use a graduated neutral density filter on the lens so as to cut down the brightness of the sky to something the meter can handle.

there are scenes and yours is one, that have a dynamic range, the difference between the brightest and the darkest, that is greater than what a sensor can handle. if such a scene is encountered then it is up to the user to decide what to do. that is how to take the pic with different techniques and equipment.

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There is another way - HDR. Take several shots bracketing the selected exposure +2, +1, -1, -2 stops; get an HDR plug in or standalone program for your postprocessing; mix and enjoy. Trouble is HDR doesn't always make a realistic looking picture.

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Mannypr said:

Just a few days ago I took a pic with a lens with the sun shining to the side of the photo just to check the propensity of the lens to flare.No flare what so ever and no damage to my cameras sensor that I can see.I still works perfectly

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westerner said:

Pixels on the camera sensor are overexposed from time to time on everyone's camera, some more than others depending on what they shoot a lot. I don't believe that it can really be damaged by this, unless, possibly, the user is way overexposing all the time. It would probably take a ton of severe overexposures to cause permanent damage.

When a pixel reaches its limit on how much light it "absorbs", it simply clips out to bright white. At that point, it can no longer add any more information (it has reached 100% capacity). Now, that being said, I would not make a habit of making a 30 second exposure at the sun - that would not be smart.
--
K.B.

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Fjrjacko said:

What you have done is , overexpose the highlights , very easy to do ,

simplest way not to do it , is expose for sky , that will mean the darker area will be underexposed but thats ok it is much easier to recover detail from the shadow area than to try and fix blown highlights .

either meter off the sky and set that exposure with manual or set a negative EV

turn the highlight screen on and see whats blinking , and then adjust until there is no blinkies

tis , simple

ya pics look a bit soft to me , did ya use a good tripod

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Dragonboy said:

Thanks for the info. I actually thought that the sun was too bright so it causes the overblown part of picture. They picture were taken on a tripod finger on the shutter tho :-/ and i forgot to switch off the VR on my 18-105.
--
.

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Dragonboy said:

mosswings said:

GaryDeM said:

they are not overexposed in terms of overall brightness. what is overexposed is the sky. it is simply so much brighter than the dark water and ground that the camera and its meter has no way of making a exposure that is correct for both the sky and the dark water/ground. what the meter did was split the difference-the sky is too bright while the ground/water is too dark.

they are ways of taking the pic. one is to simply decide what is the subject and meter and shoot for that. the other method is to use a graduated neutral density filter on the lens so as to cut down the brightness of the sky to something the meter can handle.

there are scenes and yours is one, that have a dynamic range, the difference between the brightest and the darkest, that is greater than what a sensor can handle. if such a scene is encountered then it is up to the user to decide what to do. that is how to take the pic with different techniques and equipment.

Click to expand...

There is another way - HDR. Take several shots bracketing the selected exposure +2, +1, -1, -2 stops; get an HDR plug in or standalone program for your postprocessing; mix and enjoy. Trouble is HDR doesn't always make a realistic looking picture.

Click to expand...

Hi! Can i not just tweak 3 of the same raw files exposure and use them? thanks
--
.

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GaryDeM said:

first the sun is not going to damage the sensor. it will simply overload for that shot then be fine for the next scene.

ignore the sun. it is so much brighter that anything else you will probably NEVER get the sun exposed right. it is just to bright.

if i had to take the shot, i would try as follows- i know that the scene has too much dr to get all in the right exposure. after metering, i would i wouod close down the the exposure, by using ecxposure compensation. send the EC down in steps as far as it will go. this will underexposure the water/ground nthen try for recovery of mthe water/ground with pp software later. your sky will still probably be overexposed in some areas but would get close. the end result should not be totally objectionable.

the whole idea of takijg a pic of a scene is to end up with a result that is pleasing to the eye. below are some images with very dark and light areas. all worked well.
taken just after the sun went down.



below niagara gorge. the super white water in contrast to the dark rock and equally dark water.



again niagara. note the super white bright water spray with the dark water going over the edge. this is a huge contrast difference in white/dark.



sunset, looking right into the setting sun. the darkish bottom seems to end up as part of the scene and blends in. even though it is really dark.



lastly. what you would think is a sunset. actually the pic was shot on slide film(which has a very narrow dr) in late afternoon. waited until the sun was partly behind the clouds then stopped way down to kill off the light. you get a fake sunset. the water cannot be darker while the glare from the sun is super white.



a lot of good pictures are obtained by not shooting a lot of images, but thinking a lot then shooting. the question that is answered is-how do i do this? then it is up to the shooter to come up with a way.

as for focusing, i use a fstop between f5.6 and f11.0 with the f8-11 most of the time. for your shot focus on the bridge. the dof will carry the focus for the whole image at f11.0.

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