Overexposed bird - how do I fix this?

Genuine-don't wanna argue with him.

Alan Hewitt Photo said:

They don't look too bad! But, faster shutter speeds or a more narrow aperture will reduce the light.

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Yes, totally logical. If the problem is overexposure, the solution is to reduce exposure, One does that by narrowing the aperture or speeding the shutter.

But do we really want to do either of those things? Maybe. Narrowing the aperture a stop from f/5.6 to f/8 from won't hurt lens sharpness on this lens at this focal length. Increasing the shutter from 1/500 to 1/1000 won't cause motion blur problems. OTOH, narrowing the aperture or speeding the shutter will make the image noisier. Do we want that?

But there is no need to reduce the exposure. The exposure is not too high. The birds, and the whole image are NOT overexposed. If anything they are probably underexposed.

The correct statement of the problem is that the lightest part of the birds is too light. And it is only slightly too light. There isn't more than about a third of a stop of clipping here in the JPEG. Perhaps none in the RAW file.

Now, if the birds are too light, why are they too light? It isn't because the exposure is too high. It is because the ISO setting is too high, and ultimately, because the metering wasn't properly adapted to the subject.

This camera has a base ISO of 125, yet the ISO is manually set to a needless 400. This guarantees more noisiness than necessary and less DR than possible. If the image is too light, the first thing to do is reduce the ISO.

This photo would probably have been better with 1.3 stops more exposure and 1.7 stops less ISO. I doubt we'd be seeing any blown feather detail.

So how do we get to more exposure and less ISO? Start by never manually setting the ISO above base until you have first set the widest aperture that will give adequate DOF and lens sharpness and the slowest shutter that will adequately control motion blur. If you still have highlight headroom in RAW, or the JPEG is too dark, only then raise the ISO. Conversely, if the photo is too light or you are blowing desired highlight detail, increase the shutter speed.

If one wants the birds on the right to be sharper, stop down to f/8. Otherwise the f/5.6 used is fine. Unless one has good reason to be worried about rapid feather movement, the shutter of 1/500 is faster then needed on a lens with OIS at 214mm focal length. If camera motion blur is the only motion blur concern here, then 1/100 should be perfectly adequate here.

So depending on our assessment of DOF requirements to frame right, and of controlling blowing feathers, possible correct settings for this shot would be

{f/8, 1/500, ISO 640}, (we want more DOF and need to control feather motion blur)

{f/8, 1/100, ISO 125} (we want more DOF but aren't concerned about feather motion)

{f/5.6, 1/500, ISO 320} (DOF is fine and we care about feather motion), and

{f/5.6, 1/200, ISO 125} (DOF is fine and we aren't concerned about feather motion)

Other than probably using too high an ISO and too low an exposure, the problem here is that in an autoexposure mode the camera made the image slightly too light for its white subjects. If you can't spot meter the white feathers or get nothing much more than a whole bird in the centre-weighted metered area, then you are best off adding a little -ve EC (1/3 stop would have done in this case,).

If I remember correctly from my film days (possibly still applies now), spot metering was designed to give what was called a mid tone. Every colour has a mid tone.

So if you spot meter off a bright white subject you are actually metering to give you a mid tone white (more greyish in colour).

If you spot meter off a dark subject you will end up with a lighter result.

To obtain an as seen white or dark subject you would need to alter your exposure to make it longer or shorted thus making your subject lighter or darker in the final image.

Of course everything around your subject will become lighter or darker as well. So it is important to understand what you want to end up with as the mid tone in your image and expose accordingly.

Sometimes it was/is necessary to spot meter of multiple parts of the image to understand the exposure range within the scene you are wanting to capture (if you have time).

Ansel Adams made use of this knowledge with the "Zone System" he used when exposing, developing and printing his negatives etc.

Of course, with digital these days, post processing allows us to regain some of our blown highlights and dark shadows.

Yes, a digital camera will do the same. Put a camera in full auto, fill the frame with a white sheet of paper and make a photo. Then fill the frame with a black sheet of paper and make a photo. Both photos will look the same...middle gray. Cameras are designed to render the world as having a middle gray tonality.

mharps said:

If I remember correctly from my film days (possibly still applies now), spot metering was designed to give what was called a mid tone. Every colour has a mid tone.

So if you spot meter off a bright white subject you are actually metering to give you a mid tone white (more greyish in colour).

If you spot meter off a dark subject you will end up with a lighter result.

To obtain an as seen white or dark subject you would need to alter your exposure to make it longer or shorted thus making your subject lighter or darker in the final image.

Of course everything around your subject will become lighter or darker as well. So it is important to understand what you want to end up with as the mid tone in your image and expose accordingly.

Sometimes it was/is necessary to spot meter of multiple parts of the image to understand the exposure range within the scene you are wanting to capture (if you have time).

Ansel Adams made use of this knowledge with the "Zone System" he used when exposing, developing and printing his negatives etc.

Of course, with digital these days, post processing allows us to regain some of our blown highlights and dark shadows.

Click to expand...

Folks looking for an automated, automatic solution to this kind of issue are, in my experience, barking up the wrong tree.

In the moment, there's often not a way to get an accurate exposure via metering in this kind of situation. Part of the solution comes from experience — and it might suggest trying to reduce exposure by 2/3 to 10 stop when there's a really white bird in a more neutral scent. Another part of the solution is to make a quick check of the histogram and/or use the "blinkies" display in the camera that flashes blown out areas.

Your camera is a great meter and exposures are cheap. Make one. Take a look at the histogram, check for blinkies, and use the EC control to adjust accordingly.

Just a minor point to Fingerpainter's post. ISO was set as 'Auto' on the camera and it chose 400, not me.

Alan Sh said:

Just a minor point to Fingerpainter's post. ISO was set as 'Auto' on the camera and it chose 400, not me.

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Yes, but had you dialed down the exposure compensation a bit, the unnecessarily ISO is what would have been reduced to prevent the highlight clipping (and without reducing the sensor exposure any).

The highlight detail can be clipped by either too much exposure or the ISO being too high. The only reason the camera would have chosen to set a higher ISO (brightness) instead of setting a higher exposure (probably by reducing the SS here), is if the SS was already at its minimum preset value (which is fine if, for whatever reason, that’s where it needed to be). The issue here is that the camera didn’t quite judge the high dynamic range scene correctly and failed to capture all the important highlight detail. That’s why exposure compensation exists - to override what the camera’s metering comes up with in tricky situations like this.

With the blinkies enabled, those two birds would have been blinking slightly and you would have known to dial in a click or two of negative EC until they weren’t.

I think you are worrying about nothing but try nothing back the contrast slightly and detail should appear. Which software do you use for processing?

Alan Sh said:

I took some pictures of birds - example below. But, while the rest of the picture looks fine, the actual bird seems way overexposed. It's white - I get that - but I've lost all the detail.

So, what did I do wrong and how can I correct it for any future shots?

Thanks for any advice

Alan

Click to expand...

I use Capture One - and sometimes Phtoshop Elements. I will try what you suggest.

Alan

Alan Sh said:

Just a minor point to Fingerpainter's post. ISO was set as 'Auto' on the camera and it chose 400, not me.

Click to expand...

Sorry, I didn't pick up the use of Auto-ISO from the EXIF, but that could be my failure or the limitations of my EXIF reader.

What I did see in the EXIF was that you were in an autoexposure mode, that the mode was shutter priority, that ISO was set to 400, and EC was set to 0.

If you were in Auto-ISO, the camera's choice of ISO 400 was understandable, given that the lens is wide open and you had chosen a shutter speed of 1/500 and no EC. If you had applied -0.3 EC it would have chosen ISO 320. If you had chosen a slower shutter, the camera would have set an even lower ISO.

To maximise DR and minimise noisiness in shutter priority mode, you should use the slowest shutter speed that doesn't result in unwanted motion blur. That's both camera motion blur and subject motion blur.

As I said in my previous post, with OIS on the lens, you should have been able to avoid camera motion blur at a shutter speed down to about 1/100. That's just 2.7 stops slower than the critical sharpness rule of thumb of a shutter speed of 1/(2 x crop factor x focal length). Can't OIS give you 2.7 stops?

I'm less certain about avoiding subject motion blur. I wasn't there on the day, and I'm not familiar with the behaviour of these particular gulls. You'd know better then me if there was a risk of feathers blowing in the wind or sudden motion. If there wasn't such a risk, you should have used a slower shutter. If there was visible feather ruffling from the wind, 1/500 may be completely justifiable. The interesting case is the intermediate one: the risk of sudden movement. In photography we are always making trade-offs. When using a faster shutter against the risk of possible but uncertain movement, I will usually take multiple shots, at least one of which uses a slower shutter.

A general comment about a reply focus I'm seeing. If I'm reading this correctly, a number of posters are going after the choice (or automatic selection) of ISO 400 in this particular case.

I think that's more than a bit off the track.

In the. real world, for a bunch of real world reasons, people photographing wildlife are going to necessarily use ISO 400 and higher quite often. Frequently when I'm photographing migratory birds, starting before sunrise and concluding at dusk, and often photographing in challenging conditions such as tule fog, I end up shooting at much higher ISOs than 400. In fact, 1600 or even 3200 are common in the lowest light.

So in a general sense, while going with a lower ISO in this specific photograph might have made a marginal difference in the blown-out highlights, that's not the main issue here and the real solutions lie elsewhere.

Mainly, as several have not suggested, it is important to use the EC control to second-guess the camera's AE settings in cases like this. It is simply a fact that when the camera meters a scene with white birds and darker components that we almost always need to compensate by altering the exposure to protect the highlights on the white bird... especially if the birds are in the sun.

So the main lesson here is not to avoid ISO 400. It is to compensate for the extremely bright luminosity of the white birds by offsetting the exposure to ensure that the white features don't blow out... no matter what ISO you need to use.

Folks have different preferences for how they accomplish this, and any of them are fine. My own is to use aperture priority mode, but keep an eye on the shutter speed the camera selects... and learn to quickly make some reasonably accurate guesses about how to use the EC knob in situations like the one in this thread... and then double-check them with the blinkies and/or the histogram as possible.

(added context: I always shoot in raw mode.)

--
When in doubt, doubt.
www.gdanmitchell.com

Alan Sh said:

Just a minor point to Fingerpainter's post. ISO was set as 'Auto' on the camera and it chose 400, not me.

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Hello,

First, I consider that your picture is over-exposed which means too bright (on certain part of the image), this is how over-exposure is understood by the majority of people.

I think you have 2 alternatives:

• as already mentioned you can use a lower ISO but this means that the image may look a bit too dark, so you may have to correct it in post processing. This is the manual alternative
• Another possibility is to use DR200 (1 stop under exposure) or DR400 (2 stops under exposure), it will under-exposure but correct brightness automatically but only for the dark/mid tones (to protect highlights) ! Use DR400 for important over-exposure. You can even use DR auto which will select these modes if necessary.

These 2 possibilities are equivalent but the difference is that the second is automatic (does no require post-processing).

I like the way it works ! I rarely agree with Fuji but here, for this implementation, they are spot on !

The way to use it is: simply use EC to have a lightness "globally correct"; even if you may have over-exposed parts. And then use this function to protect highlights, but only if necessary.

If you shoot raw, it is certainly better to do this manually to have more control. But if you want OOC images, I recommend this function.

So, the history of the shot went like this:

I wanted to test out my 70-300 and I was hoping to get some BIF shots. I saw these gulls resting on the ledge from some distance away. I manually set the SS to 1/500'th as I thought that would be fast enough if they flew off. I set the AF to "C" and set the camera to slow multi shot (can't remember what that is called). Everything else was set to automatic. I gradually walked towards the birds taking a few shots as I approached. The shot you see is one of them.

Of course, they flew off - and I didn't get a single one of them flying in focus. [As expected - this is all new to me].

When I got home, I looked at what I got and that resulted in the question I originally asked.

And I forgot to move it back to AF-S which resulted in another question on this forum.

All the answers here have been a great help - I am still a beginner when it comes to Fuji - and doing non-static shots.

Alan

Alan Sh said:

So, the history of the shot went like this:

I wanted to test out my 70-300 and I was hoping to get some BIF shots. I saw these gulls resting on the ledge from some distance away. I manually set the SS to 1/500'th as I thought that would be fast enough if they flew off. I set the AF to "C" and set the camera to slow multi shot (can't remember what that is called). Everything else was set to automatic. I gradually walked towards the birds taking a few shots as I approached. The shot you see is one of them.

Of course, they flew off - and I didn't get a single one of them flying in focus. [As expected - this is all new to me].

When I got home, I looked at what I got and that resulted in the question I originally asked.

And I forgot to move it back to AF-S which resulted in another question on this forum.

All the answers here have been a great help - I am still a beginner when it comes to Fuji - and doing non-static shots.

Alan

Click to expand...

No need for an explanation. Occasionally, we all tend to take ourselves a little too seriously on these forums.

Relax and enjoy your new lens. This is about having fun. You've gotten some great advice and will have a better chance at getting the image that makes you happy the next time. In the meantime, enjoy the journey.

I responded to the OP asking how to avoid over-exposure in future shots. The answer is to let less light in. How we do that practically can of course vary.

Alan Hewitt Photo said:

I responded to the OP asking how to avoid over-exposure in future shots. The answer is to let less light in. How we do that practically can of course vary.

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The question the OP asked was a bit more open, "So, what did I do wrong and how can I correct it for any future shots?" That presented an opportunity to explore adjustments either to exposure or to post-exposure lightening (ISO). In this case, it's likely the OP could have avoided blowing out the highlights by keeping exposure the same and lowering ISO. They may even have been able to accomplish that goal by shooting at base ISO and increasing exposure.

Bigger picture...blown highlights aren't always a result of overexposure. Highlights can be clipped, if a higher than neceseary ISO is used. That's a useful bit of info to have in one's hip pocket when doing photography in situations where light may become a limited resource. If one optimizes exposure first and then sets ISO, one can maximize light to the sensor and avoid blowing out highlights.

--
Bill Ferris Photography
Flagstaff, AZ
http://www.billferris.photoshelter.com

You buy a copy of this old John Shaw book and learn how to properly expose your images.

The book is older and geared entirely for shooting film. But - most any two pages are a concept. Easy to understand and well illustrated with first rate images. Exposure, composition and more are covered well. Your overexosure problem is covered well.

No, I don't get anything from a book sale. It will help a lot with many of the questions that might come up in your photo work.

Alan Sh said:

So, the history of the shot went like this:

I wanted to test out my 70-300 and I was hoping to get some BIF shots. I saw these gulls resting on the ledge from some distance away. I manually set the SS to 1/500'th as I thought that would be fast enough if they flew off. I set the AF to "C" and set the camera to slow multi shot (can't remember what that is called). Everything else was set to automatic. I gradually walked towards the birds taking a few shots as I approached. The shot you see is one of them.

Of course, they flew off - and I didn't get a single one of them flying in focus. [As expected - this is all new to me].

When I got home, I looked at what I got and that resulted in the question I originally asked.

And I forgot to move it back to AF-S which resulted in another question on this forum.

All the answers here have been a great help - I am still a beginner when it comes to Fuji - and doing non-static shots.

Alan

Click to expand...

We were all beginners once, and we can relate! In particular, photographing birds — especially in flight — presents a ton of challenges at first, and they never completed go away.

You'll make a lot more unsuccessful photographs as you pursue this, but each one is learning experience that will, over time, increase your success rate.

Dan

Bill Ferris said:

Bigger picture...blown highlights aren't always a result of overexposure. Highlights can be clipped, if a higher than neceseary ISO is used. That's a useful bit of info to have in one's hip pocket when doing photography in situations where light may become a limited resource. If one optimizes exposure first and then sets ISO, one can avoid blowing out highlights and maximize light to the sensor.

Click to expand...

Trying to boil this down to "ISO too high" is taking an edge case and trying to apply it to something that is a lot more basic and obvious.

You don't overexpose because you choose ISO 400. You overexpose because your exposure choice isn't right for the subject. And here, the issue is that the subject was overexposed for its bright highlights.

This is actually a basic, fundamental, and very important consideration with digital photography — overexposing highlights to the point that they blow out means that you cannot recover the details in the blown out area. (With negative film, the situation was reversed — response rolled off at the bright end so you could push things further, but if you underexposed you might end up with blocked shadows.)

The ideal way to deal with this situation is to "under-expose" (e.g. correctly expose to protect the highlights of the white birds) and make some adjustments in post. Ideally, photograph in raw mode so as to retain the greatest flexibility for post-processing adjustments.

The post-processing adjustments can range for really, really simple (sometimes it is only necessary to raise the "exposure" value a bit, in other cases you might raise "shadows" or "black" and possibly lower "white" and/or "highlights" a little) to more complex techniques using masking.

Also, to those suggesting the various native Fujifilm modes that "expand the dynamic range," you do know that they do this by... raising the actual ISO, right? Essentially the camera raises the ISO (in fact, you lose the lowest ISO settings when you choose these modes) and then pushes the shadows... just as we would do in post. (If you don't want to use raw mode, this is a fine solution... since it roughly, and with less control, mirrors that processes we would apply to the raw file in post.

Bottom line: Don't blow out highlights in your exposure with digital capture.

gdanmitchell said:

Bill Ferris said:

Bigger picture...blown highlights aren't always a result of overexposure. Highlights can be clipped, if a higher than neceseary ISO is used. That's a useful bit of info to have in one's hip pocket when doing photography in situations where light may become a limited resource. If one optimizes exposure first and then sets ISO, one can avoid blowing out highlights and maximize light to the sensor.

Click to expand...

Trying to boil this down to "ISO too high" is taking an edge case and trying to apply it to something that is a lot more basic and obvious.

Click to expand...

In this case, ISO was higher than needed. If a lower ISO had been used with the same exposure, highlights would not have been blown out.

gdanmitchell said:

You don't overexpose because you choose ISO 400.

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ISO isn't an exposure setting so, of course the choice of ISO doesn't determine overexposure. Exposure is strictly determined by available light, f-stop and shutter speed.

gdanmitchell said:

You overexpose because your exposure choice isn't right for the subject. And here, the issue is that the subject was overexposed for its bright highlights.

Click to expand...

The subject was not overexposed. The subject was overlightened during processing after the shutter actuation was complete. As a result, highlight detail was lost. That's what happens when an ISO higher than needed is used.

gdanmitchell said:

This is actually a basic, fundamental, and very important consideration with digital photography — overexposing highlights to the point that they blow out means that you cannot recover the details in the blown out area. (With negative film, the situation was reversed — response rolled off at the bright end so you could push things further, but if you underexposed you might end up with blocked shadows.)

Click to expand...

It's a basic fact of all photograhy that exposure is determined by available light, f-stop, and shutter speed. ISO or ASA or film sensitivity do not directly affect exposure.

gdanmitchell said:

The ideal way to deal with this situation is to "under-expose" (e.g. correctly expose to protect the highlights of the white birds) and make some adjustments in post. Ideally, photograph in raw mode so as to retain the greatest flexibility for post-processing adjustments.

Click to expand...

Choosing the widest lens aperture that delivers an acceptable depth of field and the slowest shutter speed that adequately renders movement in the frame maximizes exposure within the confines of the photographer's creative goals. That's not underexposure. That's optimizing exposure.

gdanmitchell said:

The post-processing adjustments can range for really, really simple (sometimes it is only necessary to raise the "exposure" value a bit, in other cases you might raise "shadows" or "black" and possibly lower "white" and/or "highlights" a little) to more complex techniques using masking.

Click to expand...

It's not possible to alter exposure after the shutter actuation has ended. The photograph can be lightened or darkened (dodged or burned) during processing but exposure is fixed when the shutter actuation completes.

gdanmitchell said:

Also, to those suggesting the various native Fujifilm modes that "expand the dynamic range," you do know that they do this by... raising the actual ISO, right? Essentially the camera raises the ISO (in fact, you lose the lowest ISO settings when you choose these modes) and then pushes the shadows... just as we would do in post. (If you don't want to use raw mode, this is a fine solution... since it roughly, and with less control, mirrors that processes we would apply to the raw file in post.

Click to expand...

The Fuji DR modes are more complex than you describe. Here's a post with some test photos you may find interesting: https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/66532053

gdanmitchell said:

Bottom line: Don't blow out highlights in your exposure with digital capture.

Click to expand...

As I wrote in a previous post, "blown highlights aren't always a result of overexposure. Highlights can be clipped, if a higher than neceseary ISO is used."