HELP me expose Mary Poppins!

[mom2rtk]

I seem to have trouble getting a well exposed shot of my daughter with Mary Poppins. I think it's because of all that white. Is my problem my white balance, or my metering? Should I be using spot metering on their faces? Wouldn't that blow out the detail in the white on their dresses? It's mostly the dark faces that bother me.....

This is the uncorrected shot I took last year (except for resizing). We're headed back in a couple weeks with a new (larger) Mary Poppins costume (we're stalking her penguin this time.... but that's another pathetic story....)

Thanks for any help!

 

[zackiedawg]

You may try metering off the dresses, and use a flash to fill the shadows.

Or you can meter the whole scene, and dial in 1-2 -EV.

Or if you're really brave, have everyone stay still, and fire off an exposure burst of 3, and combine for HDR (high dynamic range).

Or meter the dresses as you have, and bring up the shadows in post processing (which looks pretty do-able with those - you still seem to have good clarity and detail on the faces, so you should be able to equalize them a bit).

A few ideas to consider!

 

[YEKCIM]

Try shooting in RAW, if that is an option, and add a little fill flash.

 

[mom2rtk]

You may try metering off the dresses, and use a flash to fill the shadows.

Or you can meter the whole scene, and dial in 1-2 -EV.

Or if you're really brave, have everyone stay still, and fire off an exposure burst of 3, and combine for HDR (high dynamic range).

Or meter the dresses as you have, and bring up the shadows in post processing (which looks pretty do-able with those - you still seem to have good clarity and detail on the faces, so you should be able to equalize them a bit).

A few ideas to consider!

You know, what I can't figure out is why they are so dark when I DID use the flash! Any thoughts?

 

[mom2rtk]

Try shooting in RAW, if that is an option, and add a little fill flash.

I have been considering shooting completely in RAW for this trip. But I won't have the laptop to dump my cards into until several days into my trip (my husband and son are joining us then.) I've been back and forth on whether I can afford a bunch more memory just to cover these few days.....

At the very least, I do think I'll change to RAW for these shots. Thanks for the suggestion!

 

[zackiedawg]

You know, what I can't figure out is why they are so dark when I DID use the flash! Any thoughts?

Ah, didn't realize you used flash already. I'd have to guess either the flash wasn't set strong enough, or just didn't have the reach.

I think you've got the right idea, metering off the dresses - it's a mostly lighter scene without any heavy shadows, so not much risk of crushing shadows, so I'd worry more about preserving the highlights in the white of the dress. RAW will certainly give you the most latitude to recover shadows, though you could probably do just fine with the JPEGs above by tone-mapping them and bringing up the shadows a touch...you don't have to push it too much, and a JPEG can handle that much adjustment. RAW can handle far more, but yours aren't that far off.

If you're not handy with tone mapping, consider a program like Topaz Adjust that has adaptive exposure adjustments - you don't have to push to the extreme HDR look - just push the adaptive exposure slider a few notches and leave the rest alone, and that photo above would look fine!

 

[Chikabowa]

Oh my goodness... that has to be one of the cutest character pictures I've ever seen. I absolutely LOVE it.

OK, first and foremost, I wouldn't go to nearly as much work as the above guys. (they are MUCH better than I am in post process, but I'm also lazy and hate doing that much work). This is totally saveable as a jpeg as it isn't an exposure issue. I'm a color calibrated monitor and your whites are not blown, but they are white. And that is REALLY good.

If you want me to take this down, let me know. But I just simply did a brightening of the overall photo in photoshop. Then dodged the faces at a low opacity, burn the white in the dresses at an even lower opacity (to bring some of the real detail back in). Then I burned a little of the background/foreground for a little more of a vignetted look.

Lastly I warmed up the overall coloring of the picture. Took me all of 1 minute, 30 seconds (Oh... and I did tell you that I'm pretty much worthless in photoshop?? I am... so this is simple stuff that anyone can do).

But you were totally on the right track. You wanted to expose for the bightest part of the frame - all those white dresses - which of course leaves the skin tone a little darker and duller. That's ok and pretty typical. Those things you can easily fix in photoshop afterwards.

(Let me know if you want me to take my play down)

 

[disneyboy2003]

Your picture & daughter are so cute!

I worked on your picture briefly. I used Photoshop's Dodge Tool on the 3 faces in the picture and brightened them slightly. If you use Lightroom, you could have also used the Local Adjustment brush and "painted" an increased exposure on each of the 3 faces.

At the time you took the picture, your camera probably didn't want to "blow out" all the white highlights in both dresses and the pants. So it under-exposed the picture so that some details still remain in the whites, leaving darker faces in the picture. This is similar to taking pictures of the snow or taking pictures of a white fence/wall.

As zackiedawg recommended, in these situations, you can add some Exposure Compensation (or +EV). Usually you'd do this if you don't need any of the details of the snow or the white wall.

However, there's a lot of detail in those white dresses, so I think you did the right thing in keeping what you have, and just brightening the faces later in Photoshop.

And, yes, I would also shoot in RAW also. You'll have lots more pixel information to work with when you brighten or darken parts of your photos later on. Yes, RAW files are huge, but memory cards are really cheap! Another option would be to buy a netbook for a couple hundred dollars and download your memory cards into your netbook's hard drive at night.

Hope that helps!

​

 

[disneyboy2003]

Ha ha, Chikabowa/Susan! You beat me to it! I must have been in the middle of typing my post when you posted your brighter picture. Great job!

 

[boBQuincy]

HDR is really the way to handle this, the brightness range is more than the sensor can capture and that is where HDR shines. But even three rapid exposures are still likely to show some movement from the characters making the HDR difficult to align, *so* perhaps a different form of HDR would work better here.

Take the three (or even two) exposures (one as before and one with about two stops more) and only patch in the faces. They should be really easy to align with a little feathering on the selection and the result should be really good.

A flash will not help much here because it can't distinguish between the white dress and the faces, both will get the same amount of light.

 

[mom2rtk]

Thank you all so much for the suggestions. I'm pretty stupid about post processing, but I plan to learn as I go. Mostly at this point I just need to be sure I have the raw data (no pun intended!) to work with, and I feel better knowing I do.

I had the same problem of course in her First Communion dress, and in another white dress on a different occasion.

And no problem leaving the photos. After all, it's in my original post.

Thanks again!

 

[Groucho]

RAW is definitely the way to go - and memory cards are dirt cheap, I'd definitely pick up extras if you have any question about if you have enough space!

I think the real issue here which nobody mentioned is those darn hats! Specifically, the big brims... those make sure that, in the sun, the dress is nice and bright and the faces are dark. Your onboard flash probably wasn't strong enough to make a big difference in the sunlight.

There are plenty of good suggestions but you may also want to try using spot metering and try metering off the face. If your camera has a bracketing function, turn that one and grab 3-5 exposures at +1, 0, and -1 stop.