[nanhi]

Well, I have been a decent photographer since age 10. Coming from a family of photographers with the best equipment one can afford, things often go wrong with my photography.
I have read some of the best books on photography by the masters, some of these being practical work books. Have gone on numerous photo walks. Have taken free photo seminars for beginners.
So yesterday was my sons 39th birthday and we had a celebration out on hot and sunny Toronto. The beach umbrella was red in color, so I had a hard time with the white balance - turned our faces into red lobsters. The bright & sunny background under exposed the photos below the huge umbrella.
The patio was wooden decked and the camera on the tripod would vibrate each time someone moved, so I had to keep a high shutter speed. This shot up the ISO in TAv mode - and required some noise correction in PP.
To make matters worse, folks moving about the huge round table would get cut out from the pre-composed frame - remember I was shooting with the camera on a tripod with the Pentax remote. One can't recompose in such situations, so many good shots were lost
With all the sunshine around, it never occurred to me to bring the flash gun with me. And the camera's in built flash would cast a huge shadow due to the lens hood.

Required tedious work in Lightroom to get an appreciation for my effort.
And finally one of the guests said, what is that thing in your hand pointing at the camera in almost all the frames?? I wish I had one of those radio remotes in place of the IR stuff.

Hey Friends, with all my hard learned experience, things always seem to go wrong.
Help!! What would you do??
Regards.

[Aaron28]

always experience frustration when I apply undue pressure to myself thinking I am goin to get this totally right and forget to enjoy the moment.......
been reading and need to experiment with a polarizing filter.....that may help with these very sunny situations.....I don't know
we had a family event down at the river and got very few 'good' shots out of many but was still glad to have any at all

[kiberkli]

Can you post a couple of pictures?

You can try narrow shots to not get bright (sandy?) backgrounds.
Shoot from below, up, if you're under a canopy to avoid bright backgrounds.
Set the white balance to shadow.
Tape a paper cup over the on-camera flash to diffuse the light.

I don't know, hard to tell without seeing some photos.

---------- Post added 08-17-15 at 08:41 PM ----------

and forget to enjoy the moment.......

Yup, that.

[davidreilly3207]

Try using two second delay to give yourself time to hide the remote.

[nanhi]

Aaron28 & Kiberkli Sir, here are my photos - the originalsb but heavily resized for the forum. Ofcourse I corrected the colors in Lightroom as much as I could.

[UncleVanya]

My Dad and I were talking about this - he suggested setting the interval timer and having it just go off frequently and then you have fully candid shots - lots of them. And you get to enjoy yourself.

[kiberkli]

Aaron28 & Kiberkli Sir, here are my photos

I see what you mean. Is your AE metering center-weighted or spot? But that might have blown out your background. With that background using a flash might have worked. Hindsight is 20/20.

These images look good, though. "...things always seem to go wrong.", 'Wrong' is relative

[mike.hiran]

Convert to B&W! Silver Efex pro could do wonders and the grain will help you...

[wildman]

What would you do??

This is a high dynamic range shot that's pushing the sensor to it's techical limits...

... so - shot RAW, spot meter on highlights, expose for ETTR, let the shadows fall where they may and normalize the final image in Photoshop.

For this kind of difficult lighting you have to think like a sensor not a photographer.

It's a lovely family shot otherwise BTW.....

[nanhi]

I have summed up all the helpful tips from all you beautiful Pentaxian Photographers - what an awesome community.
These tips might help other photographers "when things go wrong with them", even though they are damn good at photography.

a) Aaron28
Need to experiment with a polarizing filter.....that may help with these very sunny situations.

Answer: Oh my God, had a polarizer and a GND Filter. Always thought a CPL was for the sky and expanses of water.

b) kiberkli
Shoot from below, up, if you're under a canopy to avoid bright backgrounds.
Set the white balance to shadow.
Tape a paper cup over the on-camera flash to diffuse the light.

Answer: tried WB "Shadow" & some others. Not much better. I suspect my K-5 IIs has a problem. Could not use the on-camera flash - the lens hood throws a bad shadowy patch.

mdave13
Try using two second delay to give yourself time to hide the remote.

Answer: A good suggestion. My mind was fooled by the thought "that the photo moment might be lost in that 2 seconds". So did not use it. What a shame.

UncleVanya
setting the interval timer and having it just go off frequently and then you have fully candid shots - lots of them. And you get to enjoy yourself.

Answer: My God! This is an awesome suggestion. Can I make another suggestion: shoot high def video and extract the "Keeper" photos from it.


kiberkli
Is your AE metering center-weighted or spot? But that might have blown out your background. With that background using a flash might have worked.

Answer: The metering was Matrix (Pattern) as per Exif data. External Flash would have been the best. Fooled by all the sunshine and left it behind. Another regretable mistake.

vagrant10
Convert to B&W! Silver Efex pro could do wonders and the grain will help you.

Answer: Will try it in Photoshop or Lightroom. This a time old trick that Pro Photographers use. Do not have Silver Effect Pro, Vagrant10 Sir.

wildman
Shoot RAW, spot meter on highlights, expose for ETTR, let the shadows fall where they may and normalize the final image in Photoshop.

Answer: Certainly agree on RAW. This is what I am trying to say - it is just these little things that we forget and regret later. ETTR is where you expose for the highlights and then recover the shadows in post? I tried this. Only resulted in the red lobster faces to a greater degree because of the red beach umbrella.
Toronto is extremely hot and bright at this time of the year. The temp was 39 degrees Celsius. Perhaps I could have invoked "highlight and shadow correction".
It was mighty kind of you to have taken time to correct the photos and attach it. My heartfelt thanks Wildman Sir.

May the Force be with you all.

[ChristianRock]

Shooting in RAW lets you adjust the white balance later to whatever you want it to be. That way you don't get the "lobster faces". My non-critical processing of RAW files is done in 3 quick steps, so it doesn't really take much time:
1. Adjust white balance if needed, 90% of the time I don't.
2. Use auto levels (every software has some kind of auto levels). If it makes the picture worse and blows up colors, just adjust the exposure slider if needed, instead.
3. Bring up shadows (there's usually some kind of "fill light" slider that does this).
90% of the time I get what I need this way. Sometimes I might have to adjust sharpening (my software already adds a little bit by default - that is why it's not a step in my routine), or some contrast (especially in harsh sun conditions).

It is possible to shoot with the built-in flash in bright situations like this and use it as fill-in flash. I've done it many times, even under direct sun, to try to avoid getting what I call the "racoon eyes" look - the shadows in the eyes. Under and umbrella it should work well, you'd just have to make sure that you have proper distance and that you get a long enough exposure to avoid shadows in the background. I'll use like 1/30 to 1/80 - usually 1/60 works very well, I find. The flash helps freeze motion for the most part. Then I adjust aperture and ISO for that (shooting in Manual of course). In these cases I sometimes end up using apertures like f8 or even f11, but who cares - in family pictures nobody really cares about bokeh that much. I could blur backgrounds if I needed to, but so far I haven't needed.

Even better than the built-in flash is an external flash, of course. I am pretty attached to my Auto Thyristor flashes but sometimes (I have 3) and sometimes I like to play with my Zeikos flash in manual mode. I don't even have a P-TTL flash.

Why don't you practice one hot sunny afternoon in your back porch with a something like a vase or a big stuffed animal to test different flash settings (including onboard in case you don't have a flash with you)? I've done that before and it helped when I came in harsh light situations like these.

[nanhi]

Shooting in RAW lets you adjust the white balance later to whatever you want it to be. That way you don't get the "lobster faces". My non-critical processing of RAW files is done in 3 quick steps, so it doesn't really take much time:
1. Adjust white balance if needed, 90% of the time I don't.
2. Use auto levels (every software has some kind of auto levels). If it makes the picture worse and blows up colors, just adjust the exposure slider if needed, instead.
3. Bring up shadows (there's usually some kind of "fill light" slider that does this).
90% of the time I get what I need this way. Sometimes I might have to adjust sharpening (my software already adds a little bit by default - that is why it's not a step in my routine), or some contrast (especially in harsh sun conditions).

It is possible to shoot with the built-in flash in bright situations like this and use it as fill-in flash. I've done it many times, even under direct sun, to try to avoid getting what I call the "racoon eyes" look - the shadows in the eyes. Under and umbrella it should work well, you'd just have to make sure that you have proper distance and that you get a long enough exposure to avoid shadows in the background. I'll use like 1/30 to 1/80 - usually 1/60 works very well, I find. The flash helps freeze motion for the most part. Then I adjust aperture and ISO for that (shooting in Manual of course). In these cases I sometimes end up using apertures like f8 or even f11, but who cares - in family pictures nobody really cares about bokeh that much. I could blur backgrounds if I needed to, but so far I haven't needed.

Even better than the built-in flash is an external flash, of course. I am pretty attached to my Auto Thyristor flashes but sometimes (I have 3) and sometimes I like to play with my Zeikos flash in manual mode. I don't even have a P-TTL flash.

Why don't you practice one hot sunny afternoon in your back porch with a something like a vase or a big stuffed animal to test different flash settings (including onboard in case you don't have a flash with you)? I've done that before and it helped when I came in harsh light situations like these.

The back porch test shooting is a brilliant idea. Thanks ChristianRock Sir. I too prefer the Auto Thyristor Flash but have yet to master it as a fill flash. I bought a flash gun set for a song with three modules - Thyristor the Quantaray QDA-P, TTL the Quantaray QDA-PAF & PTTL the Promaster 5050DXR, when Wolf Cameras were closing down. The Flash Gun is the Quantaray QB-6550U. They all came for $ 88.
Sir, request please help in setting it up to shoot as aThyristor Flash with my K-5 IIs. Both the Flash and the Thyristor Module is color coded - three colors for the distance scale wrt to the f-stop and the slider with the ASA/ISO setting. When I set the camera to Tv mode, the QDA-P module sets the F-stop on the camera and the flash sync speed automatically.
Thereafter I get 50-50% luck. Still do not know how to set it up for fill flash.
Will provide more information / photos if you need them.
Regards.

[aleonx3]

The beach umbrella was red in color, so I had a hard time with the white balance - turned our faces into red lobsters. The bright & sunny background under exposed the photos below the huge umbrella.

Not sure why there is a problem with white balance.... did you shoot RAW or JPEG; I notice you are using k-5IIs, it should not be a problem at all.

The patio was wooden decked and the camera on the tripod would vibrate each time someone moved, so I had to keep a high shutter speed. This shot up the ISO in TAv mode - and required some noise correction in PP. To make matters worse, folks moving about the huge round table would get cut out from the pre-composed frame - remember I was shooting with the camera on a tripod with the Pentax remote. One can't recompose in such situations, so many good shots were lost

TAv mode would cause problem in this case especially when you set the shutter speed too low in broad daylight. Noise should not be a problem as long as it is under ISO 1600 (in your photo it is ISO 320).

With all the sunshine around, it never occurred to me to bring the flash gun with me. And the camera's in built flash would cast a huge shadow due to the lens hood.

I would not use flash if at all possible; just try to avoid shooting into the shadow against bright background.

Required tedious work in Lightroom to get an appreciation for my effort.
Regards.

I was a lightroom user until I bought the latest Silkypix developer 6, which makes post processing much simpler and smoother. A few thing that Silkypix does very well compare to LR, you can use skin tone for white balance adjustment, auto noise reduction from RAW to JPG and the most useful one is group edits (same slider/control value applied to selected group of photos).

[Aaron28]

experiment with a polarizing filter

that may have made for a slower shutter speed though......the shots are still pretty good though! and good estimations for being away from the controls

interval timer

novel idea

[aleonx3]

Answer: Certainly agree on RAW. This is what I am trying to say - it is just these little things that we forget and regret later. ETTR is where you expose for the highlights and then recover the shadows in post? I tried this. Only resulted in the red lobster faces to a greater degree because of the red beach umbrella.
Toronto is extremely hot and bright at this time of the year. The temp was 39 degrees Celsius. Perhaps I could have invoked "highlight and shadow correction".
It was mighty kind of you to have taken time to correct the photos and attach it. My heartfelt thanks Wildman Sir.

I understand ETTR from the film days... but with the high DR of the DSLR, it is less practical now, and I often shoot with -EVC because shadow can be recovered but not highlights (if it is already clipped). With matrix metering which you use, sometimes could be a little tricky especially with high contrast situation (bright background).