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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
01-08-2012, 09:51 AM
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How to avoid blasted highlights? Chimp...and compensate. ON any high contrast shot, your camera can't cover the whole dynamic range or the scene.. you're going to have to tell it what to clip. If your subject is high in the range, you may have to under-expose, if your subject is low in the range, you may have to over expose... that's one decision you camera can't make for you. Spot metering helps, but then you have to keep your subject in the centre of the frame. Given that the rule of thirds is pretty well known, it's amazing that your camera doesn't look at the four " crossed thirds" points for something in focus instead of in the middle. That's something camera makers could correct. The fact that there is more contrast in the world (as much as 5000/1) than you can capture with a camera is just one of those things a photographer has to work with. At least until we have a sensor that can actually capture the full range of bright sunlight and shadow. In the meantime, do what most pros do. Do a lot of shooting at sunrise or sunset. The lower angle of the sun means less harsh shadows, and the lower contrast leads to fewer blasted highlights. You're probably dealing with contrast of 1000-2000/1 , much more manageable. Attack the source of the problem, the lighting, rather than trying to compensate for bad lighting. One light source high overhead is simply bad lighting, especially if it's the sun. You wouldn't do it in the studio, why do you think you can get away with it outdoors in real life?
I'd love to give the guys talking grey cards some airplay but, grey cards are for studios. I used to use an incident light reading on my light meter, all the time, but since coupled metering, I don't even carry a light meter anymore. To me, it's not even a reasonable part of the solution. You can obtain great results without using a grey card, or an incident light reading. Chimping a test shot will tell you way more than any meter reading from a grey card, or an incident light reading. I'm not saying the grey card doesn't tell you anything. I'm just saying a chimped test shot tells you more, and requires less equipment and interpretation.
I would also suggest that if you do choose to bracket, start at one stop steps... the DR range of modern equipment makes the half stop pretty pointless in most situations. I've done brackets at .5 EV increments that didn't get to the exposure I wanted. Sometimes I've even gone to 1.5 stops as in -3. -1.5-0-1.5-3.0 ev. (Warning.. when you bracket, you are usually altering your shutter speed or your f-stop the resulting changers in DoF and motion blur will change the picture such that the picture with the best exposure, is not necessarily the best picture aesthetically, there's a difference between the best picture in theory and the best picture you can get with existing light... and that tends to be very subjective as to what is the "best".) The odds of your camera's DR matching up with the Contrast range of the subject is pretty rare. I'm not saying it doesn't happen. There have been lots of times when I ended up using a half stop increments on my way to a proper exposure and lot's of times when I wished my camera was set to 1/3 ev steps instead of 1/2, but the situations where that happens in landscape or wildlife photography definitely don't warrant such a low EV gradient being the default.
But long story short, how do you avoid blasted highlights? Check your curves (by pressing the info button while chimping) and make sure your brightest highlight is about a third of the way from the far right of the window. You are very unlikely to have a blasted highlight with an image thusly exposed.
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