Highlights

[AlistairC]

Hi everyone,

Went out shooting with my D50 today and have some absolute beginner questions that I'd appreciate if someone could try and answer for me. I'll post some of my pics for review soon.

I was shooting predominately landscape today (for you Sydneyites it was down at Bobbin Head). Whenever I included the sky in any of the photos it would appear to be burnt out. I was shooting on Program mode. So basically my questions is?

What makes an image burnt out?
What is the best way to aviod burn out?

Thanks
Alistair

[mudder]

G'day Alistair,

Blown highlights are basically when the amount of light received for the shutter time used exceeds requirements... Dunno how else to explain that... The sky can easily get blown out as that's where most of the light comes from...

A few things that could help are:
Use of an ND grad (filter over the lens), where a region of the filter (usually half of it) has a grey area which reduces the light, this part is usually used for the sky to try and reduce the light from the sky and balance the foreground a bit... I've never used one but I've seen great results from some of the members here... With these, I assume you simply place the area of the filter that goes from clear to grey at the horizon, or where the amount of light transitions...

A circular polariser also helps and also adds saturation and contrast too... Although it'll lose about a stop or more of light, so your shutter times will increase...

You could take multiple (I just use 2) exposures say a stop or so apart (this assumes you're using a tripod) and you could then blend one exposure over the other using the over exposed image for the foreground, and the lower exposed image for the sky detail... Easy peasy to do... I do that a lot for landscape stuff, any static subject that has a high dynamic range...

Also, the difference in the amount of light between the foreground and the sky might be made more extreme during the times of day where the sun is strongest... Early morning light and late light is nice for landscapes, also tends to warm the light and create yummy long shadows...

I'm sure more people will come along with some ideas too... These are just the first few I thought of...

Post an example, it may help get more info for you...

[avkomp]

firstly I think I would do away with using the program mode because it will choose aperture and shutter speed.

you will learn more about photography by using other modes.
I suggest aperture priority because YOU choose the aperture you wish to use and the camera chooses a shutter speed.
This way you have more control and start to get a feeling for why you might be using certain settings.

As for your original question, it is hard without seeing some of the images in question but typically the sky is brighter than ground so sometimes it isnt possible to have both correctly exposed BUT in your case perhaps you were shooting into the sun??

Perhaps try shooting with the sun behind you
and avoid shooting subjects in strong shadows and bright skies.
Sometimes we meter for the sun (but this makes everything else too dark, so we use the flash to fill in the details) this has limited range though and wont light up a landscape.

Cameras can only record limited ranges of shades of light unlike the human eye which can display light to dark all at once.
so we need to avoid situations which have very dark and very bright in the one scene. with time you will learn to realise what can and cannot be recorded.

hope that makes some sense.

Steve

[avkomp]

mudder got in whilst I was typing. thought I was going to be the first.

Steve