How do you handle high contrast areas pictures?

lalvar40 · Dec 11, 2015

Team,
When you have a scene that has 2 high differentiated contrast areas. How do you set your camera and/or video settings in P3P? In the attached picture, since the clouds are bright , then, the house is dark. I know I can fix a little bit with GIMP or PS, but I want a better source file to work with. I'll appreciate your comments.

Meta4 · Dec 11, 2015

lalvar40 said:
When you have a scene that has 2 high differentiated contrast areas. How do you set your camera and/or video settings in P3P?

If you just take the one image, in the camera you have to decide which to expose for - the highlights or shadows
In Photoshop there are a couple of tweaks you can try.
You can play with curves and shadows/highlights
or ...
You can shoot 5 frames using AEB bracketing to get two over and two underexposed images + the normally exposed one.
Combine these in your HDR program to get the best of shadow detail and highlights.

Here's a shot done that way. I had a real problem with detail in the white wash and the water looked black.
With a single shot it was just a burnt out white mess but by taking 5 of each frame and combining them, I could preserve detail in the shadows and highlights.
Because this shot is a 12 image panorama, I had to combine 60 individual images but the result was worth it.

To properly see the detail you can see it full screen here: Sea - Above & Beyond Photography

bobmyers · Dec 11, 2015

Meta4 said:
If you just take the one image, in the camera you have to decide which to expose for - the highlights or shadows
In Photoshop there are a couple of tweaks you can try.
You can play with curves and shadows/highlights
or ...
You can shoot 5 frames using AEB bracketing to get two over and two underexposed images + the normally exposed one.
Combine these in your HDR program to get the best of shadow detail and highlights.

Here's a shot done that way. I had a real problem with detail in the white wash and the water looked black.
With a single shot it was just a burnt out white mess but by taking 5 of each frame and combining them, I could preserve detail in the shadows and highlights.
Because this shot is a 12 image panorama, I had to combine 60 individual images but the result was worth it.

To properly see the detail you can see it full screen here: Sea - Above & Beyond Photography

Great work!