Landscapes
THERE’S OFTEN little latitude for
exposure adjustment when shooting
a landscape, and you might be
unable to find a single exposure that
can record detail in both the sky and
the foreground. One solution is to use
a graduated filter to darken the top of
the picture, then bring it closer to the
exposure value for the bottom.
Alternatively, shoot three (or more)
images from the same position,
adjusting the exposure each time to
record a full range of detail of the
scene, and then blend the best bits of
each image together in Photoshop
(more on this on page 40).Backlighting
OBJECTS THAT are lit from behind
can be plunged into darkness. Using
exposure compensation to brighten
the object will also expose the
brighter parts of a scene to more
light, and there’s a risk that you’ll end
up losing some detail and colour in
these areas – as you can see in this
shot. You have a few options in this
case, depending on the subject of the
photograph: expose for the
background and create a silhouette,
use flash to illuminate the subject, or
rely on HDR or exposure blending
techniques to fill in the blanks.Hotspots
SCENES THAT have one area that’s
much brighter than the rest can be
tough. A normal exposure can leave
the ‘hotspot’ overexposed, while
reducing the exposure to retain detail
in it can leave the rest of the image
too dark. To get around this you
could set Auto Lighting Optimizer
(ALO) to its highest setting in the
hope of opening up the shadows.
My preference is to layer a normal
exposure and a darker exposure in
Photoshop, then ‘paint in’ the
underexposed hotspot on the
correctly exposed scene.EXPOSURE COMPENSATION is useful if you have lots of
exposure latitude – space on the graph to shift the histogram left or
right. But what if you don’t? High contrast scenes, where the
histogram shape is already clipped at each side, offer little room for
tweaks and you may need to employ other skills. Here are some
situations where you can’t rely on exposure compensation.64 http://www.digitalcameraworld.com
CANONSCHOOL
CONTRASTING SHOTS
High-contrast scenes
Why you can’t fix everything with exposure compensation
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