Bright Background

First question. Did the image upload?

Secondly. Shot a bunch yesterday and the subjects are all over powered by the bright snow. Shot on full auto with scene for snow an sand, D5500 with 55-200m lens.

Yes, I see the image.

This shot has extreeeeemelyhigh contrast... So, what you're going to want to do is expose for the highlights. This means the snow will be properly exposed for and Fido will appear underexposed. Then you bring up the shadows as best you can using post processing software. If you shoot JPG, you will have a very limited range of exposure before your shot starts to go south on you in a big way. If you shoot RAW you'll have a good 4 stops or so of adjustment before things start to go wonky.

....

What he said. It's an extreme shot and auto-modes usually don't do well with those.

You can pull some info back in post,; it's there.



Just some quick work pulling the darks and shadows, not bothering too much about the snow and rest.

Dropped the midtones, reduced the Blue channel a little, sharpened it up a bit.
.....

.....

Bourbon Neat said:

First question. Did the image upload?

Secondly. Shot a bunch yesterday and the subjects are all over powered by the bright snow. Shot on full auto with scene for snow an sand, D5500 with 55-200m lens.

Click to expand...

The way that light meters work is to try to make all things come out middle gray intensity. This makes the snow be a special problem (white background), it will underexpose to come out gray. That makes the dog dark. About +1 EV Exposure Compensation would have been a good general thing to do for Auto mode in the snow.

To correct it now, just boosting the JPG is just more problem. But if you have an Adobe Editor (Elements or Photoshop), they have this Levels control (CTRL L). This is the standard histogram tool in many editors (even Faststone has it, menu Colors - Adjust Levels or CTRL L).




Lowering the White Point makes it brighter, but clips badly, just does not come out good here.

But lowering the center point (as marked, raises the center and lower tones, basically it boosts gamma) is brightness which does not change the end points (does not clip). This is an extremely standard tool, good to know.

In this histogram, the large peak is the snow. The smaller middle peak is the shaded upper right corner, and the lowest peak is the dog.

Thank u or your psts.

Looks like it can be adjusted some with after software then. Holy crap this textbox is poop, must be we hafta key s l o w l y.

Just beginning thelearnin curve to thisamera and diital all together. Gotta be smething t gecontrast under control prio to te shutte realase.

Bourbon Neat said:

Looks like it can be adjusted some with after software then.

Click to expand...

Yes... Good post-processing software is pretty much essential for digital photographers.

Bourbon Neat said:

LHoly crap this textbox is poop, must be we hafta key s l o w l y.

Click to expand...

Try disabling Javascript (not Java!) in your browser, reload the page and then type up your post. It's what I do.

Bourbon Neat said:

LJust beginning the learning curve to this camera and digital altogether. Gotta be something to get contrast under control prior to the shutter release.

Click to expand...

Unfortunately there's not much you can do except, as I mentioned earlier, expose for the highlights and then correct things in post. Your camera can only handle "so much" dynamic range and if it's exceeded, you're going to have blown out detail. If you under-expose you'll blow out the shadows and you'll lose detail. If you over-expose you'll blow out the highlights and lose detail there instead. The idea is to get as close as you can without blowing anything out entirely -- or blow out as little as possible -- and then fix things in post-processing.

Have a read: Understanding Histograms

.....

Again, thank you all for your input.

The textbox issue is resolved by using Firefox browser.

The hints concerning post processing was a good nudge in the right direction, something that seemed a bit intimidating. Amazing things can happen with those sliders, if only I weren't color blind. LOL

Great advice on exposing to highlights, a big thank you for that Paul. The research in that direction brought huge dividends and led to other good techniques as well.