topic Re: Shooting dark foreground with light background in EOS DSLR & Mirrorless Cameras

Shooting dark foreground with light background

Tintype_18 — Thu, 07 Oct 2021 20:30:18 GMT

My amateur status is showing. Here's a photo I took back in August. Did edit with PSE but can't get the background right; white stripes turn red. Can eliminate them by moving the "White" to the extreme left. This was under a shelter in daylight.. Flash?

Canon T7 1500D 1/200 f/8 36mm ISO 400 Shot at 5:56 PM

Recommendations are most welcome. Thanks.

Re: Shooting dark foreground with light background

Danny — Thu, 07 Oct 2021 20:29:49 GMT

Hi, Tintype_18!

Were you trying to include an image? If so, then when you're composing your message, click the "Insert/Edit Image" icon at the top of the text box. It's near the center of the formatting options ribbon and it's a square with a pair of mountain peaks in it. Click on it and you'll get more instructions.

That's all there is to it. We look forward to seeing what you share!

Re: Shooting dark foreground with light background

Tintype_18 — Thu, 07 Oct 2021 20:31:15 GMT

Had to go back to add the image. Senior moment. Lots of them these days.

Re: Shooting dark foreground with light background

wchettel — Thu, 07 Oct 2021 21:11:56 GMT

Hi Tintype,

In PSE, try this: File > Open in Camera Raw, then play with the Highlights and Shadows sliders. Move Highlights to the left to decrease and move Shadows to the right. You can easily reset a slider to the starting default by double-clicking the pointer.

When you're satisfied with the adjustments, click the Open button at the bottom-right - that takes you back to the PSE Editor where you can make other edits and save your photo.

Re: Shooting dark foreground with light background

jrhoffman75 — Fri, 08 Oct 2021 11:24:34 GMT

@Tintype_18 wrote:
My amateur status is showing. Here's a photo I took back in August. Did edit with PSE but can't get the background right; white stripes turn red. Can eliminate them by moving the "White" to the extreme left. This was under a shelter in daylight.. Flash?
Canon T7 1500D 1/200 f/8 36mm ISO 400 Shot at 5:56 PM
Recommendations are most welcome. Thanks.

If the white highlights are showing red I am guessing you have the highlight warning turned on.

Re: Shooting dark foreground with light background

Tintype_18 — Fri, 08 Oct 2021 12:48:40 GMT

Walter, I did play around with the various sliders to see what effect they produced. Interesting. My PSE for Dummies has a few pages devoted to this subject; use in Guided or Expert setting. I have a number of RAW photos that I can experiment with to get the desired result.

Had the opposite for the afternoon seminar. There were banners in the background but there was a lot of light from a set of double doors.

John, where do I disable the warning? Thanks for the info.

BTW, I took around 300 photos from Friday evening to Saturday evening. For some, that might not be a lot. A friend told of taking transparencies, getting them developed, sorting and sending to editors along with an article. Ah, the good ol' days!

Re: Shooting dark foreground with light background

jrhoffman75 — Fri, 08 Oct 2021 12:52:10 GMT

To turn off highlight/clipping warning there should be a little box in upper right corner of the histogram display. Just click on that box.

Re: Shooting dark foreground with light background

ebiggs1 — Fri, 08 Oct 2021 14:29:13 GMT

"This was under a shelter in daylight.. Flash?"

Flash, no Photoshop!

" Did edit with PSE but ..."

First, your white balance (WB) is way off. I think I mentioned that to you a while back. If you will just use the correct WB a lot of your problems will go away. One of the trickiest shots to do is a dark foreground and a very bright back ground (BG). This is because you exceed the dynamic range (DR) of your camera.

One solution is to shoot two shots. One exposure for the foreground and one for the BG. Then merge them in PS. Another is to learn how to use layers and masks in PS and always shoot Raw. Is this more what you are looking for?

Re: Shooting dark foreground with light background

ebiggs1 — Fri, 08 Oct 2021 14:42:44 GMT

A lot of the time, well, actually most of the time new folks try to make a simple job very much more difficult than it is. If you have a P mode snapshot let it be a P mode snapshot. You do not need any of the extraordinary features that come with your camera.

And, to add to that, when you post edit keep it simple, too. One click with the Levels tool on a neutral gray area will correct the WB. Almost every photo you take will have something that is 18% neutral grey in it. If you shoot Raw like I have been admonishing you, you will have greater latitude for correction. In this case the ladies pants is neutral grey. One click fixes WB.

You can then work on exposure which is also missed because of the bright BG.

Re: Shooting dark foreground with light background

ebiggs1 — Fri, 08 Oct 2021 15:37:33 GMT

BTW, you might try to downsize you u/l to the forum. The last one, we are discussing, is 41" and 2+megs. My reply was 950KB. It will speed up your u/l.

Re: Shooting dark foreground with light background

Tintype_18 — Sat, 16 Oct 2021 23:33:04 GMT

EB, thanks for your example.

Re: Shooting dark foreground with light background

ebiggs1 — Sun, 17 Oct 2021 14:50:25 GMT

" If you have a P mode snapshot let it be a P mode snapshot."

You do know what "P" stands for? P is for "professional mode"!

Re: Shooting dark foreground with light background

wq9nsc — Sun, 17 Oct 2021 16:57:48 GMT

Ernie did a very nice job in his post (#8) in this thread of editing the photo and I believe he has extracted about the best that can be done given what was captured.

If it was ONLY a light background and dark foreground, you can end up with a beautiful image but in most cases what happens is what you experienced with the light background being fairly close and thus reflecting a lot of light to the back of your subjects creating loss of contrast. This is a case where some properly applied fill flash will work wonders.

And pay close attention to his advice on adjusting WB because it will save you a lot of time and trouble with problematic color shifts. I shoot sports photos under some really lousy lighting conditions and using auto white balance with white priority applied does a very good job most of the time but I use the DPP "click white balance" option under white balance frequently.

Friday night I shot a football game in miserable rainy conditions at the worst illuminated field in the conference. Lighting coverage is inadequate and a large percentage of the bulbs weren't working at all with reduced output from others. Using f2.8 glass and 1/800 shutter speed resulted in ISO 16-20,000 at the best spots with most shots in the 25,600 to 32,000 range with 51,200 in the end zones. Canon 1DX series cameras produce usable photos under these conditions but the combination of poor lighting along with color temperature ranging across a wide range due to aging bulbs requires more work in post than most fields.

This was a fun shot from late in the fourth quarter with the starting QB wearing his still near pristine uniform while his line is coated in mud. Colin ran out of bounds near me early in the fourth and told me on the way back in that he wanted a photo with his mud covered line after the game was over 🙂 They did a great job of protecting him during the game!

Shot with Canon 1DX Mark III with EF 400 f2.8 @ f2.8, 1/800, ISO 40,000 processed through DPP.

Rodger

Re: Shooting dark foreground with light background

ebiggs1 — Mon, 18 Oct 2021 15:00:30 GMT

"...he wanted a photo with his mud covered line after the game was over They did a great job of protecting him during the game!"

Looks like they did a fine job. His uniform still looks clean!

You know whether teaching music or photography, the student or beginner frequently has trouble. Common. One main reason, that has varied causes to why is, they don't do what the instructor or teacher tells them.

The photo shown as an example took perhaps three minutes to get to that point. A levels adjustment, a quick mask and another levels adjustment to that. WB adjustment done with these levels. If the sample was shot with Raw it would have a much greater latitude to do these adjustments.