EOS R7 street photography lighting and contrast help

[mdphotography]

per the subject, I've been doing some street photography, but really struggle with the contrast between the buildings and the sky...especially when shooting from a shaded position.

here are some examples - I'm in the building shade shooting against a bright sky.

Is there any way to compensate?  white balance maybe?  a filter?

thanks in advance!

using EOS R7 with Sigma 18-50mm lens

[stevet1]

Michael,

Try a handful of black and whites.

I think both of your pictures would lend themselves well to a black and white rendition.

Steve Thomas

[rs-eos]

I'm assuming you're capturing RAW. If not, you'll definitely need to so that you can attempt to adjust for shadows and/or highlights in these very high dynamic range scenes.

While balance shouldn't matter here. And if capturing RAW, you can change that to whatever you need in post processing.

A filter (e.g. graduated ND) wouldn't help in the first image above. That could help in your second image though since the very top could use some reduction. However, graduated NDs are tricky to use and wouldn't benefit you unless there is particular band of the image along an edge that needs to be affected by the same amount.

If what you're capturing doesn't have any moving subjects, you could set up a tripod and capture multple exposures (at least two image; one exposed for shadows and the other exposed for highlights). But I'd recommend a third exposure which would be in the middle. You'd of course have to edit them in post-processing, either having them auto-merged, or even hand-blend them.

[BurnUnit]

If shooting RAW is it worth using auto exposure bracketing (maybe 3 exposures?) or can you pull up enough dynamic range when editing a single RAW frame, properly exposed? I don't do a lot of this kind of shooting but have surprised myself on occasion with how much detail I can sometimes pull from over-exposed areas on a single RAW frame.

[Waddizzle]

I would suggest capturing an image using HDR mode, high dynamic range mode. It can done either in camera or in post from a bracketed exposure of RAW images. 

I believe your camera may require that you capture images in JOG format. It create a single JOG imag. It may or may not retain the source images. 

Doung it post from a bracketed exposure will generally give a better end result than doing it in the camera. Here are some examples processed in Photoshop.  I captured (5) images 1 EV apart, ranging from -2 to +2 Ev. The foregrounds were getting well under exposed because of the bright sky and clouds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[mdphotography]

thanks for the tips!  Yes, I am shooting RAW so I think I'll try focus bracketing next.

[Waddizzle]

“ 

thanks for the tips!  Yes, I am shooting RAW so I think I'll try focus bracketing next.

[TomRamsey]

For actual "street shooting", or people on the street shooting in raw will be your best bet.  The shot you have here are more scenic and you could use a tripod and bracket shots.  Or as Waddizzle suggests in camera HDR.  I've not used in camera HDR with my R6II so I don't have an idea of how good it may or may not be.  A bright sky like you "canyon" shot will always be difficult with a single shot.  And as Steve said both of these shots would be nice in black and white. Both pics are excellent regardless of the bright sky.  on these types of photos some of that midday glare is not a bad thing, it adds some character to the pic.  Of course having an over cast day would be great, but we know how that works.

[Waddizzle]

“ You want Exposure Bracketing, not Focus Bracketing. “

My bracketed exposures captured (5) separate images. They were shot handheld.

I didn’t need to press the shutter (5) times. I put the camera in continuous drive mode.  I used the built in shutter delay timer, two seconds.

When the delay expired, the camera automatically captured the entire bracketed sequence at the highest frame rate!

[SignifDigits]

An easy thing to try would be the built-in HDR Backlight Control Mode in the Special Scene Mode and see how you like the results.  It may automatically composite to a JPG as Wadizzle suggests.  https://cam.start.canon/en/C005/manual/html/UG-02_BasicShooting_0150.html