Hello,
The images we attempt to take of the sunrise are washed out badly.
1 Manual settings
2 Auto focus - Single point center
As the sun came up, we adjusted the ISO - Aperture - Shutter speed. All washed out.
We took a video, and it turned out very good.
We use single-point center focus for various reasons. Could this be part of the issue? Is it possibly causing the camera to also take the lighting information only from the center of the image?
Any help would be appreciated.
Well, looking at this, not knowing the point of exposure or the EXIF data: f/stop, shutter speed and ISO, I will gauge this on what I see, which is not that bad at all.
The problem is one of dynamic range. What we see will always exceed between white and black, by a significant degree, what the camera is capable of capturing. This is very much a function of brain power allowing us to adjust between light and shadow over a few seconds. We do suffer shock when suddenly faced with extremes like coming from a dark room into the sunlight.
So, looking at your image, I would say that the limiting factor is that the camera is seeing the sun full on, (one of the hardest things to do) and that is blowing out that area, whereas other areas fall outside its range to encompass deep shadow. How to get past that?
One of my favourite photographers, Sean Tucker, has a couple of videos out on the subject of contrast, and as a bit of a philosopher the connects that to life experiences:
and...
Well, you could try an High Dynamic Range shot - where the camera (preferably on a tripod) will take three or more shots at different exposures in rapid succession and combine them into a merged JPG file that flattens out the range. The instructions for this are on P182 of the Canon EOS R8 Advanced User Guide v1.3.0 Firmware or later.
The other solution is to not shoot the sun directly, but catch it just before it rises or just after it sets, or is in cloud to some degree. That reduces the dynamic range and sculpts the light on the cloud. For example.
BTW, it is one thing to take a shot of the sun directly with a relatively low power lens, but it is dangerous to you and your camera to shoot that way with a high magnification telephoto.
I understand you had reasons for shooting in manual, but I would suggest for environments outside the studio, where you have less control over the light, start with Av mode and play with the settings the camera suggests, taking note of what you expose on and the dynamic range shown in the histograms. It's very enlightening - no pun intended!
Here is an example image and the information that is not shooting directly at the sun. It is badly washed out. We will defiantly be using AV mode the next time we go out for testing. I do suspect we will see much better results. If you can garner anything from this all advice is appreciated. Thanks
File Name IMG_1223 - Copy.CR3
File Size 21.0MB
Camera Model Canon EOS R8
Firmware Firmware Version 1.2.0
Shooting Date/Time 7/16/2024 6:34:44 AM
Owner's Name
Shooting Mode Manual Exposure
Tv(Shutter Speed) 1/20
Av(Aperture Value) 16
Metering Mode Evaluative Metering
Exposure Compensation 0
ISO Speed 100
Auto ISO Speed OFF
Lens RF50mm F1.8 STM
Focal Length 50.0mm
Image Size 6000x4000
Crop/aspect ratio 3:2
Image Quality RAW
Flash Off
FE lock OFF
White Balance Mode Auto: Ambience priority
AF Mode One-Shot AF
AF area select mode 1-point AF
Picture Style Auto
Sharpness:Strength 4
Sharpness:Fineness 2
Sharpness:Threshold 3
Contrast 0
Saturation 0
Color tone 0
Clarity 0
Color Space sRGB
Long exposure noise reduction Disable
High ISO speed noise reduction Disable
Highlight tone priority Disable
Auto Lighting Optimizer Disable
Peripheral illumination correction Disable
Chromatic aberration correction Disable
Distortion correction Disable
Diffraction correction Disable
Digital Lens Optimizer Disable
Dust Delete Data No
Drive Mode Single shooting
Live View Shooting ON
Camera Body No. 112022012492
Comment
Thanks again for your fast response Jimmy!
Well, first I would say that it is not perhaps as bad as you might think. First, however, let's look at the critical data:
Av(Aperture Value) 16 - I would suggest going for something more like f/8, that gives you two stops of light to play with.
Tv(Shutter Speed) 1/20: by increasing the aperture by two stops, you can now use a Shutter Speed two stops darker, i.e. 1/80sec: better for hand-holding.
Metering Mode Evaluative Metering - so despite pointing the camera in the centre, Evaluative metering rather averages out the exposure across almost all of the image, which is why you find the image over-exposed.
ISO Speed 100 - OK
Auto ISO Speed OFF - If you have trouble juggling the three exposure controls, set this to Auto
So, I would say that your main culprit was shooting in evaluative metering and not realizing that the image would be washed out. Essentially, a sensor will measure reflected light from a subject area and try to set the resultant exposure to a mid-tone (called 18% grey, because colour is irrelevant) which about the same tonal value as grass. However it can be fooled when the subject is much darker or brighter and will thus over or under expose the image accordingly. This is where you need to take control and you can do so by:
Being very specific as the the area or point to meter - set by customizing your metering controls
Using the exposure compensation control to reduce or increase the light intensity of the image
Setting everything manually, but you need to be aware of the impacts on other aspects of your image in doing so.
Still, it's not impossible to improve some issues in post production, so for example, this is a crude effort in Photoshop, just using a screen copy of the image as displayed on my computer. Is that more as you recall it?
However, it seems to me you are unfamiliar with the use of your camera to control metering and to then apply that to producing an appropriate exposure using your three controls Aperture, Shutter speed, and ISO.
If that is correct, then my first suggestion is to do some study on metering in conjunction with becoming familiar with the camera controls. If in doubt, start with P mode and observe the settings the camera wants to use, then change one of your controls at a time, and review the new settings by the camera.
Also, consider watching some instructional videos on these topics:
Starting with: Canon EOS 101 How To - Components of Exposure (youtube.com)
Canon EOS 101: Photo and Videography Basics | Canon U.S.A., Inc.
To get a good grounding controlling your camera, I suggest this video:
Canon R8 Beginners Guide - How-To Use The Camera Step By Step! (youtube.com)
Always download the Advanced User Guide: Canon EOS R8 Advanced User Guide v1.3.0 Firmware or later. it is a valuable resource and you should use it to become familiar with the specifics of your controls.
Two words: "RAW" and "TRIPOD". I only saw one instance each of them in all the commentary. For me, they are the most important, next to "MANUAL".
I think (IMHO) that the replies here were an excellent background and analysis. They gave a lot of advice, food for thought, and great methodology for analyzing the photograph sans much detail. I'd like to offer some additional thoughts in conjunction with, and support of, those comments.
First, "handholding" and "sunrise" are two incompatible conditions for a good photography (although excellent for romance if it’s not a camera you’re holding! 🤣😉) (For “Snapshot" photography, that’s another thing; for that, any ol' result is good enough.)
2) "Previsualization" - so what kind of sunrise do YOU want to take? If you don't know what your settings are, you are asking the camera to take the photograph for you, and the camera will give your the results it decides was best, whether you like them or not.
3) APERTURE: Following then on “Previsualization” … Aperture is very important for sunrise/sunset photography as it directly affects the capture of the sun. You want a general golden sky glow encompassing most of the image with a vague outline of a disk? Large aperture, maybe ƒ4 or so. You want a more dramatic, defined disk with more sharply defined clouds fading off darker away from the sun? Medium, medium-small aperture. You want a very dramatic, very-well defined sun disk with (possibly) “rising sun" rays shooting out ? Very very small aperture... for examples. YOU need to figure out what YOU want beforehand. As long as you get what you were looking for, then you're on target.
4) BLENDING TECHNIQUES: As was described in great detail by Tronhard and others, cameras simply cannot reproduce what the eye “sees” (which is a brain function that responds in millisecond adjustments to balance extremes of light and render a "picture" in our heads), so we can see both the sunrise and the sand when we look at them, but in our photos, it is more or less “one or the other” i.e., expose for sun, black sand, or expose for sand, get the sun blown out. Therefore, various techniques such as have been explained are used to “blend” exposures to get the photograph’s zone exposure close to what we are seeing with our eyes, whether that be from RAW with layers in Photoshop, or and “HDR” stacking or whatever.
5) ONLY USE MANUAL: change the shutter speed a/o ƒ-stop and see the results real-time in your viewfinder. (Viewfinder is generally for viewing than the screen for this.) If you have your camera set to “bracketing” then you’ll have a very wide range from a 3-4 images from which to work with later.
EXAMPLE: In the attached example (just showing a thumbnail here) of the beach, (Canon EOS R5, ƒ7.1, 1/400 s, ISO 100, RAW, the sun is actually behind a thin layer of cloud, extremely bright, so the exposure was typically problematic for bright sunrises: expose for the sun and the rest of the scene will be close to black, losing all detail in shadows; expose for the sand and water and the sun will be blown out, losing all detail due to Over-exposure. Looking through the viewfinder, I stuck a “balance” between the two that I felt would be recoverable in Post, through various means (layers, adjustments of highlights, blacks and whites, etc.) Result is attached. (In this particular shot, the sun never was visible as a disk, which was fine, as it attracted me as a kind of “light hole in the sky”.)
In the example of the tree and sunrise, (just showing a thumbnail here) (Canon EOS R5, 1/500s, ƒ 7.1, ISO 800, RAW, this was much easier as I pre-visualized the foreground tree as just a black silhouette against the sky and sun, so I simply exposed for the sky & sun, looking through my viewfinder until the sun was well-defined round, adjusted and balancing SS (keeping in mind I had a minimum 1/500th due to the lens) and ISO, and then didn’t worry about the tree as I wanted a silhouette without detail anyway. I used a “rifle sandbag” on the side of the truck (this was in Kenya) for stability.
Of course, none of this is possible without a tripod (or sandbag!)
5) And finally, if you are going to be taking a lot of sunrise/sunset shots (even if just for a specific period of time) I would highly recommend using one of the “C” settings on your camera after you’ve figured out your basic settings and what you feel works, so that you can instantly return to them and use them as a starting point on your next outing, so that you’ll just have to make “tweaks” to the settings rather than go through every single one and try to remember everything. (Personally I never get up early enough for sunrises, but I have one of my “C” settings for “Birds” which I use all the time.)
Good luck!
