Ok, I know that taking pictures at a certain time of day is a no no, but how can you lessen this problem. Sometimes you have no choice but to shoot in these conditions. Yesterday I went to a Horse Show Play Day. It was approximately between 2 and 3 pm. These were my camera settings, fuji 800 and 400, apreture f8 and f11, shutter speed between 1000 - 1500. Almost every picture the faces of these people were blown out. Was it my film?(should I have used a slower film) the develper, settings what? lol. I don't have a light meter and I don't know if my gray card would have lessened the problem, but any tips or information that you have would greatly help in this matter. Thanks, Mel

Thanks Dave!! Yes it does help in post processing and I will try that on a few of my action shots. I really appreciate it! But still I wonder why or how to better the situation during the actual shoot. :)

My 2 here....... That harsh contrasty light makes photographing things almost impossible sometimes. You end up with blown out highlights and shadows with no detail, certainly makes for images that are not optimal. David did a wonderful job on the postwork, yet I understand your desire for the best in camera image you can get... (my kinda girl!) My suggestion would be fill flash, normally I hate flash, I mean really, really hate it (for reasons I'll not go into)..... yet it can be a good thing in certain circumstance.... or a reflector on the side with the deep shadows. Now in this situation though I am not sure how well either of these would work for the simple fact that the distance of subject to flash is so great, and you have a moving subject. This is a really tough situation to work in..... would love to hear other in-camera fixes for this too.

Bounce card? Maybe? Michelle & David gave some awesome ideas and it helped me to understand my photoshop a little more. Thanks. Jinx

what about a polariser or other filters (skylight?). i've never used a filter till recently and it does improve scenes which would otherwise be washed out. michelle, you can't leave us hangin like that...come on spill the beans :))

A polarizer will reduce glare, but it will not help the already lost detail in the shadows, at least to my knowledge. It isn't a fix for a complicated exposure problems such as this one. A polarizer will cut down light coming into the camera by 1 to 2 stops, but all that means is that in order to get the proper exposure you have either increase shutter speed or open up the aperture to let in more light. So you still have the harsh contrast situation no matter what. Sky light filter I've never used, but they do not effect exposure, the light the cut down is miniscule as to not even be noticable. What makes this case so complicated is that its an action shot. Were she posing a sitting subject she could use the flash, the reflectors or as Jinx called it a bounce card (same thing) to add some light to the harsh shadows. Time to make bean soup!

ok, i see. what about taking a few spot meter readings and averageing it out. i've read about this but have not put it into practice. michelle, going to share the soup ;)

Ok the thing to do for you if you want nice negs is to use the sone system. You mesure and expose for the shadows and develop for the highlights. Really fast told it means we have 10 sones varing from black (sone 1) until (sone 10) -white. If you get yourself a greycard (you can buy it in a descent photostore). Or as I used to do use youre hand. Then U mesure the light in the shadow and in the sun and se how many sones it differs. Lets say it differs 7 sones and you want to se youre shadows without everything fading away in the sunpart your greycard is sone 5. then 5 + 7. Ok its a long time since i did this basicly what i meen is mesure for the shadows -like you do now. But underdevelope maybee -1 or even -2 steps.

Was this scanned from a print or a neg (or trans...?). Typically, printers will print for the "average" scene tonality, so there may well be information on the neg that's not showing up in the print that the printer offered (personally, I would much rather have a blocked up shadow than a washed out highlight!). What you're facing is the contrast range of film (about 10 stops for print, about 7 stops for trans) - vs. the roughly 40 stops that the human eye can detect. If given no other choice, I would maybe try shooting with a slower film (higher speed films usually exhibit more contrast than slower). You would still be well within the "acceptable handholdable range" without suffering from loss of depth of field. Just my 2 cents worth.

Enjoyed this thread! More More like this

Would a Better Beamer work in this situation? I jsut read about these on dpreview.com in the Nikon forum. Here is a link to the Beamer... http://www.birdsasart.com/accs.html#BEAMER Magick Michael

Attached Link: http://www.naturephotographers.net/tdg0502-1.html

and a link to how to better use your Better Beamer...

Thanks everyone for their helpful input!! No, this was not a scanned photo. To keep from running over on prints, I now have them all put on CD at the developer. Plus, my scanner glass underside is in need of serious cleaning. My new lens comes in Wed, so I think I will try this again next month and then use a gray card for metering the light before it's reflected off the subject and see what kind of results that has. I can't afford a light meter now, so hopefully that will improve it. We shall see. :))

Oh, in these situations, the flash would not be powerful enough. Because I'm using a focal length of 200mm to 300mm. I guess I failed to mention that. lol.

I Never shoot before 17.00 pm... "in a clean sky", use just a normal 50mm lens and 100 iso film for this type of full side shoot....friend the angle....the angle give the solution....you can move in 365 respect your model ..and please ..dont do all in the machine....or b and w will be die...work with ligth...ligth is photo...but this is just a bud angle....turn back the composition ...dont come ...go back the escene...and sorry my english.....good look