Blown Out Whites

[Onion]

Simply put: I have trouble with blown out whites because of the bright Miami sun. How can I make it better? Here's an example. I'm shooting with a Nikon D5000 and 18-105 lens. Picture was F/7.1, 200 ISO.

 

Edited March 13, 2011 by l33t p1mp

[OwinC]

Filters would work for you.

Blues and grays

[SpeedCrazy]

As Owin said, you could use a filter, or you could just use a lower ISO(if possible) or speed up your shutter, give an exposure bias of -1/3 or possibly more. I dont know anything about the d5000 so idk if these will work.

Hope some of that helps.

[jammin]

 

Yep, simplest way without getting filters is to use your exposure compensation.

 

Also watch out for scenes with high contrast between light and dark areas when taking your photos. If the dynamic range is higher than the camera can handle (i.e. there are bright white areas and dark areas in the same frame) then you'll either get blown out whites or dark areas with no detail.

 

In the specific case of the photo you posted, changing the metering mode on the camera may have helped too. Using spot metering might have exposed the subject correctly at the expense of a slightly darker background.

[hardnrg]

... bright Miami sun.... 200 ISO.

This is a very basic but fundamental error, you should get a book on photography to learn the basics. Anything in bright sunlight should be shot at 100 ISO or lower (if you have the option).

 

If you can set the F-stop higher, that will also decrease the amount of light saturation, but also increase the focal range (which you may not want depending on the scene).

 

You should have some sort of light meter in your camera at the very least, more advanced cameras have light level histograms and over-exposure zebra patterning, which can show you instantly if you will over-expose the picture.

 

Shooting in RAW gives you a bit more light levels (bit-depth), so you have a bit more leeway with post-production editing (e.g. exposure recovery)

[Guest evilneil]

If you concerned about blown highlights, always shoot in RAW mode, edit in ACR 90% of the time everything can be recovered when editing in raw.. You can edit jpegs in the adobe raw editor, sometimes you can recover some that way but jpeg always clips out the blow data to save on file size. I always shoot weddings using raw, its a life saver!