Photography help – Sunny shots

Hi,

Took my camera out last sat and sun for riding pics but most of them didn’t come out very well. They appeared washed out with the sunshine.

Any help? Camera is a Canon Ixus 130.

Any examples you could post?

Bright sunlight can be especially hard to take good pics in, especially if the sun is high in the sky – it tends to wash everything out and make it look harsh & bleached.

The brightness can also make your camera struggle as it can’t cope with the bright sunlit parts of a shot & the dark shadowy parts of a shot. There isn’t enough dynamic range to cope with the whole lot so the camera has to decide (unless you can override it) whether to expose for the dark bits or the light bits.

Shooting into the general direction of the sun will often result in horrible skies too if the sun is high, not the vivid blue you perhaps remembered on the day. Shooting away from the sun or at 90 degrees to the sun can help with this.

Flash?

It probably has a setting you can use being a compact.

I’ve got some examples at home so will post them this eve. Most of the shots were taken using the auto setting and some are good, some bad.

No flash and weather was very warm.

Does the ixus have any exposure control? I was taking pictures in bright sunlight on sat and just adjusted the exposure control and the pictures were much better. I still played in PS later but they were perfectly acceptable in their original format.

As a beginner my understanding is that if you have sunny conditions the camera basically thinks everything is bright so it exposes for that. What this effectively does is make the sky acceptable and everything else very dark. If you over expose for the detail you will get a blown out sky and more detail in the rest of the pictures. Its a trade off but without the use of filters there isnt any way i know of for exposing for both sunny sky and detailed foreground.

Can you fit a flash? Can you get a lens hood? Are you expecting and inexpensive camera to perform miracles? I don’t know the camera and am typing on the phone so won’t be Googling til I get home. Does the camera have manual settings?

Depends what the problem is innit.

Camera is a compact and does have an inbuilt flash but obviously no bolt on hoods, filters etc. I think there is some limited control on exposure etc.

Take shots of people at the
beach (Beach)
? Lets you take shots of brightly lit people
on sandy beaches where the reflected
sunlight is strong.

Are you taking pics into the sun?

Or is it that part of the picture is very dark and part light?

You could fashion a hood out of a small yoghurt pot or similar, just to see if it helps.

Were you shooting into the sun? or was the sun behind you?

If the sun is in front of you, then I use my hand as a shade over the top of the lens, this stops it from washing out too much.

Oh and … This Thread Is Useless Without Pics 😉

Or shade the lens with your hand.

But that will only help if he is seeing flare, surely?

Will get some pics up this evening.

That was worth the wait, c’mon tiger, don’t be shy. 😉

Sorry, went to the pub instead last night. Here are some pics, they all seem a bit flat and washed out.

This one seems ok to me:

Looks like it was a hazy day, I don’t think they are washed out that much, but they could be better.

Photo 1. Sun is to your right, you could try cupping your hand to the right of the lens so it is in shade.

Photo 2. Looks like a hazy day, looks OK to me.

Photo 3. You are shooting into the sun, really your subject should be facing the sun, with the sun behind the camera. This will mean you wont look so shady and lights up the subject better.

Photo 4. Looks like the cloud/haze has burned off and turning out to be a nice day!

You could try playing around with the curves in photoshop, which may make your photo’s pop a bit more, or even try adjusting the contrast/brightness.

As above…

1: Sun is to the right of the photo, behind the rider, so throwing a shadow over his front.

2: Haze always looks crap but the sun isn’t behind you which makes it more obvious.

3: Shooting into the sun

4: Sun is behind you so it’s a good one.

Next time you’re out have a look where the sun is and position yourself so the sun is somewhere behind you if you want them to look more like the last one.

In the case of 3 (and even 1) you could, if you’re a bit closer, use the flash to light up the subject to get rid of that shadow. But generally in-built flashes are pretty pants so it’s easier to move to get the sun where you need it.

They don’t look too bad to me, except that you’ll always have problems shooting into the sun.
To pick out detail on the subject, if you insist on shooting into the sun, use a flash.
Move around to use the light. When shooting with the sun behind the camera be sure not to get the shadow of the photographer in the shot! 🙄

To me they look a little over-exposed. Check your camera to see if it has exposure compensation.

EDIT: it does. What this means is that the whole scene will be slightly darker or lighter depending on which way you go – this can help make the colours look stronger, but it will also make the shadows look darker.

But as above, they are ok. Another trick you can use is the button half-press technique. So you point the camera at what you want it to get exposed right, half press the button and hold it, then move it to where you want the picture and press it home. In the case of landscapes, your camera is getting the right exposure for the foreground, but the background is washed out. If you get more of the sky in the shot and half-press, it’ll get more colour and contrast in the sky and the distance, but of course the foreground will be darker. You can vary this by including more or less sky in the shot when you half-press.

Another feature your camera might have is bracketing. So it takes three shots – one over exposed, one normal and one under – that way you can choose which you like best and delete or ignore the other two.

First and last pics look fine. You could get more punch out of them with some small amount of tinkering in Photoshop or another editing program.
I think there is some haze in the background of the first shot which is making it lose a bit of vibrancy, but there’s not an awful lot you can do about that.

The second and third are better than I was expecting them to be from your description.
The camera has largely exposed for retain detail in the darker areas, which has meant the sky has been turned into a washed out white.
A polariser might improve this a bit (and give you a bit more blue), but I don’t expect you can fit one to your camera?
You could have perhaps reduced the exposure by a 1/3 of a stop (probably -0.3eV), but this would have made the foreground edge towards too dark.
Alternatively, you could try taking a few paces left or right and shooting at a greater angle away from the sun. This should give you a bluer sky – probably when the last picture has a nice blue sky.

For your bike & mate picture I would have perhaps stood a little closer to your mate (to give the flash a chance) and put the flash mode to force fire (it’ll be flash symbol with no ‘auto’ next to it). It’s not always available in ‘auto’ modes.
You might also have a scene setting that will do this for you, as it knows you are wanting to illuminate the foreground.
This will light up whatever comes within the flash range, but still preserve the exposure of the background, meaning your mate would be illuminated a bit better.

There’s a good example of fill-flash on this web page, under section 2:

http://www.danheller.com/tech-fillflash.html

Thanks for all the advice, some pretty helpful tips.

I’ve only had the camera a short time and I guess coming from an SLR I was always going to be a bit disappointed with picture quality.

I would never have thought about using the flash in sunny conditions so will give that a go.

I’d go with Molgrips on this, I’ve got an IXUS (no idea which model) and I quite frequently point it towards (not at) the sky, half press then frame the shot. Take a couple of test shots before your subject comes past. If you end up with a dark blue sky and clouds but the foreground is too dark you can still fix it using Picasa or whatever. If the sky is too washed out, there’s not much you can do later..

I normally leave my SLR with negative exposure compensation as a matter of taste but an IXUS will reset this whenever it’s turned off so I find this method easier than changing the exposure..

I’ve got an IXUS (no idea which model) and I quite frequently point it towards (not at) the sky, half press then frame the shot.

I also do it on my DSLR, because it’s quicker than accessing the other settings. It can go wrong if the foreground is close enough because as well as metering it sets the autofocus too usually, however there might be a setting around this. There is on my DSLR.

It’s worth noting that some of the latest batch of compacts have a setting where they can take an over and under exposed picture and merge them to get the sky and the foreground right.

I think i’ll have a play tonight and try and work out my camera’s features better.

Thanks for all the help.

Just wondering but considering the distance involved to the subjects and the general landscape nature, how effective a flash would be in this situation?

Light can travel quite far, quite quickly.
HTH.

TheLittlestHobo – Member
Just wondering but considering the distance involved to the subjects and the general landscape nature, how effective a flash would be in this situation?

For picture 3, with ‘bloke in foreground’ it would help quite a bit. Although this depends on how powerful the flash is. The aim in this situation is to provide some illumination to the foreground subject that is effectively, in shadow. The flash will do nothing to alter the ‘landscape’ bit in the background.
That is why I suggested that the OP would probably need to step a bit closer to his mate in the picture as the flash on a compact camera probably wouldn’t have enough reach as it was shot.

I’d say the 1st and 3rd pics are actually a little under exposed for the subject matter. The camera has exposed for the main landscape detail, not the rider, so with the sun behind them the shadow detail is lost. I’d suggest overexposing a stop or 2 to bring out the shadow detail.
If the pics were over exposed, they’d look a lot more washed out than they are.