Use the Histogram While Taking Pictures
Posted: Sunday, July 03, 2011
by Jessie Eldora
gotmydigital.com
Blown Highlights in Digital Photography.
The histogram function on digital cameras is a picture lifesaver. You can quickly assess the image and its histogram and correct the exposure to get it close to perfect. One of the most important uses of the histogram on the camera is ensuring that there are no blown or burned out highlights in pictures.
Loosing Detail in the Highlights
In most cases there will be details left to salvage in the dark areas, but once the lighter areas go pure white (or pure any color) there is nothing left to save.A photographer once said that any scene that has more contrast than slide film can handle isn't worth photographing anyway. A bit of an exaggeration, but an important point nonetheless.
The above rule holds only for color photography. Black and white thrives on contrast; blown-out whites and blocked shadows can actually give a picture a lot of pop, and pictures are often printed intentionally to achieve this.
Excessively contrasting pictures are rarely very appealing, and thinking in terms of exposure may not be the best way to approach the problem. Photographers should first think in terms of composition - try framing the picture in a way that the overall contrast is reduced. For example, leave out the sky, shoot either front-lit or back-lit (adding fill-in flash if needed), look for bright surfaces that will reflect soft light into the scene.
Blown-out highlights are the number one enemy of the digital photographer. Unless the goal is to overexpose, in high key pictures, try your best to avoid loosing details in the lighter areas of the picture. Details can often be found in the dark areas, but once they are gone in the highlights, they're not coming back.
Blown Highlights
Blown highlights do happen in color photography and when properly handled they're entirely acceptable. The thing to watch out for is blown out 'areas' like the entire sky, large swathes of sunlit area.Blown highlights can be seen both in the histogram and in the blinking, black blotches.
This is one feature the Canon PowerShot A1000IS has.
The solutions in photo editing will not work in every instance, but it's one way to handle blown-out highlights. If you are shooting in JPEG mode, the highlights that are overexposed may be lost for good.
Shooting in RAW will give you a fighting chance of bringing back that detail. RAW images contain far more data than JPEGs and recovery of blown highlights will be more successful.
Always have the histogram enabled on the digital camera for the same reason. A quick glance tells whether your are on the right track or not. Some cameras can also flash a mask over bright and dark areas of the picture, giving you even more control.
Also other articles on Photography on my website www.gotmydigital.com
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