Exposure Problems: As you can see, the lighting is partial through the trees and very bright beyond the shade of the road and even brighter towards the top. I have tried Aperture...

lifenprism Loc: Upstate S.C.

As you can see, the lighting is partial through the trees and very bright beyond the shade of the road and even brighter towards the top. I have tried Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, and full manual with no good results of exposure balance I'm looking for. All suggestions are more than welcome. Noah

Exit From Tranquility

PalePictures Loc: Traveling

lifenprism wrote:

As you can see, the lighting is partial through the trees and very bright beyond the shade of the road and even brighter towards the top. I have tried Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, and full manual with no good results of exposure balance I'm looking for. All suggestions are more than welcome. Noah

Your camera cannot handle the full light range. The way to get around this is to shoot bracketed and merge the photos. No matter what your setting are it won't help. Spotty light through the trees on a road can also be a problem. I typically try to find enough of a canopy that the light is not spotty on the road.

Russ

lifenprism Loc: Upstate S.C.

Thanks Russ....I'll keep that in mind and try bracketing on my next adventure. Actually never thought of merging and have done it on other situations but never came to mind on this shot.

PalePictures Loc: Traveling

lifenprism wrote:

Thanks Russ....I'll keep that in mind and try bracketing on my next adventure. Actually never thought of merging and have done it on other situations but never came to mind on this shot.

No problem.
Keep in mind that you are still going to have spotty light on the road with a bracketed shot. If you shoot bracketed you have to watch how you merge to HDR. To do a scene like this you really need to keep it photorealistic. This is possible with a manual merge.

A note on the last photo I did like this.

I recently was in Berlin Ohio and needed some backgrounds like this. I went down 50 or 60 roads before I found the light I wanted. After 3 hours I got 1 shot!!! Many times we see a scene and we think...Oh that's pretty....After you do this for a while you will start being much more critical of a "That's a pretty scene". Many scenes look good but will not produce a great image. I tend to look for flaws and then determine if they are going to be to difficult to deal with in post or not.
Hopefully this will give you some insight into how I produce what I think is a good image as well as the work involved.

Regards

Russ

lifenprism Loc: Upstate S.C.

Great advice. Thanks again.

Ed-Likes-Pics Loc: Longmont CO

lifenprism wrote:

As you can see, the lighting is partial through the trees and very bright beyond the shade of the road and even brighter towards the top. I have tried Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, and full manual with no good results of exposure balance I'm looking for. All suggestions are more than welcome. Noah

I really like this photo the way it is. I've seen some photos that used HDR software to adjust the exposure of dark areas to better match the bright areas and they often seem to be too "even".

But to get what you want...have you tried "shadows/highlights-->lighten shadows" about 80% in Photoshop Elements 11? Or similarly, "fill flash-->lighter" about 25 in Photoshop Elements 2. These both produce interest results.

Heirloom Tomato Loc: Oregon

lifenprism wrote:

As you can see, the lighting is partial through the trees and very bright beyond the shade of the road and even brighter towards the top. I have tried Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, and full manual with no good results of exposure balance I'm looking for. All suggestions are more than welcome. Noah

I made a fix in PSE11, but for some reason it will not upload. What I did was very simple and you could try it yourself. Lighten the shadows a little. Darken the highlights a little more. It looks a lot better on my monitor than the original did. Wish I could show it to you.... when I try to send it keeps giving me a "reset" message.

lifenprism Loc: Upstate S.C.

Thanks to the both of you. I'll make a duplicate and play with it in PS. I tried a few but it just didn't seem balanced the way I'm wanting it (may be asking too much)to. If I get the highlights balanced to my liking, I lack the balance of tranquility in the shade. But I'll keep trying....lol thanks again

Heirloom Tomato Loc: Oregon

lifenprism wrote:

As you can see, the lighting is partial through the trees and very bright beyond the shade of the road and even brighter towards the top. I have tried Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, and full manual with no good results of exposure balance I'm looking for. All suggestions are more than welcome. Noah

That was a huge file. I had to save it as medium quality to get it down to 7 meg. Should upload now...

Heirloom Tomato Loc: Oregon

lifenprism wrote:

Thanks to the both of you. I'll make a duplicate and play with it in PS. I tried a few but it just didn't seem balanced the way I'm wanting it (may be asking too much)to. If I get the highlights balanced to my liking, I lack the balance of tranquility in the shade. But I'll keep trying....lol thanks again

The answer might be hiding in the midtones adjustment. Keep trying, you'll get it!

lifenprism Loc: Upstate S.C.

lol....sorry. I forgot about the file size when I posted it. I meant to post a duplicate instead of the original file.

Noah

Ed-Likes-Pics Loc: Longmont CO

lifenprism wrote:

Thanks to the both of you. I'll make a duplicate and play with it in PS. I tried a few but it just didn't seem balanced the way I'm wanting it (may be asking too much)to. If I get the highlights balanced to my liking, I lack the balance of tranquility in the shade. But I'll keep trying....lol thanks again

OK. Now I better understand what you're looking for..."tranquility in the shade" sounds like what I liked about the original...plus what I would call the "light at the end of the tunnel" effect of the background. My previous suggestions probably lighten up the shade too much, but maybe something a little less will work. And Heirloom Tomato's version is more subtle. Is that more like what you're trying to get?

Bob Yankle Loc: Burlington, NC

Though this is not HDR, it entailed a fairly high number of control points in Viveza 2 and CS6 to balance out the light levels. In the process, I heightened the structure levels in some areas and toned them down in others. Russ admonished to keep this photorealistic and that's what I tried to do here. Colors in the matte were chosen by sampling with the eyedropper tool in the photo itself, so they should blend in fairly closely.

Variation on Exit from Tranquility (Sony SLT-A77V, 24mm f/2.8 lens, Auto Exposure, Aperture Priority, 1/25 sec, f/14, ISO 100)

NikonJohn Loc: Indiana U.S.A.

lifenprism wrote:

As you can see, the lighting is partial through the trees and very bright beyond the shade of the road and even brighter towards the top. I have tried Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, and full manual with no good results of exposure balance I'm looking for. All suggestions are more than welcome. Noah

I like that shot Noah. If you like I could try a little work on it later today or tomorrow to see what I can do with Nikon Capture NX 2. This is not the free software that Nikon gives you with the cameras, I think it does a great job and is easy to use. Although it is not nearly as powerful as Photoshop.

Linda From Maine Loc: Yakima, Washington

Hi Noah, and welcome! I love the composition of your shot. I wanted to address your comment re trying aperture priority and shutter priority. What mode do you usually shoot in?

Aperture priority is for controlling your depth of field and shutter priority is for when you have a moving subject - and want to stop action or blur it.

Each of those modes would give you the same overall exposure, so I wondered if you wanted to discuss those functions a bit further to clarify?