enpaz1

I am a beginner photographer and am having difficulty understanding what I am doing to cause what i believe are blown out areas. The areas I'm speaking of, are the foreheard, cheeks and across the nose of the little girls. It's also in the tshirt of the little boy.

The settings are as follows for nikon d5100

for the little girls- shot indoors
f/6.3
1/60
iso 3200
manual setting
using a speed light -0.7 exposure
diffuser


little boy-out doors
f/5.6
1/125
iso 1600
aperature setting
speed light

Is it possible to fix these areas and if so what can I do? I have access to photoshop and gimp.

thank you in advance for

TREBOR77 Loc: Winchester Kentucky

YES...you can fix these in PS....your iso is too high or your shutter is too slow...try shooting with a faster shutter...just tweek it a little....

Bill Houghton Loc: New York area

They are very fixable. If you would like I'll post the them adjusted, of course they'll be in a reduced format, since Store wasn't checked.

Shakey Loc: Traveling again to Norway and other places.

Cute kids! Probably fixable if you wish to give us permission to try. We can include instructions on how to do it after we discover how. Please click the download square.

Frapha Loc: Tulsa, Oklahoma

To start with, your ISO setting is much too high.

Dewar Loc: Summer in MN & Winter in FL

Tough shot. Auto White Balance is probably somewhere between the color of the flash and the color of the lights on the tree which gives you a yellow cast. I dropped the "Saturation" down by -15 in PhotoShop and it cured most of the problem. After a little tweaking with "Levels", it's a great shot.

rhin0ski Loc: Boise, Idaho

I adjusted the white balance and brought down the highlights. I used Sagelight Image Editor to do this.

abc1234 Loc: Elk Grove Village, Illinois

enpaz1, you can fix these problems in post-processing. However, since you are a beginner, you are busy enough learning the camera and photography that need not deal with post-processing too. Here are my suggestions.

if you use flash, then you must keep your ISO low. This is because when the ISO is high, the camera may see enough ambient light that it will not fire the flash. Reduce your ISO to 400 or lower. For these shots, you could have comfortably used 100. I set the camera to manual, 1/200, f/8 or f/11, ISO 100 and flash to AUTO. This usually gives the right exposure and color balance.

These apertures will give you more depth of field meaning that more will be in focus. The high shutter speed will stop any camera or subject movement. 1/60 is too slow for a beginner.

When you are ready to deal with color balance, set it manually using an Expodisc. However, for the time being, stick to auto white balance.

The hot spot on the forehead is common, even with a diffuser on the flash. If the flash was pointed directly at the children, you will still get that hotspot even with a dome-type diffuser. Tilt the flash head up and you will reduce it. Better, use a bounce diffuser such as the Lite-Scoop II. Makes a world of difference.

I enjoy post-processing. However, my philosophy is to get the best possible picture in the camera and then fix the rest later.

Good luck and let me know if you have any more questions.

jimmya Loc: Phoenix

I agree with one answer... it would appear your ISO is way out there. With flash, even my on board, I shoot at
f/5.6, 1/200, ISO-100.

enpaz1

Thank you everyone for all of your feedback. I'm appreciative of the time you took to comment and make adjustments on the images. I'm not sure why having a higher ISO seemed to work better, but I'm definitely heading back to the drawing board on that one. I'm always at that drawing board...maybe I should just draw instead...lol.

Rhin0ski..thank you for posting your work. It looks good and it makes me feel better that I can salvage the pictures.

ABC1234 I so agree....learning the camera and how to properly apply settings given all the variables is more than enough. Post processing can be a god send but I'm really trying to focus on getting the best exposure I can from the beginning.

I've also reposted a couple of the pictures along with the originals if that is helpful. I'm still learning PP so and will do my best to apply all of your suggestions and repost the edited pictures.

Shakey Loc: Traveling again to Norway and other places.

Here's my attempt: GIMP: Use the Heal tool then smear tool @ 30% Opacity for fine correct. Originally tutorial comment by Raydance.

rhin0ski Loc: Boise, Idaho

I made some adjustments on these originals: I used Sagelight Image editor for the white balance and highlight adjustments. I also used Topaz Detail3 to sharpen both, and Topaz InFocus to take some of the blur down in the picture of the young boy. I have all of the Topaz plugins, PaintShop Pro X6, and Sagelight Image Editor to do 90% of my editing. Cute kids!

icke

Hallo enpaz1...I think your pics are quite nice...you indicated displeasure with the highlights...these are quite normal...you can remove these (even out ) with the Photoshop healing brush tool...these highlights also appear around the eyes and mouth (reflections from moisture) ...it appears that the light source came from above ...some of the resulting shadows were softened (again with the healing brush) keep the brush small...the shadow under the chin was a tad harsh...I hope the tooth fairy was generous...

rpavich Loc: West Virginia

Don't get discouraged...you are a beginner...we all started there. :)

You need to learn flash exposure and how it works...that will be the best thing to learn...

here is a link; I suggest you read through it and try it yourself to illustrate what's going on when you take a flash image.

http://strobist.blogspot.com/2007/09/lighting-102-33-balancing-flashambient.html


After you read through that, go to the "lighting 101" series on the main page and start reading.


The best thing is to know why things are happening and how to manipulate them rather than just fixing this one-time issue because the next time you get into another situation, you won't know what to do.

Make sense?

10MPlayer Loc: California

Note to cthan, this is how to make a suggestion to someone. You do it with kindness and with an honest feeling of trying to help. You don't start out insulting someone then expect them to feel all warm and fuzzy about accepting your advice.