Still blowing high lights with S3..??

[CB Photo]

Okay
I have about 5 months of practice with my fuji S3 and I am starting to feel comfortable with it and all the digital settings. The one problem I still struggle with is blown highlights. Any advice?

These are from last weekend and it was high noon so some of the blown out sections are expected but it is a problem I need to overcome.

thanks

BTW...she would not get up in the tree

[drg]

First, cute kids!

Need a little more info. I see exactly what you are talking about and some of that, such as the hair in the picture of the girl on the stool is hard to get rid of without a lot of setup work. Reflectors or screens outside of the photo, some fill lighting either strobe or concentrator are possibilities but not for quick work obviously.

The pic with the girl and the tree looks like a saturation issue. Leaves and sky and fall light angles can cause sharp curves in the color temp.

The photos of the boys in the tree might need fill flash.

All of them I'd want to know about camera settings, particularly quality, white balance setting, and so on. Plus these small photos have some resizing issues (always a bugaboo in evaluating).

I would ask, how did you meter, and did you use any compensation settings?

And of course the old axioms regarding exposing for the highlights are applicable.

Finally, with a digital camera be it DSLR or compact, the histogram is your BEST tool. Keep the curve away from the top and sides, but close. A little overlap may be unavoidable, but the more of the curve that impinges on the boundary, the more detail adjustment you lose permanently.

Let me know and or post a larger shot and some settings and we'll see what else we can come up with.

By the way, how do you like the S3 and have you posted any large images in the Gallery?

[Photo-John]

Those are great photos. The color is great and I really like the angles and the kids. I think you did a great job. The kids look happy, natural, and the photos are very fun and natural.

The histogram on your camera's LCD Is the key. Make sure that the the graph doesn't get clipped on the right side and you'll never lose your highlights - unless you lose them in post-processing.

I'm curious about your processing, actually. What are you doing after you capture the photos? The Fuji guys gave me a demo with the S3 Pro at PMA this year. One of the main benefits of the S3 Pro is the expanded density range. I seem to remember that even though the detail was captured, it was a little hard to see in the files and you had to make a little effort to get it to appear in the final images. But the camera definitely captured more highlight detail than other digital SLRs. It's most noticeable in wedding photos where detail in wedding dress lace is easily lost.

What software are you using for processing? Are you shooting RAW? That may be critical to getting the most from the S3 Pro.

[Franglais]

Okay
I have about 5 months of practice with my fuji S3 and I am starting to feel comfortable with it and all the digital settings. The one problem I still struggle with is blown highlights. Any advice?

These are from last weekend and it was high noon so some of the blown out sections are expected but it is a problem I need to overcome.

thanks

BTW...she would not get up in the tree

Your first two photos are backlit and the third is strongly sidelit. The reply with ANY camera is to get your lighting sorted out. Either use a fill-in flash or else a reflector.

The S3 seems to have done a better job than my D70 would have done. In conditions like this I use fill-in flash all the time.

Charles

[another view]

Too much contrast will always do this with a digital camera. Color neg film can handle this better, but DSLR's are getting better. Slide film probably would have done the same thing, btw.

So what do you do if you have more contrast in what you want to photograph than what the medium (digital sensor, film) can record? Well, you lower the contrast, that's all! You can use fill flash or maybe a reflector to bring up the light level in the shadows, or shoot on an overcast day. Since option #2 isn't always going to work, you have to work with what you've got - and fill flash can go a long way. The shot of the three kids has light coming thru trees - a big diffuser might have helped a lot more here than fill flash, but you'd need an assistant (and a non-windy day!) to hold it.

I'll go out on a limb here and say that a couple of blown highlights isn't the end of the world, IMO. In some cases - like backlit light-colored hair - you might have to underexpose the image by several stops to keep detail in the highlights. That'll give you a really bad image, even after trying to save a RAW shot in Photoshop. I'd expect to see blown highlights in a case like this. It's definately more the exception than the rule, but I think people tend to panic about this a little too much - again, IMO.

[CB Photo]

Thanks all
I have heard all this before but it really helps to hear it again.

I just got my quantum flash and battery pack so i plan to spend some time over the holidays taking a few pics...I will post them.

Regards

[Mike 2]

There is an excellent Fuji S3 review on one site that compared the FUJI S3 Raw converter s/w to the latest version of Adobe Raw and I believe Adobe DNG Raw convertor. He has pictures that show quite dramatically that the new Adobe RAW conversions produce far superior dynamic range results than the Fuji S3 sw which appears to negate the S3 advantages. The latest Rawshooter Premium RAW converter may also do a good job with dynamic range at an excellent price, but I have not tried it yet.

Regards,
Mike 2