Is this digitals achilles heel?

[mdmc]

I get this in most of my photos! How can I minimize it?
(It is, Blown highlights)
Mark.

[Trevor Ash]

I dunno man.

First thing I noticed after reading your post and then looking at the image was that it IS minimized. There's nothing you could have there there really as I doubt it would have even shown in the histogram (at least if it did it probably would have been hard to notice).

Second, it's REALLY tough to tell and I could be wrong, but it's quite possible that those are simply specular type reflections from his facial hair. If that were the case, the way to minimize it is to minimize the reflection (change subject angle/light angle/camera angle/light softness/etc)

Like I said, it's very difficult yo tell from this photo why you have those blown out pixels.

It's true that digital camera have a slightly narrower dynamic range than many professinoa films out there so it's equally possible that you've indeed run into a situation where film would have done a better job.

Just some personal opinion here, but I really wouldn't worry about what you show in this particular photo. If they bother you just clone them out. But you're right, digital does suffer from lower dynamic range.

[mjs1973]

I have found this to be very true as of late. I took a lot of photos on a recent trip, and I noticed for the first time, the lack of dynamic range with my DRebel. Maybe it is something that I just didn't notice before, but this trip made it very clear to me. It could be because I changed my image review display to show me the histogram, and the "blinkies". If I exposed to for the FG, I would almost always blow out the sky, and if I exposed for the sky, my FG was too dark. A Graduated ND filter did help some, but I do need one with some extra stopping power for those bright skys. I did take the time to set up my tripod, and shoot different exposures so I could merge the photos together later, to increase the dynamic range of the photo, but the extra work can be a drag when you already have hundreds, if not thousands of images to go thru.

On this same trip, I was also shooting Velvia 50 and Provia 100F and I found that my slide images, showed a better range than the DRebel. The blown out sky was not as noticeable on the slides, as far as I could tell. Then again, looking at a digital photo on a 17" monitor, compaired to holding a 35mm slide up to a light could have something to do with that too.

It can be very frustrating at times, but on the other hand, it really makes us pay attention to what we are doing, and how we are meetering, and setting our exposures. If it was easy, we would all have huge galleries full of great prints. Until technology gives us greater dynamic range with digital sensors, we will have to find creative ways to compensate for the limitations. Just my thoughts on the subject.

[another view]

In my experience, digital seems to have about the same dynamic range as slide film, except that the highlights blow out a lot quicker. This is especially easy to do with flash-on-camera type shooting, as opposed to studio work with flash where the lighting never changes.

Add to that TTL flash metering was great with film - some newer cameras with dedicated flashes and color neg film you didn't hardly even have to think about - and it's frustrating. Camera mfr's are starting to get better with flash metering, but it's not there yet.

[Michael Fanelli]

FWIW... A DSLR has a dynamic range a bit greater than slides and less than negative film. But that dynamic range is handled differently than film. Heavy use of the histogram and some experimentation can be a big help to avoid, or at least predict, DR problems.

[opus]

I think the first generation DRebel also has less dynamic range than the newer ones. I heard this from a digital pro speaking at a conference about what would be improved in the next generation of digital cameras.

[racingpinarello]

If you want to minimize blown highlights, you need to have better exposure control.

Digital camera don't do well with highlights, so adjust for it. Understand how your camera meters, find out how to adjust your exposure to maintain detail in the highlight and then it would be okay.

I don't think that digital is worse than film in regards to highlights, but a photographer must have good exposure and compensate between film and digital. They don't always have direct correlation.

I also noticed that you had a lot of color noise, and I spent 10 seconds on it with Noise Ninja and it helped it out. Recently I went to a Rob Galbraith seminar and found out about this software. Well worth it.

Loren

[92135011]

plus the digital noise
I hate that stuff!

[Dzerzhinski46]

This might have already been said, but as with any photo, metering technique can have a great effect on the final product. If you don't know what your camera is metering, then find out. It always pays to know. Judicious metering and then averaging these readings might give you a better exposure, but even then, bracket. I have found with digital that metering matters a lot.

[OldSchool]

If you are shooting RAW images, you may be able to avoid a lot of those blown highlights..

If you are shooting JPEGs... well they are created in camera with consideration to your setup for tone, sharpening, saturation, exposure, etc. You will get more minute blown details if you have sharpening set to high for example. So if you are shooting JPEGs and want to avoid those small blown highlights, I'd suggest turning sharpening off, tone to neutral, and underexpose by 1/3 stop -- and then apply these selectively in post processing.

BR,
Tim

[OldSchool]

If so, check out this:

http://forums.photographyreview.com/...69079#poststop

These curves are awesome in avoiding blown highlights in the jpegs. Give it a go.
Tim

[Stephen Lutz]

This is not that difficult to correct in PhotoShop, although you are correct the dynamic range of digital is about five stops, the equivilant (roughly) of slide film. Look at your histogram display and it is divided into five segments. Anyway, what you have here looks more like flash artifacts than "blown highlights." With photoshop this is easy to correct. Choose the clone tool, set mode to "darken" and opacity at about 25%. Select an area darker than the highlights and clone it onto the light part. The light parts darken, and the darker parts are unaffected. Easy correction for spotlight in a dark beard. I scrubbed out the flash blast on his nose too, using the same simple technique. It took about two minutes. Give this a try!

[Asylum Steve]

White spots in very small select areas of a digital photo are quite different than what would be considered blown out highlights in a shot. True blown out highlights are an indication that part of the image was overexposed, and almost always detract from the photo.

Your exposure looks fine and the specks are hardly noticable. As Trevor said, they are simply blown out pixels, and yes, while it may be tough to pinpoint the reason, as others have mentioned, it's very easy to fix in PS.

IMO, this is no different than dust on negatives and slides. It's simply a thing that's next to impossible to avoid. And personally, I'd much rather spend a few minutes on a computer spotting a digital image than the hours it sometimes took back in the old days to spot a photographic print... ;)

[mdmc]

I get this in most of my photos! How can I minimize it?
(It is, Blown highlights)
Mark.

First, thanks to all for posting!
The pic I posted before is a bad example, but the junk was there! It is the refletion of the D70's built in flash.
This pic is what I had in mind, and I'm no sure why there is all the spots.To fix it I resized it to 40x26" and cloned spot by spot. took about an hour.
Stephen Lutz and Loren, thanks for showing me some good stuff. I have psE2 and less than basic skill. I also have noise ninja, but no clue as to color noise.
Both of you're fixes are excellent!
I'll have more questions and comments later, right now I don't know what else to say
Mark.

[handstrap]

First, thanks to all for posting!
The pic I posted before is a bad example, but the junk was there! It is the refletion of the D70's built in flash.
This pic is what I had in mind, and I'm no sure why there is all the spots.To fix it I resized it to 40x26" and cloned spot by spot. took about an hour.
Stephen Lutz and Loren, thanks for showing me some good stuff. I have psE2 and less than basic skill. I also have noise ninja, but no clue as to color noise.
Both of you're fixes are excellent!
I'll have more questions and comments later, right now I don't know what else to say
Mark.

I am not at all convinced that what you are seeing is a case of blown highlights. Your flower image looks to be under exposed by quite a bit... image pixels from values at 229 down to 165 are hardly registering as visible. This image does not have any pixels above 229 so that demonstrates that the highlights are not burnt out.

It is likely that what you are seeing are artifacts from post processing... and it is more than likely that they are from over-sharpening. You need to understand what your camera is doing by way of post processing your images - what camera are you using? You may need to develop a post image capture processing routine that does not harm your images.

The original image that you posted seems to be under exposed by quite a bit. The flash may have illuminated the hairs of the beard but your enlargement shows spots of white under the right nostril (on the upper lip) of the subjects moustache. These light areas are not evident in the normal sized image.

Checking the whites of the eyes with a digital colour meter shows them to be anything but white. The RGB values are as low as 18% and as high as 37%. Of course pure white would show 100% at each value. I normally aim for around 75~85% showing at the whites of the eyes. Your portrait shows the whites of the eyes as dark and unnaturally biased towards green and blue.

h

EDIT: for clarity