help for a friend

[Frog]

First, I am posting these with permission of the photographer.
She does a lot of horse shows and riding events and sells to clients.
One venue she is shooting at has a bright white building behind the arena and there is really no better place for her to shoot from to get the action shots she wants.
She is concerned about shooting in raw as it might take too long to load and edit files for the clients to see.
I'm not a sports/action photographer so told her I'd ask here. I've even suggested she join up so maybe we'll see her, I hope.
The first is the unedited and second is the edited that she did.
Fill flash is not possible due to distances involved and fear of frightening the horses.

[Frog]

ok where'd they go?

[freygr]

This is were a spot meter is needed. Most of the shooting I do just happens to be under covered arenas and lighting is very dim. You just have to let the light areas blow out to and get a good exposure of the action. The noise in the photoshoped cropped is due to being under exposed.

[SmartWombat]

You can do it with the camera - you do not need a spot meter.

In this example you know the horse is going to be in shadow as they enter the slalom.
So you find a piece of the same sand in a similar tree shade, and meter off that.
Then set that exposure manually and ignore the camera's meter while taking the photo.

[JDocPony]

Hi it is I that Frog is being a wonderful person and helping... I am soooooo glad to meet you all... I have been trying to meter just the horse but I will deffinately go with my setting not the camera... That means I have to remember my old school tables doesn't it...lol... I gues I will have to get my cheat sheets back together... are there any tricks for shooting into setting/dropping Sun?... Thank you all for the help....

[AgingEyes]

Is that a full-frame shot, i.e., not cropped? The EXIF file shows you shot with 155mm. It appears to me then you were pretty close to your subject. Fill flash is possible. Do you know some bird photographers use flash, too, despite their distance from the birds? There's something called Better-beamer. What it does is it extends the reach of the flash light. But I'm guessing even without that, it looks like you were close enough to use something like a SB800 to throw some fill flash on your subject.

You can use the method suggested by SmartWombat, but your background will likely be over-exposed. Is that acceptable?

Do you only take the shot when your subject matter is in the shade?

Another way to find out what exposure setting to use in manual mode is to meter off your palm and open up one stop of whatever you get. Well, at least that works for me. Of course, your palm should be under the same lighting as your subject matter for the readings to be useful. To find out how much adjustment you need to make by metering off your palm, try compare that reading with that from a 18% grey card.

Also, take a look at this thread:

The 4 Basics

[Frog]

Glad you found it, Pony. I forgot to tell you what my name is here.
Welcome to the group and hope to see a lot of those horse shots and some of your for fun ones too.

[Frog]

Not sure what camera you have, Pony, but does it not have spot metering?

Aging Eyes, she specifically does not want to use flash for fear of spooking or distracting the horses.

[AgingEyes]

Not sure what camera you have, Pony, but does it not have spot metering?

Aging Eyes, she specifically does not want to use flash for fear of spooking or distracting the horses.

Ooops! My bad. Sorry :blush2:

[fx101]

What will really help here is positioning. Try shooting from a different angle, should you be forced to shoot at that hour, and you may consider shooting wide open or with a faster lens so that the background is out of focus. This makes the blown out highlights less distracting. I don't know what camera you're using so I can't comment on whether shot bracketing (although you'll need a pro cam) will do.

[another view]

You can do it with the camera - you do not need a spot meter.

Most Nikons have them built in...

This is a tough one - to properly expose the horse and rider, there is no way the white building in the background would be anything but completely blown out (and distracting). Even if you didn't have a spot meter you could do it with exposure compensation. I'm assuming the light level inside the building (which is what is lighting the horse and rider, correct?) won't change, so once exposure was correct it would stay correct.

RAW isn't going to make any difference with the background, and as long as the light inside the building isn't changing you won't need it (set up exposure and white balance first, then all shots will be correct right out of the camera although you still may want to "tweak" in Photoshop).

A different time of day when (if) the sun wasn't directly lighting the white building, or on a heavily overcast day might help - but in reality I know this never seems to happen at the right time.