REMEMBER to right click photos to see them larger!!
Does THIS look familiar...and if you notice I was actually TRYING for a good photo here. Yes I goof too.

WHY did this happen? The camera's in camera metering system is what I relied on (and yes I shot manual). The in camera metering mode READ the scene and evaluated the scene and determined what the correct exposure needed to be to bring it to a "neutral grey 18 if all pixels were in black and white"

So, given the first image and knowing this above is Neutral Grey18, well you can SEE how the camera evaluated the scene and made it that. Problem is the FACES are what I wanted.
IN many modern point and shoot digital cameras there is a piece of software, called "Facial Recognition" that would "see" these faces and the in camera meter would evaluate the scene with the faces taken into consideration. I, however, using a dslr must use my own brain for facial recognition....and after a long day at Disney my brain wasn't working so well.
I can learn from mistakes (which I did after LOOKING at the image immediately to see if had caught both of them smiling....oops...). As you can see, I had varying levels of success IN CAMERA.


Further proof I was ON VACATION and just a Mom...not a photographer. JM has golden posts growing out of his head...so "perfect" it could be crown? whooops!



What can you do to help keep this from happening?
1-use a fill flash - force your flash on, and the camera will evaluate for the scene and "flash" as well to light up the subjects in the foreground. This will keep your nice pretty blue skies in the background as well.
2- Notice that when I shot back in toward the carousel, as opposed to the open sky, I had less of a problem. ;) Change your angle of shooting to a darker background.
3 - shoot in RAW format and then fix post capture in photoshop as I did HERE:
There is a trade off of course - NOISE when you have to bring up the exposure so very much. Less sharpness to the image when you have to bring it up so very much. But the ones with minor adjustments look pretty good. :)


that "crown" is even brighter now...thank goodness it's not a "great" face shot so it probably won't get printed for the wall. ;)


notice this was the VERY dark Samuel - there is a blue tint that I could not get out, and weird lighting in the hair. Sometimes, well things are just too far gone to try and save!

Here is what the save of the first photo looks like....

and because I can't help it....a basic edited photo of Katie in COLOR and then in B&W. Not sure which I like better!


2 comments:
that is great you were able to save that photo that would have had to go in the recycle bin here.
I need to just break down and start shooting in raw so that I could do that. I need to get an external hd. I throw so many away that I would love if that had not happened.
I shoot in av most of the time. I also have not figured out the fill in flash either.
Your saves are great. Love the bw and color version of K.
I can't believe that picture was saved. I definately would have deleted it. As someone who has never really tweaked my pictures after the fact, what software would you recommend for beginners?
PS. I was finally able to get my 50mm lens to work when I went online and googled my problem and found out that I need to adjust the aperture through the camera and not on the lens. Thanks for your help before.
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