Any Tips While Shooting under the Bright Sun?

Joined: 20 Mar 2006 Posts: 20 Location: SoCal

With new camera at hand and summer around the corner I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions on how to shoot outdoor pics under a bright sun. I recently visited LegoLand in California and most of my pics appear to be "washed out" over over exposed due to the extremely bright sun. How can I avoid this in the future?

-Thanks!

Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2006 10:06 am

ND Filter, Polarizing Filter to put a stop or two, a higher shutter speed, a small aperture f/11 or more, lowest ISO you can achieve...

and most important thing of all "Sun Blocker Lotion"

Joined: 20 Mar 2006 Posts: 20 Location: SoCal

adorski wrote:

ND Filter, Polarizing Filter to put a stop or two, a higher shutter speed, a small aperture f/11 or more, lowest ISO you can achieve...

and most important thing of all "Sun Blocker Lotion"

Thanks for the advise....i'll do some experimenting!

Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2006 3:36 pm

The biggest problem with direct sun is the high contrast between light and shadow - the sky and your subject, or bright parts of your subject and shadowed parts of your subject. You can make use of this intense light/shadow contrast, but usually it's difficult to get pleasing results without a lot of careful thought.

To deal with both shadows on the subject, and the difference between sky and subject, the best thing to do is to find an angle which has the sun either at your back or off to one side (but preferably slightly behind you). This way you're shooting directly illuminated objects against the sky, rather than objects in shadow against the much brighter sky. This way the exposure of the terrestrial objects (people, buildings, trees, manatees, potatos) will match more closely that of the sky, and with your sun at your back, will reduce the amount of visible (dark) shadows on your subject. Shooting towards the sun is usually bad unless you're going for some kind of specific effect that requires it. In this case you're going to either have completely dark objects (buildings, people, whatever) because they're in shadow, or okay objects but a completely washed out white sky. Turn around and shoot something, and the sky will be blue and the objects nicely coloured.

You can also set exposure compensation down a bit to try to underexpose scenes that might otherwise look washed out. Often if you're pointing at an object in shade and metering it normally you'll blow out everything else. Keep this in mind and use negative exposure compensation when you're metering darker objects on a bright sunny day, and this will help you keep the bright stuff from getting washed out. A slightly lower exposure will often make your colours more vibrant in many cases - I usually apply a curves adjustment in photoshop to bring down the exposure of midtones, and make them look more saturated - colourful.

Finally a polarizer can help darken the sky a bit, but only at certain angles - if you have the sun at either shoulder you'll see a much darker sky through a properly rotated polarizer. It's less effective at darkening the sky either towards or directly away from the sun. Sometimes the effect can be a little too strong, making the sky a very unnatural dark blue, but you can rotate a polarizer to change the "strength" of the effect.

In summary, find a different angle that gets the sun behind you and your subject in front of you. If this is not possible (e.g. a building you like that is in shadow) try to figure out what time of the day would be better - if the building has an east facing wall that you want to photograph, morning is better when the sun is shining directly onto that wall. Also remember that slightly off to one side of the subject, with the sun partially side lighting it, will give some more depth and texture as you can see some shadows. This is better in the early morning or late afternoon when the ratio of brightness between light and shadow is less, so you won't get totally black detail-less shadows.

Joined: 19 Oct 2005 Posts: 99 Location: Tulsa, Oklahoma

I was experiencing the same problems shooting an RC car race. Habits can be hard to break. I was shooting at 100mm to 200mm wide open and I noticed a lot of washed out images. I started playing around and found I could get much better saturation at f10 and there was more than enough light to freeze the action. Don't be afraid to switch over to manual and bracket some shots to see where the sweet spot is.

A sunny day in Oklahoma can be a serious retina scorcher. No smog and low humidity and day without clouds all add up to wash out colors and deepen shadows.