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Hi all, I would like to take a photo of my kid in front of the tree while lite up. I am having trouble lighting her face. Do you recommend RAW mode then adjust the photo in photo shot? I am using iso 100, aperture 4.0, shutter speed about 1 second. I dont want to use flash because it lights up the room. Any recommendation on how to get the dark room feel with a nice lite up face and tree? Here is my sample. Tree looks great but can not see my kid. Thanks for any help.
You are not properly exposing the child. Try using flash or try adding a light just to the child from the front or side/front, turn on some lights to illuminate the child.
Shooting RAW mode will not fix an underexposed subject.
here is what i do for scenes like this . put the camera in full manual . turn auto iso off.
leave the flash off . put the camera on about 1/80th and play with the lens opening until the background with the tree is just they way you want it.
once you have the brighness in the background turn the flash on. work the exposure compensation on the flash dialing it up or down until the subject is just the way you want it.
difficult lighting scenes like this require a certain amont of skill and knowledge to capture. leaving the camera on auto will only get you an exposure the way the camera sees fit not the way you do.
You are not properly exposing the child. Try using flash or try adding a light just to the child from the front or side/front, turn on some lights to illuminate the child.
Shooting RAW mode will not fix an underexposed subject.
I added your image to your post.
This. If the only light source in the room is the tree and you place the child in front of the tree, naturally the child will be back lit. Photoshop won't fix this. You need to illuminate the child in some way, either with a flash or some other light.
If you don't want the flash to overpower the light of the tree, you need to leave the shutter open longer and stop down. When working with flash, shutter speed controls ambient light exposure while aperture controls the amount of flash exposure. So the longer shutter speed will mean more ambient light (ie, from the tree) while closing down the fstop will restrict the amount flash exposure so it doesn't wash out the tree light. If your child can sit still and you're not shooting with a telephoto lens, you could slow the shutter down to 1/60, then perhaps set the aperture around f/5.6 or f/8 - if the flash is too strong, stop down until you find the right balance of ambient light and flash. Of course, if you have an external flash, you can turn the power down on that instead of messing with the aperture but I wasn't sure if you only had the popup flash to work with or not.
Fill flash
Try to balance the ambient light with the flash or your flash will over power the tree lights. You already have the ambient light correctly exposed all you need is the flash in a low power to light her up.
looks like there is a chance to bring some details but i cant tell due to the quality of the picture posted..
had to make it smaller because the child looks all pixelated & possibly OOF. But yes some type of fill light will help
You just have to use the flash, but use some of the advise told by Mathjak107, and PA2UK. You can do this with the camera on Manual mode. That's a very difficult shot, something like trying to take a photo of somebody with a sunset in the background. You just have to illuminate the subject.
If you don't want to use the flash, illuminate the subject and room with a quartz floodlight (work light). Shoot RAW, AWB, and process the RAW image with PhotoShop. Or just illuminate the subject with one or more table lamps that use daylight CFLS or just incandescent lightbulbs.
looks like there is a chance to bring some details but i cant tell due to the quality of the picture posted..
had to make it smaller because the child looks all pixelated & possibly OOF. But yes some type of fill light will help
And this just shows why it's not a good idea to do this, it's not just the low quality of the jpg - trying to brighten such an underexposed area will bring out a ton of digital noise, making it look soft and out of focus, among other issues.
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I'll give the settings a try. I dont have a popup flash, I use a canon speedlite.
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