photographing snowdrops with a DSLR

[mark smyth]

The two of Angelique may be slightly over exposed but I would change that on the computer with 'shadows and highlights'.

Never knew I had a shadows and highlights button but have found it. Thanks

[Steve Garvie]

The human eye has a much wider dynamic range than a digital camera sensor. On a bright day when the sun is high in the sky a digital sensor will inevitably "blow" the highlights whilst the dark shadow will show no detail. The exposure meter in your camera is designed to set a "mid-tone" exposure.
In a uniformly lit scene without excessive areas of brightness or darkness it will yield an accurate exposure reading but with a snowdrop against a much larger dark background it will over-expose the whites.

The default exposure meter setting is of an evaluative type which "reads" the entire scene. To prevent blowing the highlights you need to "confine" the exposure meter so that it only reads the exposure of the snowdrops you want to photograph. Depending on how close you are to the snowdrop this will mean setting the exposure meter to either centre-weighted (if snowdrops occupy much of the scene) or spot-metering (if the snowdrops occupy a small part of the scene). With the spot-meter centred upon the snowdrop you will get an exposure reading which will render the white snowdrop as a "mid-tone" -but snowdrops are white so you will have to compensate by over-exposing to make the whites white and not mid-tone grey: this usually involves an over-exposure of 1.5-2.0. 

It doesn't matter whether you take images in RAW or JPEG, if you blow the highlights no amount of post-processing can restore detail to these highlights though post-processing can rescue detail from the shadows.

[Chris Johnson]

Thinking about that conundrum, maybe it might be worth trying (on bright sunny days when the 'drops are wide open and perfect for snapping) using something to shade the snowdrops - a big sheet of card or something to stop the sunlight shining directly on them. In other words find a way to create your own overcast conditions on warm sunny days.

Good point Martin, I overlooked the 'drops not being full open is overcast conditions.

Most of my photography is undertaken in natural conditions and direct light can cause 'glare' problems in many situations and not just with white subjects. As I'm photographing close to the ground in most instances a friend or partner blocking the light with their body is often sufficient. When alone, I use my rucksack or backpack. I have tried reflectors and other materials which may work well in other parts of the country but not in this windy part of Scotland.

It's worth mentioning tripods. I always use one and would recommend other to do the same. They can be a fiddle and some extra weight to carry but in low light conditions such as the early part of the year, you can use lower speeds and gain that all important extra depth-of-field.

[hwscot]

Most of the time I use a digital use compact, and I shoot with about a stop of underexposure whether I use program or aperture priority. Exposure is either trial and error, or learning how to fool the camera into giving you what you want.

The basics of metering haven't changed since film days .. the camera will always want to make things grey / midtone. If it does that with the average scene, then any small highlights will be blown. The old rule was 'expose for the highlights' .. i.e. expose so you preserve the highlight detail, i.e. underexpose the highlights .. and 'develop for the shadows' .. i.e. you can lift enough detail out of the shadow areas even when, af first glance, they seem to have blocked up completely. That all still holds for digital .. digital just gives better tools for retrieving shadow information.

As has been said, once highlights have been blown, that's it. Depending how much time you're willing  to spend on it, you can draw in detail where the information has gone .. a simple way is to paint a light grey tone over the blown highlight and then clone in a suitable texture from an area that's correctly exposed. Having created your fake highlight information on a separate layer, you can play with the opacity to get something that looks ok.

Very often there is actually some highlight detail around the edges of the blown area .. it can be virtually invisible to the eye. It is possible to effectively amplify that information, and that can sometimes significantly reduce the area that looks blown. Pick a very light tone and having loaded your brush with it, set the brush to multiply, with opacity around 10%, and paint carefully in around the edges of the blown area. The amount of information you can  recover can be surprising. As before, you do it on a separate layer and then play with layer opacity.

If I want to work critically, as I would shooting a model, I use an incident light meter. You are measuring the amount of light falling on the scene, not the amount reflected from one particular bit of the scene. Incident meters are inexpensive and you can learn to use one in less than an hour, then it's just practice and experience. You still have to make judgements about what in the scene you want to look dark or bright, but you should quickly start to get much more accurate exposures faster. So long as the light levels stay reasonably constant your exposure shouldn't need to change from shot to shot. With any reflected light reading you are at the mercy of the accident of how the particular things you're aiming at are interpreted by the camera .. how wide the metering area / how large the area you want to correctly expose is relative to the overall frame. It will change even as you zoom in and out on a particular target.

It sounds more complicated to use an incident meter, but in reality, with a little practice, it's easier, quicker and more accurate.

A large format camera has an aperture control and a shutter. Otherwise it's an unthinking empty box. The camera is very, very simple so you have to do everything yourself. A digital camera does everything for you; you only have to press the button .. it couldn't be more simple. You just have to decide which sort of simple you want.

[annew]

Bob Wallis and I were discussing the difficulty of photographing snowdrops recently - I wondered if the 'face-recognition' facility would work with snowdrops like Grumpy..... I'd love to know, but don't have that one. Please someone say you'll try it!