Bat lantern

bfgstew

6

17 Oct 2010 - 6:37 AM

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Hi Dusfim,
A difficult shot to achieve as you have the bright light of the lamp and dark shadows behind the bat! To get an evenly exposed shot you must try and set the exposure somewhere in the middle of these two, unfortunately it looks as though you have set it on a brighter part of the shot and got a lot of underexposure around the bat, which is a shame as I presume this is the intrest of the shot. If you have a flash unit, you could use that to bounce light off the ceiling so it isn't harsh and should bring the bat to life. Still an intresting composition and well worth another go.
Regards
Stewart

Constructive Critique!

pamelajean (Critique Team)

7

17 Oct 2010 - 5:27 PM

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Hello, Mario. It's good to try different things, and you have chosen a simple and yet interesting subject. The trouble is that the light is bright and the bat decoration is dark and there is too much of a contrast. I agree that using flash could have solved the problem. Also, because you were shooting upwards, the lines of the wall panel are not straight, but that's a minor niggle. I have tried a modification, but had to really push the highlights and shadows in order to get some light on the bat and prevent the light in the lamp from getting too bright. I'm sure there is some nice detail on the bat, but that hasn't been revealed, and there was also a lot of noise/grain in the shadow areas that had been lifted, so I softened the background. I partially straightened the wall panel, used the burn tool on the light, and sharpened. My second modification is a tighter crop. I think you should have another go at this type of shot because it's quite a challenge.
Pamela.

Constructive Critique!

PeterDSmith

4

17 Oct 2010 - 5:46 PM

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The dynamic range, the difference between the lightest and the darkest part of the scene, is large, too large for the sensor of your camera. The advice in these circumstances is 'to expose for the highlights' because it is easier to recover more details in the shadows when processing the image file on a computer. (However, The Photography Rule Book does state that it is allowable to burn out a highlight, provided that the highlight is a light source, such as the sun or a lamp.) Usually, this occurs when you are photographing a landscape on an overcast day: the sky is very light and the ground is very dark. In order to 'expose for the highlights', you measure exposure from the sky - point your camera directly at the sky and press the exposure lock button - and over-expose by one and a half stops, using exposure compensation.

Constructive Critique!