How do I effectively photograph when the sun is in the frame?

Question

I have been trying to get a good shot out of direct sunlight but my shots just turn out dark, even if I set my shutter speed to the 1000-4000 range at ISO 200. Another odd thing is that even if my shutter speed is below the thousands range, they still turn out dark when sunlight is involved.

What settings can I use to remedy this? I am using a Canon EOS 50 film camera, and I usually use ISO 200 films. I am in Manual Mode. What shutter speed-aperture combination can you suggest. What about ISO, or even lenses?

I have no means to scan the photos, so I guess I will just describe one of them in detail:

The picture is composed such that the camera is pointed at the sunlight, and a person is at the left side of the photo. The sun has just risen, about 7 am, and a little above the horizon. The output image is dark, so is the person, but the sunlight is beaming radiantly, forming some sort of a huge ball of light, and everything that's near the camera (the person, the plants around the person) is dark, and the sky is a bit dark too.

Asked by Ygam

Answer

How are you metering the photograph? There is no one aperture/shutter-speed/iso combo for any situation, you either need to get an accurate meter reading or 'guess'. When I say 'guess' I mean use the Sunny 16 rule which is:

In daylight, the appropriate shutter speed at f16 is 1/ISO

So if your ISO is 200 and your aperture is f16 then your shutter speed is 1/200 (or 1/250), from this you can figure out any other aperture/shutter-speed combo 'guess': f11 would be 1/400, f8 would be 1/800 etc.

Given this starting point you can hold the camera up and get a meter reading to see how far off the guess is and adjust accordingly by looking at the meter in the view finder and changing your aperture/shutter-speed until it reads a good exposure. You may also want to try changing metering modes to be tighter (spot) or wider (matrix) which has a pretty good discussion going here:

Rule of thumb for metering? When best to use Multi-Zone/Matrix, Spot, or Center-Weight?

EDIT (given the OP's edit):

The problem most certainly is metering. The camera is metering for the scene which sounds like its 90% The Sun and 10% your subject, you need to meter for your subject. You can accomplish this in a variety of ways:

-You could switch to spot metering and take a meter reading off your subject first and then use that for the photograph

-You could get really close to your subject and meter their chest/face such that they fill up most of the frame for metering and then go back to your original position and use that reading.

-You could look around near you for something in a similar amount of light (the ground in front of or behind your feet) and take a reading and use that

-Get more light on your subject somehow

-etc

Answered by Shizam

Check more discussion of this question.

How do I effectively photograph direct sunlight?

Question

I have been trying to get a good shot out of direct sunlight but my shots just turn out dark, even if I set my shutter speed to the 1000-4000 range at ISO 200. Another odd thing is that even if my shutter speed is below the thousands range, they still turn out dark when sunlight is involved.

What settings can I use to remedy this? I am using a Canon EOS 50 film camera, and I usually use ISO 200 films. I am at Manual Mode. What shutter speed-aperture combination can you suggest. ISO? or even lenses?

EDIT: with no means to scan the photos, I guess I will just describe one of them in detail.

The picture is composed such that the camera is pointed at the sunlight, and a person is at the left side of the photo. The sun has just risen, about 7 am, and a little above the horizon. The output image is dark, so is the person, but the sunlight is beaming radiantly, forming some sort of a huge ball of light, and everything that's near the camera (the person, the plants around the person) is dark, and the sky is a bit dark too.

If that did not help, I'll try to scan it :P

Asked by Ygam

Answer

How are you metering the photograph? There is no one aperture/shutter-speed/iso combo for any situation, you either need to get an accurate meter reading or 'guess'. When I say 'guess' I mean use the Sunny 16 rule which is:

In daylight, the appropriate shutter speed at f16 is 1/ISO

So if your ISO is 200 and your aperture is f16 then your shutter speed is 1/200 (or 1/250), from this you can figure out any other aperture/shutter-speed combo 'guess': f11 would be 1/400, f8 would be 1/800 etc.

Given this starting point you can hold the camera up and get a meter reading to see how far off the guess is and adjust accordingly by looking at the meter in the view finder and changing your aperture/shutter-speed until it reads a good exposure. You may also want to try changing metering modes to be tighter (spot) or wider (matrix) which has a pretty good discussion going here:

Rule of thumb for metering? When best to use Multi-Zone/Matrix, Spot, or Center-Weight?

EDIT (given the OP's edit):

The problem most certainly is metering. The camera is metering for the scene which sounds like its 90% The Sun and 10% your subject, you need to meter for your subject. You can accomplish this in a variety of ways:

-You could switch to spot metering and take a meter reading off your subject first and then use that for the photograph

-You could get really close to your subject and meter their chest/face such that they fill up most of the frame for metering and then go back to your original position and use that reading.

-You could look around near you for something in a similar amount of light (the ground in front of or behind your feet) and take a reading and use that

-Get more light on your subject somehow

-etc

Answered by Shizam

Check more discussion of this question.

How do I eliminate lens circles in my pictures?

Question

I have taken a few pictures that show these circles, and I'm getting very annoyed at this problem. Seems most common on sunny days. This particular picture is not my own, but it is a good example of what I'm talking about. I can understand certain situations where I could use this to my advantage, but I am wondering right now, is there any way to reverse or prevent this effect?

P.S. As I said before, I have realized that I can sometimes use this to my advantage. In that respect, does anyone know how to cause it?

Asked by J. Walker

Answer

This is lens flare, where reflections within the lens end up showing on your photos.

General guidance to minimise it includes:

• Avoid getting the sun in shot (and ideally, avoid having it just-out-of-frame too)
• Use a lens hood to shade the front element
• Try to use lenses that have anti-reflective coatings
• Keep the front element clean, but follow the lens manufacturers advice about use of wet cleaners (generally, don't; only use a microfibre cloth)

Answered by Rowland Shaw

Check more discussion of this question.

How does being in a polar region affect the golden and blue hours of light?

Question

While I already know what the golden and blue hour are, I am having trouble understanding how this changes very close to the poles so that I can time an upcoming trip to Iceland.

Online services give different interpretations which make little sense. Here is a screencap from Twilight Calculator. Note how the sunset and sunrise time increase consistently and so does the corresponding Golden hour and Twighlight duration until May 16th. On May 17th things get weird. The golden hour duration jumps from 122 mins the previous day to 309 mins. 309 mins!

• Does that mean the sun stays above the horizon the whole night? In which case, it should be all golden and none blue.
• Or does the sun dip below the horizon? As suggested by the fact there there is a sunset and sunrise time and therefore. And therefore should there not be about 305 mins of blue hour? ...and the golden hour should last about 87 mins?
• Should the last two columns in that chart be reversed starting on May 17th?

Given that I am looking to Iceland for mostly landscape shooting, the big question is: When would there be the most golden light? (So when the sun is above the horizon and not below).

Asked by Itai

Answer

Iceland is so far north that depending where you are in the country, you get significantly different results. Compare the following chart from gaisma.com for Reykjavík, which is in the south:

With this chart, for Ísafjörður in the north:

As you can see, between mid June and the beginning of July, the sun never actually sets in the north of Iceland, however in Reykjavík it DOES set, but it stays light enough to remain twilight throughout sundown (the pink area). At this latitude, there would be little to no 'blue hour' as it rarely gets dark enough, even in Reykjavík.

To answer your final question, the best time to go for as much golden hour as possible would be between mid May and late July, as this is when you get the most twilight (as much as 5 hours), and as it occurs in the early hours of the morning, you will not be competing with tourists for the best scenes.

Note that as Iceland is not on the meridian, but uses GMT throughout the year, the sun's lowest point occurs at around 1:30 am, not midnight, so you can still get 'midnight sun' in Reykjavík around the summer solstice, even though the sun does eventually set (around 12:05 am).

Oh, and have a great time. Iceland is a wonderful country!

Answered by Nick Miners

Check more discussion of this question.

How can I use wide aperture with fill flash?

Question

I was working with an off-camera flash this weekend for some portraits of my son. I was shooting in medium sunlight (early morning, partly cloudy, w/ some shade), and I like the lighting control I got with the flash (it softened the shadows on his face), but it sort of messed up my aperture control.

Using a 30D w/ 50mm F/1.8, I can get a narrow DOF at low apertures, but since the use of the flash constrained my shutter speed, I couldn't use apertures low enough to produce as much bokeh as I'd have liked.

I'm thinking that one solution would be a neutral-density filter to let me use a lower aperture. Would this work, and if so, is this the preferred way to handle this situation?

Answer

In your shooting conditions the constraint is that a large aperture requires a very short shutter speed to expose the ambient light appropriately and you can't sync the flash faster than about 1/200 sec on the 30D. A strong ND filter might solve this problem. Alternatively, if your flash supports HSS, you can use that to reduce the exposure time (as little as 1/4000 second, I believe). If neither is available, an expedient solution is to move the location and the background into dark shade: you can still get some nice ambient light but it can be reduced several stops.

Check more discussion of this question.

How can I take a sun backlight portrait like these examples?

Question

How can I take a photo like the ones below? The problem is that my photos (taken with a bridge, Sony H2) will get blown up at the highlights. Is it because I'm using a weak camera? Is it because I'm shooting in JPG (can't use RAW)?

Is this dynamic range achieved by greater cameras + RAW? Or is it by post-processing?

Is there a pattern to this type of photos like: wide apperture (< f5.0), RAW, ...?

Examples:

or this or this one

Answer

That picture isn't taken with "natural lighting" -- there is a large "hot" reflector (probably a gold-toned or "zebra stripe" metallic type) to the left of the camera throwing light back into the subject.

Picture quality is rarely about the camera. It's about composition and lighting. Your camera may not be able to throw the background quite as far out of focus as the one used to take this picture, but if you make use of auxillary light sources (like the reflector used here) you can take pictures that are every bit as well-lit as this.

Check more discussion of this question.

Sun backlight portrait

Question

How can I take a photo like the ones below? The problem is that my photos (taken with a bridge, Sony H2) will get blown up at the highlights. Is it because I'm using a weak camera? Is it because I'm shooting in JPG (can't use RAW)?

Is this dynamic range achieved by greater cameras + RAW? Or is it by post-processing?

Is there a pattern to this type of photos like: wide apperture (< f5.0), RAW, ...?

Examples:

or this or this one

Answer

That picture isn't taken with "natural lighting" -- there is a large "hot" reflector (probably a gold-toned or "zebra stripe" metallic type) to the left of the camera throwing light back into the subject.

Picture quality is rarely about the camera. It's about composition and lighting. Your camera may not be able to throw the background quite as far out of focus as the one used to take this picture, but if you make use of auxillary light sources (like the reflector used here) you can take pictures that are every bit as well-lit as this.

Check more discussion of this question.

How does one best deal with shaded faces in bright sunlight?

Question

When photographing people in bright sunlight, parts of faces are often shaded by hats or by their own contours. This creates highly-contrasted faces, and either a very bright background or very dark faces.

Using flash doesn't always help, especially when photographing a large group (~10 people) from a little distance.

What's your solution for this common situation?

Answer

For me, I have reflectors which can be positioned (sometimes with help) so as to fill in the light on the subjects. There are some reasonable 5-in-1 options out there, I have a 43" version of one of them and it works very well, folding up to a pretty small package and giving lots of options for cooling or warming the light as needed.

If you don't have reflectors, but do have larger, bright, surfaces you use, then that too is an option. What it really boils down to is getting some of generally available light redirected to the place you want it and, for that, many reasonably reflective items will help a great deal if sufficiently large. Heck, it can even by some bristol board or shiny wrapping paper, I've done both.

Anyways, those are what I do and, to be honest, I prefer that sort of light over a flash anyways. Fill flash can harsh, especially when it is on camera, and so I prefer to avoid it.

Check more discussion of this question.

How to take a good landscape picture against the sun?

Question

I like hiking, and usually take my DSLR with me. I often find myself in front of beautiful landscapes, with the sun really high or directly in front of me. The resulting pictures are usually pale, ie they lack contrast (I don't know if I'm clear). Also, the sky is usually very clear.

This can usually be post-processed, but what are the techniques for getting good pictures in such conditions ?

Answer

I think this is an example of: use the opportunities you have, rather than the ones you wish you had. The situation you describe is tricky, and it'll be difficult to get the kind of grand, well-lit landscape that you seen in magazines. But, as Kyle suggests, perhaps there are different interpretations of the scene that could work. Some specific suggestions (some of which are mentioned in other answers as well):

• Keep the sun off your glass (not just out of the frame): shoot from the shade, use a lens hood, shade the lens with your hand or a hat, etc.
• If you want a blue sky, underexpose or shoot in manual, spot-metering off the sky.
• A polarizer will help.
• Make note of interesting scenes and come back when the light is better.

Good luck!

Check more discussion of this question.

How to reduce the effect of bright day light in the photographs?

Question

This photograph was taken at around 9:30 AM. The sunlight was bright. I can't shoot in raw. I have adjusted the brightness and the contrast by which at least the tree is appearing brighter.

Look at the ground, it is of some weird colour. Something pinkish. How to adjust that in JPG?

What are measures that should be taken while shooting in daylight before and after processing?

Answer

Bright daylight is often considered problematic for photography, as it causes harsh shadows. You'll get the best results by waiting for a softer light - a sunset/sunrise or clouds blocking the direct sunshine. If waiting is not an option, a polarizing filter is usually used to somewhat tame bright daylight, as in this example -

Ground color on your photo is off because white balance is on the ground is off - the warm light makes tones warmer (gives a red/yellow hue). Different light shows colors differently. Human brain is somewhat able to adapt perception of colors in different light, but a camera can adjusted for only the whole scene. If you fix the red tint in warm light, the areas with cooler shadow light will show slightly blue. You might like it better (shadows are darker and therefore do not show as well) or not (humans generally prefer warmer tones).

You could try setting custom white balance by putting a gray card or a sheet of white paper in the light you want to appear as neutral and telling your camera "look, this is how white/gray should look like". How exactly to tell this depends on camera model (if you have a user manual, try looking for "setting custom white balance").

You could also adjust white balance in post processing; try sliding it towards blue. Or, even auto levels or automatic white balance would render your example cooler:

Check more discussion of this question.