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Photography Question 

Rett Dean
 

Loss of Detail in washed out sky


 
  washed out Thunderbirds
washed out Thunderbirds
200mm F/4, ISO 100, Taken mid day with heavy overcast.

Rett Dean

 
 
I just got back from shooting at an air show in Florida. Had great days except for the last day. This particular day was the main day, the US Air Force Thunderbirds were to perform. Well the shy turned gray and the shots I got all day long were washed out. The worst part is the planes are white and with the cloudy background the shots are somewhat dull. I shot them in RAW and will do my best to try and find some good ones. I was hoping I could solicited some ideas on how to compensate for this the next time. ALl ideas welcome. Thanks. RD


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April 18, 2010

 
- Carlton Ward

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Hello Rett,
There are a lot of editing techniques to choose from such as selecting the sky and increasing contrast/saturation or using plug in filters such as Topaz Adjust. Layers in Photoshop is a great tool for these type of edits.
You did not mention you editing software but if you use Photoshop, there are several classes available here that can help you with these edits. I have taken a few of them with Jim Zuckerman & Lewis Kemper and highly recommend them.
I dont know that you can compensate very much for the "next time" as you have to either expose for the planes or for the background sky - so unless you can use HDR (which doesn't seem to be an option for flying aircraft) you have to use the tools we have in post processing. You can do a trick I call the "psuedo HDR" which is to take the original raw image and change the exposure to a stop under-exposed and create 3 images exposed -1, 0, +1 and I might even include a 4th underexposed sky as -2 to just make the sky a little more dark. You can then either combine the images using HDR or take the darker sky image and paste it into the original image creating a layer and using an empty layer mask & the brush tool to brush away the original sky letting the darker layered sky to replace it. Lewis Kemper teaches these layer techniques in his Photoshop "Toolbox" classes.
I get lots of gray days living in the Pacific Northwest which makes for nice diffused lighting on the subjects but it is often a bland background.
Here is a sample image I edited with Topaz Ajust4 that really made those invisible clouds re-appear. This was a one-click edit selecting a new Topaz Adjust4 edit called "Dark-Ghostly".
Hope this helps,
Carlton


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April 19, 2010

 
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