How can I photograph bright purple lights in a dark scene without blowing highlights?
Asked 9/20/2015
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2 answers
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I photographed a night scene with very bright purple/magenta decorative lights against a much darker background. In a single exposure, the magenta highlights clip and lose detail, while exposing for the rest of the scene makes the lights turn into featureless glowing areas. If I shorten the exposure to preserve the lights, the rest of the scene becomes too dark. What is the best way to handle this if I can reshoot the scene?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
10y ago
2 Answers
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You are trying to capture more dynamic range than the camera is capable of capturing in a single exposure.
You could make range of exposures from properly exposed shadows to properly exposed highlights and combine them in HDR. Programs like Lightroom can do it easily and with naturally looking results. Shoot the images at the native camera ISO with fixed aperture and variable exposure time, ideally from a tripod.
You could make the shot while some of the natural light is still available. If you shoot a series several minutes apart, you may find a shot that gives bright enough purples, but with enough light to bring detail to the shadows and keep the light bulbs from being blown out. I have seen impressive results when before and after dark images were combined together to bring the best of both worlds.
Originally by user27944. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user27944
10y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
This scene exceeds your camera’s dynamic range, so a single exposure is unlikely to hold both the bright purple lights and the dark surroundings.
Best option: shoot a bracketed series and blend them as HDR (or manually blend exposures). Use:
- fixed aperture
- native/lowest ISO
- varying shutter speeds
- a tripod if possible
Make one exposure for the highlights so the purple lights keep detail, and longer exposures for the darker parts of the scene. Modern HDR tools can merge these into a more natural-looking result than any one frame alone.
A second good option is to shoot earlier, during blue hour or while some ambient light remains. Extra natural light reduces the contrast between the lights and the background, making the scene easier to capture.
If there is movement in the scene, HDR blending can be harder, but it is still the main solution. A green filter was also suggested in the community answers, but exposure bracketing/HDR is the more generally useful approach here.
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