Why do red lights in night city photos turn into big red blobs, and how can I prevent it?
Asked 10/2/2010
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In my night cityscape shots, bright red lights like neon signs often lose all detail and turn into large red blobs. This happened on a Canon 500D. What causes this, and what can I do while shooting or in post-processing to reduce it?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
15y ago
2 Answers
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What you're seeing in that shot is overexposure. Unlike overexposure in a day time shot,where the blown highlights tend to go pure white, the red light from the sign caused overexposure in the just the red channel. Thus all the different tones of red have become 100% red and detail is lost.
It can be fixed by reshooting at a faster speed / smaller aperture pulling up the shadows, or blending multiple exposures (using HDR techniques).
Did you shoot raw? If so you may be able to fix it without reshooting, by taking advantage of the extra headroom in raw to reduce the exposure. If you have Adobe Camera Raw there is a tool called "recovery" which attempts to fix this kind of blown highlights though it doesn't always work that well.
Originally by user1375. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user1375
15y ago
0
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This is mainly red-channel overexposure, possibly made worse by camera shake. In dark scenes, the camera often exposes for the overall darkness, so bright red signs blow out before the rest of the image. Instead of going white, the red channel clips and detail disappears into a solid red patch.
To reduce it while shooting:
- Use less exposure: faster shutter speed, smaller aperture, or lower ISO.
- Stabilize the camera with a tripod or other support, since a slow shutter can blur lights into blobs.
- Check the histogram if your camera shows RGB channels; that can reveal a clipped red channel even when the full image doesn’t look totally overexposed.
- Consider multiple exposures and blend them later if you want both bright signs and dark surroundings.
In post-processing:
- If you shot RAW, you may be able to recover some highlight detail by reducing exposure or using highlight recovery tools.
- If the red channel is badly clipped, recovery may be limited or impossible.
So the fix is mostly to protect highlights when shooting and use RAW when possible.
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