Working on Whites

[Peter Farrell]

I have been trying to work on exposure with white subjects. This Mute Swan gave me a good oppurtunity this morning. Sony A230, 70-400G@400mm, f5.6, 1/1250, iso100, EC -0.7, monopod, 75% of FF, mostly cloudy.
PP in elements 8. Adjusted shadows/highlights & levels on swan. Also sharpened. Lightened and applied NR on BG. There is one blown area on the top of the body which I was unable to fix.Any suggestions especially on improving my white exposure are appreciated.

[Ray Rozema]

Did you try correcting exposure before converting the raw file?:confused:

[Lance Peters]

Hi Peter - taking the right approach - practise Practise Practise. Your working with the 2 extremes black head area in which you want detail and the white body - the extremes of the dynamic range - SOFT LIGHT is the key.
I make liberal use of the histogram checking and adjusting as I go - pushing the histogram as far to the right as possible without blowing out any of the whites.

We have LOTS of white birds over here - so plenty of practise :)
Whites do look good - nice fine detail, you could QM the hotspot on the head you couldn't fix.
Looking forward to seeing more :)

[Peter Farrell]

Did you try correcting exposure before converting the raw file?:confused:

Ray,
I did some exposure reduction in camera-raw, but most of the corrections were done in the editor.
Should I be doing more exposure correction before converting from raw?

[Jackie Schuknecht]

Yes Peter. Lance has a good point about the light, but if you have just a few blinkies, I usually try recovery. If I can get them to about 242 then try a linear burn on a separate layer. If the whites are at 255 then there is no detail in there to recover. Think you could rework the file and have success.

[Bob Miller]

Hi Peter.....I agree with lance that pushing the histogram to the right without clipping and soft light is the key to great whites. As is, your post looks too white to me in the body