Lesson: Sunny 16 - Crested Terns

[Mark Young]

I tired using the sunny 16 rule for the first time yesterday. I'm not sure I got this right, the breast is way too hot, I should've dialled in some exp comp on the day.
I normally wouldn't post an image with this amount of blown whites, but I wanted to give the lesson theme a go whilst I had a chance.

Canon 7D 300f4+1.4tc, ISO400, 1/400, f16,
The only PP work done was that I used recovery on the RAW image to tone down some of the heat on the breast, cropped the image approx 25%, applied NR on bg and USM on birds.

[Joel Eade]

Mark,

I like the pose of the two birds and the head angle on each is good, the bird on the right is soft since it is slightly farther away.

Your self critique is spot on .... I loaded this into CS4 and the whites on both bird's neck/upper chest are clipped....it shows in the histogram as well

If you cannot recover anything by adjusting the exposure and/or recovery slider in ACR then I suspect you'll have have to dump this one, you probably needed to increase shutter speed to 1/800 or more, and watch the LCD/Histogram for highlight clipping as you go.

[James Shadle]

Mark,
Had your subjects been all middle toned, you would have nailed it. The middle tones look great and as mentioned, the whites are clipped.

Below is a quote from the Sunny 16 tutorial : This will give you a correct exposure for a middle tone subject. With a white subject you need to reduce the exposure (stop down 1/2 to a full stop- F19 to F22) and for a black subject you will add to the exposure (open up 1/2 to a full stop- F13 to F11).
Use the above guide next time out and see how you do;).

PS In all seriousness, thank you for knowingly posting an image with blown highlights. By doing so, many more than just yourself will benefit. You have my 100% guarantee you are not the only person who blew out the whites using sunny 16 the first time:).
Now let's see how you do the next time.

[Lance Peters]

Hi Mark - James nailed the issue :) A little understanding of exposure theory goes a long way to helping you even in AV mode - helps you understand exposure compensation.
like the poses and HA'S - a little tight at the bottom.
Good show :)

[Julie Kenward]

I also commend you for showing us an image with the blown whites - it really helps everyone learn from what "blown whites" actually look like. For those of you that are new to the term, look on the breast area of the white bird - that's where you'll see it the most. The whites there are so white that they lose all the detail - the feathers are barely discernable in that area.

Sunny 16 gets you started...but, as James said, it does take a bit of exposure compensation to figure out a very white or very black focal point in the image. I'm sure you've learned that from this try at it! I do like both HA's and the way the birds are relating to each other in the image. I also would have given it a little more room at the bottom.

[Mark Young]

Thanks Joel, James and everyone for the feedback. I'll be giving this exposure technique a second pass in the next few days and will post the results.

[Thanaboon Jearkjirm]

Thank you for posting this, it helps me learn more about the f/16 rule. Love the pose given by the two birds by the way.