Help with photographing a white dog in the sunshine

I'm just learning the basics and have been playing aroudn with shutter speed, aperture and ISO, with mixed results, but one that I'm having most trouble with at the moment is photographing my white dog in sunlight.

Hoki is mostly white and when the sun hits her (though not that often where I live!) she shines and I'm having real difficulty correctly exposing a shot (examples below - ignore composition!)





I know the above are over-exposed, but where I try to counter that using different shutter speeds/aperture, the rest of the photo looks under-exposed.

Will learning about metering (one of the many sections I haven't got to yet!) help me with this problem?

Yes it will. Simply set the camera to spot metering, focus on the white part of the dog and press the button to lock the exposure. Once the exposure is locked, re-compose the frame and take your shot.

The black bits of the dog will be a tad under-exposed, but that can be recovered post processing. Remember, you can always recover under-exposure but anything that is over-exposed, or blown, is lost forever.

Very useful, thank you I didn't know that you could recover under-exposure, so that is definitely something for me to bear in mind. I haven't really done very much post processing work, so this is something else I need to learn.

Of course, typically, the sun was shining when I posted this thread so I was planning on practicing, but once I was ready, the clouds have come over and its now really, really dull out there!

In the post processing package, there will be a selection tool that will enable you to select parts of your image.



Trace around part you want to work on



and feather the edge by about 10 pixels so the edge is not sharp. That should be at the top of the screen, just below the menu bar.




With the selection in place, go to the menu and look under 'Image adjustment' where you will see 'Exposure' somewhere.



That should give you a pop-up window with a slider. Simply slide the slider until you are satisfied and click OK.




Hope this helps.

Excellent tip from Fogey look forward to seeing your shots with his advice in mind

Yes you need to learn about metering to get this right.
Photographing white is hard, and I avoid it if I can!

Generally, you can't have everything in a picture perfectly exposed so you need to choose which bit you want best exposed and meter for that.

For white fur you might need to meter more over exposed than your camera says is perfect.
A camera tries to expose for 18% grey. So if metering off white fur, the camera will want to under expose it until it looks 18% grey.
You need to do a bit of playing around until you know what works for your camera.
Try getting it perfectly exposed according to the camera then keep upping the exposure by opening up the aperture or slowing down the shutter speed (keeping an eye on your histogram to make sure you don't blow the highlights) until you have got it looking right.

This image was taken in bright sunlight by locking the metering on the white feathers

As already said - meter for the white then you can recover the dark areas - meter for the dark areas and the blown whites will always be lost.

You can extend the dynamic range on your Canon. There's a setting called 'Highlight Tone Priority' which will retain more detail in your highlight areas.

Some cameras allow you to extend the dynamic range in both directions (the shadows as well as the highlights) however the downside is that it reduces contrast. The Nikon setting is called 'Active D-Lighting'.

A simple approach is to just under expose your shots slightly.

All has been said, I just wanted to add that I think that's a great tip from Fogey *thumbs up*

xx

Thanks Fogey

I'd worked about tracing around areas, but didn't know about the feathering - so it looked really unnatural.

one problem I do have is that my pc is a work laptop and I'm not able to install additional software. I have photoshop elements 2 on it so while I can do some things, I don't have the full range of tools on it.

Thanks - I'll try that next time we get a bit of sunshine

Thanks Fogey.

I did have a go at photographing a swan in the sun - the feathers weren't as bad for reflecting as my dog's coat



Thanks Phil - more to take in, but hopefully I'll get there!

I think all the tips have been very useful - thanks everyone