High Contrast Scenes

We have all seen them and tried to photograph them. Large areas in bright light and another area in shadow. What do you expose for? If you expose for the shadow, the bright area will be way too bright with next to no detail. If you expose for the bright area, the shadows will be near black. If you go in between, neither will be good. So ... what can you do? 

1. You can take two separate photos, one that exposes for the bright areas & one for the dark. Then in Photoshop or similar, you combine the two images - removing the areas that you don't want, to expose the correct value underneath. Thi.s is particularly good if you use RAW as you can have a lot more control over the detail of the shadows & highlights

2. You can use the HDR or DRO (Dynamic Range Optimisation) in your camera, which lightens the dark areas and darkens the light areas. It only works in JPeg though not RAW.  If you shoot in JPeg & RAW you could have the option of using either system.

Read your manual or Google your cameras system to see how yours works. Some cameras only lighten the shadows and leave the highlights as is. Others alter both. Each camera is different and has several levels it can operate on from just a bit to heavy contrast reduction (without dulling the image). Your next step is to test your camera on a subject at the different levels, to see what you like. What you use may change for different scenes.

Be careful using it as sometimes it can be over used, which can make your scene look strange.