More About Getting Correct Exposures
by William Lulow
No matter what kind of camera you use, one of the most difficult pictures to make is one that shows both an interior and an exterior in the same shot. If you expose for the interior, your exterior will be overexposed. And, if you expose for the exterior, your interior will be underexposed. So, what’s the solution? Probably, the best course of action would be to retouch the exterior by making a quick selection in Photoshop and then bringing down the exterior exposure so that it is more consistent with that of the interior. But this has to be done with an initial exposure that has enough detail in both the shadows and the highlights so that both can be worked on in post-production retouching. Here are some examples:
This shot shows the exterior properly exposed.
This one shows the interior properly exposed, but the exterior is way overexposed.
Here is an exposure right in between using the camera’s reflective meter, but the interior is still underexposed, even though there is some detail showing, and the exterior is slightly overexposed but not blown out!
The answer is to be able to retouch the “in between” image enough so that detail is shown both in the interior as well as the exterior. Here is an example:
The way this is done is first to select with Photoshop’s QUICK SELECTION tool, the exterior of the image. This consists of selecting each window pane separately making sure to include just the exterior portions. Then, using the BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST sliders, adjust the exposure down, perhaps 50% or so and see if that’s enough to show detail in the exterior. You may have to tweak it a bit and also make sure that your selection doesn’t include any of the interior.
The next step is to select the interior portion of the image, also using the QUICK SELECTION tool, making sure to select only the interior portion of the image, and make the same alteration with the BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST sliders, only this time you are increasing the exposure about 50%. While you are doing that, just keep your eye on the image until there is enough detail showing in the interior so that everything can be seen. Again, you might have to tweak your retouching a bit. It is also not extremely difficult once you get used to using the selection tools. I also use a WACOM tablet with a pen stylus instead of a mouse to make these selections more accurate. If you plan to do any kind of retouching to your images, it is a necessity. This is a simple one I use, purchased from eBay for around $30, if I remember correctly:
I’ve been using this tool for years. The newer ones are fancier with more sensitive screens, but I have found the added sensitivity is more of a problem than this older version. These are still available on eBay, but you need to look for them. Sometimes the simpler, the better. This can be added to your system via USB plug in.
You can always tell that no retouching was done if the images look like the second one, above. There are even good architectural magazines as well as those of furniture designers and manufacturers, where the photographer doesn’t do the requisite retouching to make sure that the exposures are good for both exterior and interior portions of the image. Sometimes you would see images such as this one:
Here, the exterior is way overexposed, but the interior receives all the correct light. The problem with this is that the exterior is so overexposed that the light begins to alter the correctly exposed portions of the image as well. This is extreme backlight and I have spoken about how this alters the appearance of the entire image as well. It even spills onto the parts that you want to keep “normal.” The right retouching solves this problem, but you have to be sure that the retouching is what you want in the shot.
You can use extreme backlight creatively, however, if you learn to control it and have enough light produced by your mainlight to show enough detail on the subject. I have used this technique before on some fashion images. Here is one sample:
Here, the light on the background is fully three to four stops brighter than the mainlight. It causes a bit of lens flare as the light spills over to the rest of the image, but if it is controlled correctly, it can produce a soft, almost transparent effect.
So, again, it is all about how to control light and make it work for you. And if you combine it with appropriate retouching within the image itself, it will reward you with the images you want.
