some say that if you burn out a highlight in one of your images you are
bad wicked and wrong and that you will be ostracized by the community at large
and probably serve at least nine years hard labor jail term so get yourself
comfortable and just sit back for a members I want to share a little gallery
of images with you
right that's enough of that I think you get the idea that this burnt-out
highlite thing let's go investigate it a bit further don't get too head up about
your highlights because highlights unnatural things they occur and certain
subjects will always have a burnt out highlight even to our eyes now look
behind me down here can you see I'm looking a little monitor there right
look there's a little boat down here if you look at the very brightest part of
that boat that is a very very very bright area it is almost a burnt-out
highlight and that is because over here is the Sun and it's really slamming into
me if I was to take a picture of that why don't I just give it a quick little
goal if you can see here we go let's just see what do I get now cutting to my
histogram on the correct exposure I've got a slightly burnt highlight that
means I'm going to have to take my exposure down until the histogram says
that highlight has gone so the result is that one's fairly dark without a
slightly burnt highlight that one's a bit brighter mmm-hmm and of course
shooting raw and Lightroom you can fix these things you know now it's not a
case of fixing it's about making something look real the way your eye
sees it make it into something natural but what about the Hanalei over here now
excuse me I don't know if this is going to work because I don't have a camera
person I'm going to see if I can swivel the camera around I'm going to go into a
silhouette because I think this is totally gonna mess up the camera look
behind me here what about that highlight there now that is incredibly bright if I
kind of cover the camera bit and put the Sun right behind me you might just be
able to see me but that is a very very burnt highlight now when I look at that
with my eyes that highlight is burnt out what you guys are saying is pretty much
the silhouette of the surrounding area I'm not this is what I mean by our I see
light completely differently but why am I saying don't get hit up about your
highlights well look that is a burnt out highlight that is how I see it this is
an extreme one if I was going to try and shoot a picture
say this little headland let's have a look what happens let me see if I can
video for you through my little Fuji now why have I lost focus there's something
weird going on here that should be better right roll some video there we go
now look through the camera we've got pretty much a completely burnt burnt out
water and it's silhouette in the headland get my eyes as seeing a bit of
detail in both areas but not that highlight the highlight is too bright to
try and lose that burn out in the highlight are going to take that
exposure way way down and I've still got burnt out highlights but we can hardly
see the headland at all to see the headland we've got a pump net exposure
up to see the house and the building and now the highlight is totally gone so how
do you photograph something like that how do you make a shot like what's going
on behind me work you have to shoot at the correct time of day so my main point
is don't worry too much about these highlights because also sometimes they
look absolutely awesome see if I can find a shot
and I'll show you what I mean for example look we got some flags in here
and up there there somewhere we've got the Sun so the Sun is coming right in
behind these flags but it will make an awesome shot because we got a bit of
blue sky going on up there you're seeing me very very silhouette II because of
course the camera is making it more contrasty than it really is but this is
an example where a burnt out highlight actually looks natural because if you
look at the Sun it burns out let's see if we can look at the shot I'm thinking
of and see if I can roll some video for you all on on the subject here we go
look now there is the shot I'm thinking of you see now that Sun is completely
burnt out even through the video camera you can kind of see where I'm going with
this and what I'm thinking but using the small aperture you can get a nice
starburst you can play around with your you know zoom you can see what you want
to include what you and all that kind of good stuff but I
think you can see that Sun is a burnt-out high light and it that is how
it looks to my eyes let's take the shot let's just see what we can get so what
is the light meter going to say about all this I'm shooting a small aperture
because I want that starburst what is the light mates are saying about this
what's the metering mode everybody worries a lot about metering modes I'm
gonna make a video about metering modes because it genuinely doesn't really
matter which mode you use you just need to find out how they work and then
choose the one that you like I personally pretty much always use
evaluative all over metering mode because it's just a starting point there
isn't a correct exposure this is the one that you want to get the result that
you're looking for and you work backwards from that result from that
pre-visualization and that tells you the settings you need that's what my some
building blocks of photography course is all about and if you don't know about
what the settings are that's what my ultimate beginners course is about and
then you move into this more complicated thing you know of kind of looking and
thinking and using this but a common sense right let's do our shot so with
the camera set on you know zero compensation I'm just going to look and
meter and just do it the way the camera wants it and I'm going to zoom this in
fairly tight and just shoot that frame like that
that's pretty good I always check my histograms of course we got a burnt
sparkle and you know what that histogram looks to me to be pretty good
it really is there's a little spike and that is that burnt out Sun because the
Sun does burn out but the rest of the data is saying you know what there's
tons of information there his little tip when you're looking at
the back of the camera it always looks much darker if you're in bright sunshine
because your pupils the eye the pupils have got smaller and therefore he makes
this look darker than it is so but what would I do I'm going to try taking one a
little brighter I'm just going to two-thirds of a stop brighter and just
see how it looks can I capture a little bit more of the shadow data of the deep
stuff I think what I'm doing is under sacrificing the starburst effect
let's look yeah there's a little bit less starburst effect in the brighter
image though the light in the flags is better because I had a better moment
when they were flapping so I'm going to take that exposure back down this is how
I'd go about this stuff and I'd also probably get a little closer because I
think the shuttle worked better let's try again from him here here we go make
sure my autofocus is working nicely you know what I'm going to see if I can get
that I'm going to see if I can catch the Sun in a little flap of flag if that
makes sense and if I get one I think it's there yes that's kind of what I was
looking for so we kind of got the sun's just a little bit tighter to the flags
the flags are out so we've got better back marking on them backlighting not
back liking so there's a little example I guess if we can find a slightly more
subtle one of places where highlights burn out but it's natural it's what they
do here's a shot you just might remember from when we did the fog film probably
about a year or more ago when we came out looking for pictures in the fog now
look at these lights we've got to move quickly but we've got a bit of blue our
going on in the sky which looks awesome look at those filaments up there those
are burnt out they're burnt out for you guys in the camera but they're also
burnt out for me in my eyes and you can't really correct that that filament
is too bright it's a natural burnout let's just take a shot I've already set
us up on the tripod I'm going to do one with a kind of starburst effect but
using a very small aperture let's go for that one that is gonna be a 20-second
long exposure so I'm keeping my ISO right down low and probably a little bit
late to be doing this and the burner effect indeed wouldn't be quite so
strong had I got here about 10 minutes earlier Butt there you go I didn't I
didn't get parked in time right let's have a look
awesome but you can see that those highlights inside a burnt-out let's do
another one that's just widen the aperture and not
have that school of starburst effect and just shoot it again I think we got just
about enough time here we go
so there's two different kind of versions there for you to look at we've
got the one without and the one with the starburst effect going on I really like
that starburst effect but here's the thing those burnt out highlights from
the filament those are completely natural looking they are burnt out to my
eye if I squint at them I still can't see into the center of
those bulbs so the thing is don't worry overly about getting every single
highlight detail back into an image because if you do it'll just look kind
of weird I'm afraid let me just take another shot and just see what would
happen if I really really pulled the exposure down you know what even in the
really dark one those filaments are still burnt out so don't panic too much
if your highlights burn out so if you found this video useful its really
really great please click in a couple of likes we'd love to hear some comments
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side it goes take care I'll see you next time