Photography from wall at beach where car parking is done

[Peter H.]

Hey guys my wife is the "photographer" in the family and hates going to above spot in summer. Owns a Nikon with 200mm lens and has trouble with underexposed shots in am with sun around .Any ideas on how to get PERFECT pics in these conditions-maybe special camera settings or such

Thanks in advance

[Erik H. Bakke]

In the morning you'll get backlit photos from the beach side, and that will make them appear underexposed. The camera has exposed for the additional light, leading to the main motif being underexposed.
You can compensate for this by overexposing the shot, which will light up the main motif, but this will lead to skies and backgrounds being overexposed.

One option would be to shoot two or more photos with different exposure settings (AEB will normally do this quite well) and then combine the photos in an image editing suite later on. This will give you a HDR-style image, but it's not really suited for fast action photos.

Even with clever camera tricks, you'll most likely still get a halo around what you're photographing, so the best solution will still be to wait until the sun moves around to the side a bit more.

[Nigel C]

Exposure compensation is a technique I often use for avian photography where the background is not important, especially for birds against a white, cloudy sky. Like this one...


Another option is to shoot manual and get an exposure level off a similarly coloured part of the surrounds, then use those settings to shoot the subject. It may take some experimenting with settings, but once you find the right settings for white aircraft, you can make small adjustments for different coloured aircraft eg, Vietnam Airlines aircraft would require different settings to Qantas aircraft. Or you could try spot metering too. There's quite a few ways to skin the cat.

But the best option is to go to the sunny side and park under the Tower. She can shoot to her hearts content there with the sun at her back.