[Pic] Thoroughly blown out highlights

[Gutenberg]

I think eustacetilley nailed it--you needed a polarizing filter for that shot.

[wowzer]

Given the extreme background, I would have metered to the bright background and use fill flash for the cactus. If you cannot get that level of control, then meter to the sky and take the picture and fix it in photoshop.

With blown out details, you cannot recover. With software these days, you can probably pull out details of a dark image. GL.

[DRR]

I would have exposed for the cactus and adjusted if necessary. It's subjective of course, but a blown out sky bothers me much less, and is easier to correct in photoshop, than noisy or lifted shadows.

[DeusxMac]

Q & D with one selection and Photoshop Levels:

[freeradical]

Perhaps this would have come out better if I had shot this with a forgiving film such as Portra, and used a polarizing filter?

From what I understand, color print film gives you an extra stop of dynamic range over RAW digital images, and two stops over shooting jpegs.

Back in the day, many people cheated with color print film by setting their meters to a film speed one stop lower than the film was rated for to get underexposure insurance. So if shooting with ISO 100 film, people would set the meter for 50.

[eustacetilley]

wowzer wrote:
Given the extreme background, I would have metered to the bright background and use fill flash for the cactus. If you cannot get that level of control, then meter to the sky and take the picture and fix it in photoshop.

With blown out details, you cannot recover. With software these days, you can probably pull out details of a dark image. GL.

The problem with that, is the effect that I think he wished:
"I wanted the fruit to "glow"."
I interpret that to mean that he wanted some transmitted light. (Angles of refraction are unimportant.)

Stopping down and using a fill flash would kill any light transmitted through the Cactus.
Also, I'm not sure, thinking on it, that a Polarizing Filter would help much, with the sky so close to the Sun.
For most purposes, the light of the Sun and the sky immediately surrounding it are unpolarized.

Eustace

[DP]

I had some fun with it. Got a bit more color saturation in the sky and added a flare to help pop some color to the fruit. Took about 5 minutes.

[Lew Zealand]

If I understand circular polarizers correctly, one would not have helped here as you're shooting into the sun. The polarizer works maximally well at 90° from the sun's location in the sky and the closer you move to either 0° or 180°, the less filtering the polarizer will do. If you want the fruits to glow then, by necessity, you are shooting into the sun so the 2 effects are non-compatible in this case.

When I use my polarizer (sparingly), this seems to be it's behavior.

[OWC Jamie]

Yeah I don't see a circ polarizer doing much of anything here either

[Lew Zealand]

BTW in this case if Raw is not an option, I would meter to barely not blow out the sky (maybe 2/3 EV lower than here) and bring up the lower midtones in Curves because there's little risk of losing significant shadow detail in this shot. If the prickly pear pad at lower right ended up plugged in darkness, it wouldn't detract from the shot.

However, this is the way I shoot habitually: underexpose and lose a bit of shadow detail or bring it up later at the cost of some noise, but don't blow the highlights unless there's a lot of white paint or chrome in the pic.