Early Saturday (May 31) I am off to a Balloon Festival. I took this shot last year and need to understand what I can try to avoid more of the same. All advice photographic welcome...I appreciate Photoshop is a great tool, but only if the RAW file is decent so in camera advice first. Thanks.
Hmm, Exif says you used a D200 - if you still have that, and I'm not familiar with Canon, at a minimum set it for spot metering and meter on a balloon.
Shoot RAW!
Better yet, using a tripod, rip off a series of bracketed shots to get a range of under - proper - over exposed images. You should be able to use one, or sandwich two of those in pp'ing to render the full range of colors.
The image you posted was shot using
# Max Aperture = F3.48
# Metering Mode = center weighted average (2)
# Light Source / White Balance = unknown (0)
and probably focused at some point in the sky (since the sky is properly exposed). Be sure to check the histogram to make sure you've not clipped blacks or whites (at least too much).
Rashley,
Let me know if you want me to remove the re-work.
Bob, new features apparently added to FM. This is the classic black frame option. There are about a 10-20 frames you can now place around the images. I guess a benefit of the image upload service.
rashley wrote:
Early Saturday (May 31) I am off to a Balloon Festival. I took this shot last year and need to understand what I can try to avoid more of the same. All advice photographic welcome...I appreciate Photoshop is a great tool, but only if the RAW file is decent so in camera advice first. Thanks.
You have nice pictures in series - my favorites are the close crops. On the first I don't think you can get this kind of shot with the light you have. Another hour later with a low sun catching the balloons is needed otherwise there is too much difference between sky and balloon and one or the other will look bad.
So my advice is plan the lighting - early morning is best. And avoid bright skies. But I have never tried this before.
Thanks to each of you for your advice and encouragement...One of my balloon shots (none of the above) made the finals in the WA. It was the bracketing that made it possible. And let's hear it for a good, light weight tripod. This forum works!
