How To Shoot Into Sunlight

Taking pictures when shooting into the sun can be challenging, and you need to be careful with your metering. The intelligent Focus Color Luminance (iFCL) metering that is found in contemporary Canon digital SLRs is quite sophisticated; yet, when the camera is set to standard Evaluative mode, it creates a bias in the metering that favors the active focus point. Such an effect will typically result in a well-exposed foreground, while considerably brighter portions in the image will wash out to white. If the focus point or many focus points that accomplish autofocus fall in dark foreground areas, this will generally result in a well-exposed foreground.

Altering to the Partial or Spot metering mode is one approach that can be taken. The Auto Exposure Lock (AEL) button, which is symbolized by a star, should be pressed after the camera has been aimed at a portion of the picture that is rather bright. As a result, the camera will capture and lock the exposure setting, enabling you to recompose the picture before taking the photograph. Additionally, use the Manual shooting mode on your camera and make adjustments to the aperture and shutter speed to achieve the greatest possible effect. Take some test photos and examine the results on the LCD screen of your camera.

To prevent highlights from becoming washed out, the Highlight Tone Priority custom function, which is available in the majority of Canon SLR cameras, can be effective. As a result, the dynamic range at the highlight region is increased, which allows for the preservation of more detail. This means that Auto Lighting Optimizer will not be accessible as a consequence of this.

The use of the Auto Lighting Optimizer comes with both positive and negative aspects. Because of this, you will end up with a high contrast image rather than a complete silhouette, meaning that the lowlights are basically black and the highlights are incredibly amazing. The high contrast is a positive aspect of the technique because it helps to enhance the detail in the shadows. In spite of this, ALO has the ability to counteract exposure compensation and even offset exposure settings in Manual mode. This is because it strives to provide the appropriate level of brightness and contrast.

If you want to achieve the greatest possible results, you should shoot in RAW image quality mode and avoid using either the ALO or the Highlight Tone Priority functions. During the editing stage, you can use the Digital Professional program to adjust the overall exposure (brightness) and contrast, as well as to turn on and change the amount of Auto Lighting Optimization. This provides you with the greatest degree of flexibility possible. Additionally, you will have the ability to increase or decrease the brightness of the highlight and lowlight separately. You are able to accomplish all of this with only a slight decrease in image quality as compared to the process of editing JPEG photographs.

Still, you must ensure your metering is as precise as possible at first. Regardless of whether you are modifying RAW or JPEG files, you cannot recover damaged highlights. It is important to note that when you shoot in RAW quality mode, you will discover that there is more space, which means that there is a greater possibility of recapturing some of the features in bright highlights.

Use a lens hood and keep your lenses and filters as clean as possible to lessen the chance of ghosting and flare when shooting directly into the sun or at sharp angles to it. Flare can cause bright streaks of light to spread across photos. Although they are challenging to get rid of, it is not impossible.

Partial Metering:

When using partial metering, the exposure is determined by a small area located in the middle of the frame. Spot metering is another option; however, because it employs a tiny dot, it necessitates a higher level of precision when aligning it with something in the surrounding environment. At this point, you can take a quick reading.

Light Readings:

In order to obtain a reading from the meter and lock the exposure setting, you should aim your camera at a region of the scene that is relatively bright and then hit the Auto Exposure Lock (*) button. Alternately, you might want to use the Exposure Level Indicator to modify the aperture and shutter speed and then switch to the Manual shooting mode.

Cool It Down:

When processing RAW files with Digital Photo Professional software, shooting in RAW quality mode provides you with the largest amount of flexibility compared to shooting in other quality modes. In this instance, we have changed the white balance to Tungsten in order to achieve a twilight-like, cool blue appearance.

Warm It Up:

Making the switch to the Cloudy or Shade white balance setting will allow you to apply a color cast that is more orange, which will give your “into-the-light” image the appearance of a sunset. The white balance can be fine-tuned to give you exactly the results you desire, and you can also increase or decrease the saturation of the image.