Harsh Light

[Brooklynboy]

I'm not sure if I'm doing anything wrong. I tried taking a photo of something that was lit up. However, the object was not as bright as this processed picture. In real life, the light was not this strong. I could see the skin color of the face.  Is my exposure wrong? Is my Lightroom editing wrong? Is it the Fuji X-T2?

 

I tried lowering the Highlights or Whites, but it just looks awful.

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Edited January 24, 2017 by Brooklynboy

[frankinfuji]

May be your metering mode?

 

The background is dark and the subject bright - the camera will average out the exposure giving you a dark-ish background and very bright subject.

 

If you set the metering zone to a point and place this on the subject, then the face would look right and the background would probably go black.

 

Or use exposure compensation.

[voodooless]

Well, your eye has about 20 stops of dynamic range, your camera a fair bit less. So what you see is not what you can capture. For things like this it is best to use spot metering, or underexpose a bit (look at the histogram). If the highlights are not blown you could try lowering the exposure in Lightroom (you are using the RAW I hope), and then raise the shadows back.

[milandro]

fortunately, fuji cameras do pretty much wysiwyg, at least if set up properly, I consider the compensation dial the most used, useful and important dial of my camera.

[pete1959]

Your camera (properly)  raised the exposure for the background resulting in overexposed highlights.

 

Metering (what the camera does) and the exposure is what the photographer sets.

 

The camera meters.

 

The photographer sets the exposure.

 

I would expect to dial the exposure down 2 stops in such a scene and that is perfectly normal.

 

Blown highlights are not very recoverable in LR.

 

Shadows are very easy to recover.

[johant]

You overexposed.

 

The histogram would have indicated that as well. Spot metering plus three stops gives me an indication usually.

[Jwctp]

Like others have said, you overexposed.

Some ways you could handle this in the future:

 

• Use spot metering and point it at the bright part of the elf's face.
• Matrix metering and use Exp Comp dial to lower the exposure to see fit (using the WYSIWYG screen)
• Manual Exposure and adjust your ISO, shutter, and/or aperture to get your desired exposure of the elf's face  (using the WYSIWYG screen).