Exposing White / Bright Subjects

[trigger]

Hi ladies and gentlemen. Want to post this to get a few tips and techniques to get this right.

I've been trying to take pics of subjects such as white flowers and brightly lit things.

Some how it seems that there isnt much detail in my photos even after spot metering on the subject and upping the shutter speed.

here are some examples. The First pic is the raw product

after adjusting the levels, fill lighting and black levels. The second was the result. But it has lost some of the detail...

any help would be great.

[Harves]

I use the exposure compensator a lot these days, especially on white/bright things. Depending on light conditions, I find somewhere between -0.3 to -1.0 enough.

If you can revisit your white flower, take some shots at different exposure adjustments, as well as experiment with metering, but generally I use matrix metering.

[TOM]

If you really want to nail exposure everytime with subjects like this, then get yourself an incident light meter such as a Minolta IVf. No exposure compesation require.

[Seesee]

A bit of your problem with the posted images is your processing....the second has too much contrat adjustment which will help blow out the whites and judging by the halo/fringing on the petals in particular suggests you have over sharpened your image.

Try a different time of day, early morning for softer light will help a lot and/or apply a bit of + EV adjustment.

[John Dixon]

Tom beat me to it on the incident meter, you could always take a spot reading of the white and add one and two thirds compesation and see how you go on, or you could use an 18% grey card and meter off that, just make sure the card is in the same light as your subject.