# Blown out windows



## mIndex (May 10, 2012)

When I take pictures inside abandoned houses, I always have issues with the light in the windows.  If there's a window in a picture, it always ends up completely blown out.  Sometimes it's an interesting look, but other times it's just too much white.  Is there any way to reduce this?  I'm getting a tripod soon, so I was thinking I could take two pictures from the same angle, one which properly exposes the interior and one that less severely over exposes the window, and then photoshop those together.  I'm not sure how well that will work or how difficult that would be though, so are there any other possible solutions?


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## joaopsr (May 10, 2012)

Well, the dynamic range needed to capture detail inside a dark room and outside the window in a sunny day is huge. No camera sensor/film can do it.
There are many ways to overcome that.
You can blend 2 images (or more, if needed)
You can generate an HDR image
You can light the room using flash (or hotlights)
...


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## KmH (May 10, 2012)

The dynamic range between the dark inside and the bright outside is greater than your camera's image sensor can capture.

There are 2 solutions - 1. Use a tripod and make 2 exposures - one for the windows, and a second for the inside of the building. Blend the 2 photos post process.

2. Add enough light inside the building so the total dynamic range between inside and outside is small.


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## mIndex (May 12, 2012)

Any tips or tutorials for combining the two photos?  Some how I doubt it's as simple as it sounds


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## KmH (May 13, 2012)

There are bunches of them on the Internet. Blending photos - Bing


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## WhiskeyTango (May 15, 2012)

IMO: The much easier approach is to add light, i.e. flash, inside.  Meter and expose for the window and then add flash to bring the inside exposure up.  The whole process is seconds...


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## Fred Berg (May 15, 2012)

I agree that metering for the windows and using a flash to take care of the interior is a good way to deal with this issue.


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## TCampbell (May 16, 2012)

There are a few ways to deal with this and which way works depends on the framing of the shot and your gear.

You're basically dealing with mixed lighting.  You've got outdoor lighting... possibly following the Sunny 16 rule out there.  Then you've got the indoor lighting which will be much much darker (especially in an abandoned house where there's no supplemental lighting.)

What you need to do is reduce the number of stops between the "outside" light and the "inside" light so that when one is exposed correctly, the other isn't either blown out white or clipped black in shadows.

If you think logically about this... you really can't do anything about the "outdoor" light (not unless you know how to conjure up clouds to block out the intensity of the sun, but tragically I think they killed all the people who used to know how to do that -- so this really limits our options.)   BUT.... you MIGHT be able to do something about the indoor lighting using flash.

I've done these shots, and it is possible to create the balance.  The next problem is the framing of the shot.  If you're relatively close to the window then a single flash can probably fill in the shadows to balance the shot.  But if you're well back in the room, the flash will not "evenly" light the room because of the inverse-square law (the light value "halves" every time the distance increases by the square root of 2).  That means if the room is 20' long and you've got several windows, and you set the flash to provide good lighting 10' away, then you'll only have 1/2 as much light 14' away and you'll only have 1/4 of the light 20' away.  If you increase the flash power for that far wall then the closer areas will be over-exposed.  You get the idea.  This means you might actually need multiple lights.

Another way to do this is by bracketing the exposure.  I've done this method as well.  The trick here is NOT to trust your light meter.  If you just meter the room using full evaluative or matrix metering, you'll get some muddled exposure value that the computer comes up with.  That's not the exposure you want.  You really want to spot meter the darkest shadows indoors (or using a hand-held incident light meter).  Then you want to spot meter the outdoors.  You then want to MANUALLY find the middle exposure (based on shutter speeds... not aperture).  Then bracket the shot to take the low, middle, and high exposures and combine them together in HDR.

I'll be honest... I'm no pro at HDR.  When I do this myself, the good news is that the photos look balanced from a lighting perspective... but the bad news is the colors go wonky (even when I'm trying to use a "natural" HDR and not go for some surrealistic look.)  HDR is just not my friend when I'm going for the natural look -- the colors aren't just a little wrong... they're a LOT wrong.


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## jackmolotov (May 16, 2012)

> I'm getting a tripod soon, so I was thinking I could take two pictures  from the same angle, one which properly exposes the interior and one  that less severely over exposes the window, and then photoshop those  together.  I'm not sure how well that will work or how difficult that  would be though, so are there any other possible solutions?


this is how you shoot sunsets properly. works in any situation where two diffrent parks of the scene have vastly diffrent light levels.

The human eye can be very decieving on how big the light diffrence is, but after a while instinct will tell you. get a light reading from the inside, record settings, get a light measurement from the outside, record settings, then line up your shot and take the same picture twice with the same settings.

Or you can just bracket.


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## Tiberius47 (May 17, 2012)

mIndex said:


> When I take pictures inside abandoned houses, I always have issues with the light in the windows.  If there's a window in a picture, it always ends up completely blown out.  Sometimes it's an interesting look, but other times it's just too much white.  Is there any way to reduce this?  I'm getting a tripod soon, so I was thinking I could take two pictures from the same angle, one which properly exposes the interior and one that less severely over exposes the window, and then photoshop those together.  I'm not sure how well that will work or how difficult that would be though, so are there any other possible solutions?



That certainly is a very doable option.  I;ve done it myself a few times, and I've also seen lots of other people do it.

However, my first choice would be to light the room with flash.  But then, I do love my flashes...


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