What should I pay attention to when shooting on cloudy days?

Generally speaking, people don't think cloudy days are a good time to shoot, but only on dark days with heavy clouds or cloudy days with rapid climate change will it really pose great technical challenges to photographers, and cloudy days with bright light are just suitable for shooting portraits.

If you want to take a good portrait on a cloudy day, you should pay attention to at least three important factors:

1 Correct control of exposure

2 Correct control of white balance

3 Make good use of color

First of all, we notice that portraits taken on cloudy days are generally dull, and when using flash to fill the light, it is easy to form the phenomenon that the light on the face of the characters is stiff and the background is dim. In terms of exposure, the reason why the face is harder than the main body or the background is dark is that the main body fills too much light.

Therefore, the exposure of cloudy shooting should pay attention to:

Try not to use the flash, open the aperture and use the shutter for a long time. If the shutter can't be maintained at a safe shutter, consider raising ISO by one level (or using a tripod).

In this way, at least the subject and background can be more consistent. The subject is too bright and the background is too dark.

If you decide to fill the light, you can use:

A. hit the fill light on the reflector and reflect it on the human face.

B. the flash can be controlled manually. Pay attention to the intensity of fill light, not higher than the light on the spot, that is, just do a little fill light.

C. make good use of exposure combinations. The exposure effect of spotlight is controlled by shutter time and aperture, while the exposure effect of flash is only controlled by aperture within synchronous speed. Proper use of exposure combination can achieve the best effect.

When shooting on cloudy days, an important principle is that it is better to be slightly underexposed than overexposed. Once overexposed, not only the layer is lost, but also the color is dull, which is difficult to make up for in post-production.

Application of white balance and color

If you want to make people look brighter when taking portraits on cloudy days, you can actually work hard on color matching.

For example, if people are placed in front of a dark background, their skin will appear whiter in perception; If the character is placed in front of a bright background, the skin will appear dull in perception.

In addition, the color temperature on cloudy days will be high. If the camera's automatic white balance adjustment ability is exceeded, the tone of the photo will be slightly blue. If your camera has the "cloudy white balance" option, you can use this item to adjust the color temperature.

1. Let the characters wear lively and bright clothes to avoid the gloomy feeling on cloudy days.

2. When people are in front of a dark background, their skin will appear whiter and brighter.

Although it is cloudy, the brightness of the sky may still be several grades worse than the skin of the character, so pay attention to this factor when shooting.

4. Set the "cloudy" white balance option to avoid the blue feeling of the photo.

observe

If the cloudy day is also regarded as a "twilight" environment, then we will find that:

1. The sun is covered by clouds, and the light is diffuse, but in an open place, the light is too dull and there is no level of light and shadow.

2. Soft light, the color tone is particularly soft when shooting portraits, which is suitable for expressing the texture of the skin, but the whole picture is easy to appear dull.

3. Some scenes, because of the structure or occlusion of the scene, the light has a slight layering, which is not obvious and difficult to identify, but we can strengthen it and bring it out in the post-production process.

With this kind of thinking, we found that when shooting portraits on cloudy days, the consideration of the scene will be an important factor if we want to show the sense of hierarchy and the beauty of color.