This picture from under the bridge gives vivid colours of what is outside.
Once outside, the pictures become dull.
Can we learn something from this ?
Automatic exposure settings? Can the camera be adjusted for a higher +EV setting to give better dark area detail?
You can see that it is a Gopro Hero 7 Black. There was no polarizing filter.
edit = sorry it is the Blackvue.
The large expanse of bright cloud reducing the exposure is the problem. I have a similar problem with the BlackVue that is reduced by tilting down more or capturing down sun.
Possibly adjust? GoPro Support
IMHO, too much sky, consider tilting the camera. Line of horizon should be around the middle, while you are capturing 80% of sky, which has a severe effect on exposure.
I know, it is the car.
it’s BlackVue DR900S dashcam as I can see.
So there is no issue to adjust the tilt with this model.
Yes, you will get some body/cockpit in sight after adjustment - but if you want, you can crop it before uploading (I’m using free Irfanview to the job)
I tilted the Blackvue up as little as possible as I am tired of the reflections.
Luckily in my region, there is something to see above the ground.
Even too much.
Polarizing filter could help with reflections. Original or cheap self-made from old sunglasses.
It’s an “auto exposure thing”. Setting it to manual is risky I’m afraid. Then the only real thing you can do is a “polarizing filter” as gpsmapper mentioned.
PS: this is one of the things I like about the YI360 I’m testing, the “auto exposure” setting works very well
I am into a vicious circle.
If in your experience almost always the picture is a bit on the dark side, you may be able to set the exposure to plus a half or a whole stop? Most “normal digital camera’s” have this option, remaining in “auto mode”…
FYI, what is a “stop”
Maybe try;
Brightness - You can adjust the recording brightness level of the dashcam. (From the manual)
Put simply though the camera doesnt have the dynamic range to show shadow detail in high light level situations. If the exposure was adustable the bright clouds would still be “burnt out” if shadow areas were more visible. If it is important, maybe try adjusting as a post processing step using imagemagic, Irfanview etc on an image by image basis. If not, then ensure that the capture has as little bright cloud capture as possible by aiming lower, only down sun or only on blue sky days.
Hi filipc,
It would be lovely to be able to just upload directly after capturing but since on a sunny day there’s a contrast of 10+ EVs (or f-stops like photographers like to say) and normal cameras struggle capturing anything beyond a contrast of 5 EVs, something is bound to get captured dark/black and something bright white. Also due to automatic exposure algorithms cameras often times fail to capture the scenes as we hoped they would.
Due to these issues I decided early on to start running all my images through Lightroom to mitigate the contrast & exposure and vibrance issues. Please see my workflow for more details. It takes ages even on a fast computer but provides IMHO a considerable quality improvement without compromising images’ visual or technical quality in any way. I realize not everyone might be interested in buying a Lightroom licence for just this sake so alternative free options could be e.g. Rawtherapee or a command-line tool like Fred’s adaptive gamma or shadow-highlight scripts (scroll down on those pages for sample images and command-line parameters) based on Imagemagick.
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