Correcting overexposure

Zebbedee

I'm new to my digital slr Nikon D50 and I had the settings way wrong and some
shots I would like corrected are very overexposed.
There doesn't seem to be a correction facility on Picasa 3.
Any advice for a rookie?

pixbyjohn

Picasa gives you an option to edit in Picnik which has an exposure adjustment.

Kenny Logins

RAW?

AnCatDubh

thegimp maybe can help but if jpg format then you'll have trouble pulling back anything meaningful out of a badly overexposed shot.

Learn to see and use the histogram on the D50 - when you shoot for a reasonable exposure you shouldn't see too much at either extent of the histogram.

Far left is generally underexposed, far right is generally overexposed, the graph demonstrates the volume of photograph information which is under/over exposed or just right. So a large graphed area to the right of a histogram is an over exposed photograph and unless it was intentional you will need to stop what you are doing and change your settings (that is assuming the D50 isn't doing anything clever in the background like spot adjusting the exposure to compensate for dark/bright parts of an image which some cameras are now doing).

CabanSail

If you were shooting RAW then you can probably bring back a lot of highlight detail in the conversion.

If you were shooting jpeg then I'm afraid that data is lost.

pixbyjohn

Kenny Logins wrote: »

RAW?

That didn't help OP, you need to explain it :D

Kenny Logins

pixbyjohn wrote: »

That didn't help OP, you need to explain it :D

Yeah, I know- incredibly lazy reply.

I didn't want to type a long-winded response outlining the benefits of shooting RAW only to find the all of the OP's pics are JPEGs.

It seemed to it might come across a little bit 'Let's see what you could have won..'.

Zebbedee

Thanks for the replies. I learned from them.
Yes the histogram is way over to the right.
Yes they are all jpeg fine.
Shutter speed is only 1/60 whereas in the rest of the photo's which are ok speed is between 1/500 and 1/2000.
I must have unknowingly twisted the program dial on the left of the camera body.
So I suppose that means they are unrecoverable.
Have no idea what raw is (yet) but will experiment in the future.

sebphoto

Zebbedee wrote: »

Thanks for the replies. I learned from them.
Yes the histogram is way over to the right.
Yes they are all jpeg fine.
Shutter speed is only 1/60 whereas in the rest of the photo's which are ok speed is between 1/500 and 1/2000.
I must have unknowingly twisted the program dial on the left of the camera body.
So I suppose that means they are unrecoverable.
Have no idea what raw is (yet) but will experiment in the future.

RAW = NEF in your case. Click here.
Besides if your image is way too overexposed then you won't be able to do anything/much with it. Underexposure is safer than overexposure.