Sign Pics: Too Much Backlight

[Mergingtraffic]

When I take my sign pics, the sun is everything in my pics. 

If the sun is on the sign in the front it can make my pic look great, however there are some signs I would love to have that never seem to get sun.  Therefore, I have to take the pic with the sun in back of the sign which makes it look dark.  Any programs you can use to change the lighting? Any programs to switch the lighting to the front?  I know science fiction. lol

A sign I think where the sun lighting is good:


A sign I think the lighting is bad, as the sun is from behind the sign:



(I don't like taking pics on cloudy days either as the colors aren't as vibrant)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/98731835@N05/

[froggie]

Most graphics programs will allow you to adjust brightness and contrast.

[formulanone]

You can do a little bit to adjust for lots of backlighting, but with too much editing, they can look kind of "overblown". Edges of letters/numbers get unusual colors or  halation occurs. If I modify the shadow lighting on a photo, I'll usually do no more than 10% either way, or it will look spotty, mid-colored, or unnatural. Most graphical changes can be a sacrifice to the rest of the image if used outside of moderation.

Cloudy days can offer their own advantages; lighting doesn't wildly change, and glare is minimized. Higher contrast isn't as big a problem, so sometimes the balance between highlight and shadow isn't as big a compromise. The problem is that color becomes muted, and the spectrum gets skewed. High-speed photography can be iffy if higher image quality is desired.

I use FastStone for Windows, which is a combination of image browser and offers an easy-to-use array of image editing tools. There's a little bit more controls than Google's Picassa, and it loads quickly. I have an old copy of Photoshop 6.0 for some tweaks, although I use it mostly for scanning photos.

There's always going to be one-of-a-kind moments, so sometimes you just have to take what you can get, photographically. For example; during colorful sunsets, I feel it's best to just go with the flow:

[oscar]

formulaone, great photo of the sunset, but not of the sign.  Ciould you create a second image cropping out almost everything but the sign, and do whatever adjustments are needed to make the sign come out reasonably well?

I prefer cloudy days for sign photography, so I can take the shot I need when I'm there rather than come back some other time or some other day.  You don't get vibrant colors that way, but then very few signs have vibrant colors anyway.  When I do want vibrant colors, I don't let a sign get in the way.

[formulanone]

formulaone, great photo of the sunset, but not of the sign.  Ciould you create a second image cropping out almost everything but the sign, and do whatever adjustments are needed to make the sign come out reasonably well?

Not really, but maybe there's some editing wizards out there...playing around with that photo yielded some awful results; too much contrast created for an typical BGS sign. You wind up with a minimum of color, and the natural transitions between colors becomes a steep drop off.

Sometimes that's a good way to find things like green-out or other alterations to the sign, though.

Here's the monster I created... 

[Alex]

Adjust the curves or levels in a graphics program for offsetting the washed out look when shooting into the sun or with "black-boxed sign photos".

[AsphaltPlanet]

I prefer taking pictures on sunny days as well.  I also like sign pictures that take their setting into account.  For example, if taking a picture of a freeway sign situated in front of a large freeway/freeway interchange, I want to try and capture the photo trying to include as much of the interchange as I can behind it.





Because of this, I also try to position myself in traffic in order to avoid taking a photo of the vehicle in front of me's bumper.  This is especially true when following large trucks.  When photographing signs, I will adjust my speed considerably (either faster or slower) in order to try to place myself in traffic relative to a truck so that it doesn't fill up too much of my frame.  When I am somewhere local, I will even try plan my travel times accordingly to try and photograph busier roads during off-peak times.  For example, many of my westbound photographs of the 401 through Toronto are taken early on Saturday or Sunday mornings in the summer, in order to taken advantage of relatively light traffic volumes.

[Duke87]

If backlighting is making the sign come out dim you can try using flash to compensate.

But this of course does not work if there is glass between you and the sign, or if the sign is more than 20 feet away or so (i.e. you can only do it for ground mounted signs).

[Mergingtraffic]

I haven't had much time to road trip lately but I had some free time today (Friday 2-6) so I decided to go down the NJ Tpke and onto Staten Island and Manhattan.  Whenever I road trip I usually base it on how sunny it is. 

I like taking my pics in sunlight. It makes the colors more vibrant and showcases buttons better depending on the sun's location.

So yesterday and even this morning weather forecasts have said mostly sunny for the area (CT, NY, NJ).  I woke up at my place in CT and the clear blue sky backed up those reports.  So off I went, excited about capturing the scenes and wouldn't you know it when I arrived on the NJ Tpke and from there on out....clouds! Nothing but clouds. 

In fact, I even planned to get certain signs that were facing "the right way" and planned to get there before the solar noon to get pretty good lighting in time.  I check the solar noon time for some places so I know to hit it in the right time frame. 

Weather wise it was a fail.  A big fail.  I snapped pics but will see if I can get better ones. 

I enjoy road-tripping but just had to vent.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/98731835@N05/
PS: Some pics are  on cloudy days....hey can't win 'em all.

[J N Winkler]

If backlighting is making the sign come out dim you can try using flash to compensate.

This is my usual approach when I have to shoot into the sun.  Often I also dial down the exposure a stop or so (usual rule of thumb is 1/125 sec at f/16 for ISO 100 in unfiltered sunshine) to keep the background from seeming overbright.  I also try to position the camera so that the camera-mounted flash bulb can't be seen in really glossy sign panels, which is often quite a challenge with dark-background signs.  Fill flash tends to work superlatively well with engineer-grade and high-intensity sheetings, but quite poorly with most microprismatic sheetings, which either wash out (reflecting the flash illumination too efficiently) or drop off sharply in brightness across the sign panel area due to high angular sensitivity.

It is a great help to have a camera which allows you to adjust flash power and has enough zoom range to allow you to back away far enough from the sign to get the luminous flux from the flash at the signface down to a reasonable level.

But this of course does not work if there is glass between you and the sign, or if the sign is more than 20 feet away or so (i.e. you can only do it for ground mounted signs).

I have done it quite successfully with overhead signs, though if they have microprismatic sheeting, angle of incidence becomes a problem because you are at minimum ten feet lower than the center of the sign (usual mounting rule for overhead sign panels is to have the lowest point 17 feet above the road surface).  The approach I favor is to back quite far away and shoot at high zoom with flash at or close to full power.

Flash photography of signs is very difficult to do from a moving vehicle and I don't recommend that it even be tried.  Frankly, I would much rather scavenge photologging imagery for sign photos than try to take still sign photos from within a moving vehicle.  For state DOTs which don't have photologs online, I'd give serious consideration to a dashboard-mounted video camera, though there are significant collateral costs such as storage.

[NJRoadfan]

The quick way to get a sunlight photo if you don't want to fiddle with manual mode is to point the camera at the ground (with sunlight), lock exposure and shutter and then point it at the sign. I have taken sign photos with the sun directly behind the sign (sign basically blocking the sun) with no problem. I also have a polarizing filter to cut down on glaring light as well. All of this is much easier to do in the digital era with LCD preview.

Here is a photo I took using that trick, keep in mind it was 6:40PM in late August and I was facing west:

[Truvelo]

I find the sun can cause problems even when it's behind you.

Some cars I've driven must have something reflective on the body that bounces the sun onto objects at certain angles. It's annoying when it creates these bright streaks on signs which is also visible to a lesser extent on the yellow diamond sign below.


This is another nasty example of light being reflected off the car.


Another issue with the sun is when it's low in the sky. The sunlight is bouncing off the signs making the green appear overexposed. However I can correct this quite easily as the program I use has a "Contrast: Color Range" feature to alter certain colours without affecting the whole picture. In this case the green and blue signs are darkened making them much clearer to read. It has also slightly altered the road surface making the yellow line more contrasty.

[formulanone]

I find the sun can cause problems even when it's behind you.

Some cars I've driven must have something reflective on the body that bounces the sun onto objects at certain angles. It's annoying when it creates these bright streaks on signs which is also visible to a lesser extent on the yellow diamond sign below.

Some of this can be blamed on the varying amounts of brightwork (another word for plastic trim with fake chrome) and larger headlamp assemblies with more reflective surfaces than ever before.

While sometimes I find it annoying, since sometimes the sign can be almost completely washed out in white; in many cases, I feel it lends a bit of curvature and contour to an otherwise flat image.

Non-reflective signs are great for this, but if there's button copy, sometimes you can't tell unless the angle's just right.

[J N Winkler]

I find the sun can cause problems even when it's behind you.

Some cars I've driven must have something reflective on the body that bounces the sun onto objects at certain angles.

I blame this partly on the resurgent popularity of chrome accents.  This is actually an argument against in-car shooting.

Another issue with the sun is when it's low in the sky. The sunlight is bouncing off the signs making the green appear overexposed.

Again, I see this largely as a problem with in-car shooting, since the camera is doing the metering.  When the sun gets really low in the sky, the ISO 100-1/125 sec-f/16 rule begins to break down and green sign backgrounds photographed in accord with that rule look correctly exposed while everything else appears to be low-key.  As the sun gets lower in the sky (half an hour or less to sunset, say), reddish tint and specular reflection of the sun disk off the gloss of the sign panel start to be more of a problem.  The latter can be counteracted by adjusting camera position, which is easier to do when outside the car, though the former typically needs fill flash as a source of clean color-balanced white light.

This is an example of a photo that needed creative positioning in order to get relatively even illumination across the signface when the sun was quite low in the sky.

[Billy F 1988]

Another issue with the sun is when it's low in the sky. The sunlight is bouncing off the signs making the green appear overexposed. However I can correct this quite easily as the program I use has a "Contrast: Color Range" feature to alter certain colours without affecting the whole picture. In this case the green and blue signs are darkened making them much clearer to read. It has also slightly altered the road surface making the yellow line more contrasty.

Those Corridor X signs look familiar, but sadly, this is no longer US 78 and AL 4 as it's been superseded, if you will, by I-22. What cross section is this example? What roadway is this that we're looking at the nasty backlighting of the Corridor X signs? Is this heading north to Sumiton or south towards Birmingham?

[NE2]

Those Corridor X signs look familiar, but sadly, this is no longer US 78 and AL 4 as it's been superseded, if you will, by I-22.

Ahem.

from http://www.flickr.com/photos/auvet/15306956713/

[Truvelo]

My picture was taken from Exit 7 looking towards Hamilton in the summer of 2013

[SteveG1988]

Sometimes it is just too far off for the image sensor in the digital camera to take it. If it is a hard to do one i would reccomend using a high speed 35mm film roll to do it, and use a decent flash.