Using highlight tone priority in a Canon DSLR

Recording only JPEG images during a long photoshoot has many advantages over keeping the RAW images, but the main drawback is the loss of flexibility in adjusting the exposure in post-processing. When shooting RAW, even if the photo is incorrectly exposed, it is often salvageable in Photoshop or Lightroom. With the JPEG files, if the photo is over-exposed, the highlights cannot be recovered after the fact. I usually enable the highlight alert in my camera, so that any over-exposed areas in the photo appear as blinking white/black light when displayed on the LCD screen. By monitoring the highlights, I adjust the exposure as I shoot.

Sometimes, the dynamic range of the scene (the difference between the dark and the light areas) is too large for the camera too handle, so some loss of information in the recorded image is inevitable. This was the case during the first day of the Canadian University Rowing Championship last Saturday, when the bright sun was reflecting off the surface of the lake, and the rowers appeared as dark silhouettes. To minimize the over-exposed areas, some image processing can be done in camera, at the time of shooting.

In Canon DSLRs, such as my 1D X or the very popular Rebel T5i or 70D, there is a function called “highlight tone priority”, which accomplishes this. Nikon DSLRs have a counterpart called “active D lighting”.

The highlight tone priority can be activated as follows (the instructions are also on page 156 of the 1Dx manual):

• Press <MENU>;
• Select the second tab in the Camera group of menus (see picture above);
• Select [Highlight tome priority] and press <SET>;
• Select [Enable} and press <SET>;
• Take the picture.

As a side note, the JPEGs can still be adjusted, to a degree, in post-processing. For the rowing pictures, I used a combination of in-camera- and post-processing. The photos ended up being contrasty, but I think it generally works well for sports images.