hope someone can help fix some photos?

my daughters tae kwon do school had a in house tournament kind of thing and the girl taking the pictures screwed up i think she had the shutter set to fast (not a great photographer so guessing here) but all the pics came out almost black you can just barely see something in the pics :kind of: they are SUPER dark. i know you cant add something to nothing but is there a chance there might be something still there behind that darkness at all?

i do have photoshop available and know some of the basics but im not a pro by any means. is there any chance of somehow fixing or at least brightening them slightly to be able to see something in them they are all so disappointed they cant see the pics.

if anyone can help we would be so thankful especially my daughter.

Post a link to one of the full size files. At least 3000 pixels on the long side. Then we can try.

here is a link to the actual file from the disc:

http://rghost.net/private/59723059/1ddadf8e6c176ee25d90d001454a73f4

and here is a link to the photo on postimage:

http://postimg.org/image/q99sivk37/

i can just make out people in this pic some are even worse. if you can figure it out and even explain how to do it im sure i could follow and fix the rest.

thank you for your help its MUCH appreciated

what kind of camera did you shoot it on? are there any RAW files? without RAWs it will be impossible

i didnt shoot them so i dont know. the girl from the school took them (their secretary) this is the only disc they have with the pics from what she said (she was supposed to know what she was doing or she said she did so everyone's kids dont have their pics now)

yeah, there isn't enough information stored in a JPG to get the kind of flexibility we need. even a RAW file might not pull it out

thanks appreciate it guys. she has been torn a new one from what i heard by the owner of the school because all the parents now have no pictures from the contest. shame. i wish they would have asked me heck i could have used my cell phone and got decent results. she was supposedly using a decent camera to so i surprised.

Unfortunately it doesn't look good. I threw it into Lightroom and Photoshop and there just isn't enough data left for details.

It was a good camera, a Nikon D40, however her shutter speed was way off. She shot this one at 1/3200, f/3.5, ISO 800, on Shutter Priority.

this got really toasted.
exposure info was 1/3200 sec; f/3.5; ISO 800
it probably should have been 1/100 sec, so about 6 stops under-exposed.
this is the best that i could do...
and it looks like someone else was also taking the photo (camera left), so perhaps you could get a better image from him/her?

Yeah, that's all I could extract from it too.

Its a shame really. Always double check your setting before and test shoot!

Looks like your photog needed a flash. Even having a cheaper TTL flash bounced from the ceiling would have given you photos way better than what you have now.

A shame, but there is no saving those pictures.

If she had a camera in the "prosumer" range, what she probably did is put it on "sports" mode. It gave her a fast shutter speed, which would have been fine for shooting sports outside in full daylight. Indoor sporting events are hard to shoot. Although it looks like the indoor lights are bright, there really isn't much light getting to the camera.

reading the embedded exposure info on the file, the camera was set to Shutter Priority, Matrix Metering, Flash Off.
Shutter speed was set by the photographer, at 1/3200 sec.
At that speed, the on-camera flash is ineffective anyway.
The auto exposure setting on the camera tried to compensate by opening the aperture, to f/3.5.
ISO was preset to 800.

I ran it though every trick I know and did no better than sarimento1. Sorry...

Toasted is a great descriptor for this one...

pretty much why I hoped for a raw file. the photographer probably shoots strictly jpg though

MarkM10431 said:

pretty much why I hoped for a raw file. the photographer probably shoots strictly jpg though

Click to expand...

highly doubt that a raw file would be any more salvageable than a jpg at 6 stops under. I might experiment just to see.

Yeah, I think 6 stops under isn't going to turn out well either. That sensor isn't really up to catching that amount of info. I do have a Nikon D80 which I could grab a couple shots from under exposed at various levels, that camera should be similar to the D40.

sarimento1 said:

highly doubt that a raw file would be any more salvageable than a jpg at 6 stops under. I might experiment just to see.

Click to expand...

The D750 is being touted as an amazing camera for being able to do 5 stops. But, it's FF and brand new, so I doubt the photographer used one of those.