General photography question ... I know nothing about photography, but just bought a fancy digital camera, and would like to start learning the features.
In some of the pics above, where you're taking a picture of a fire at night, the issue would seem to be that the first is glaringly bright, and everything else is in darkness. What would you do to try to capture the fire, but also try to expose the surrounding house, etc. somewhat? I notice a flash was used above, which of course only lights up the foreground.
My camera seems to have a few options. There's an "adaptive lighting" setting which is supposed to balance the relationship between dark and light, compressing harsh contrasts by lightening darkened areas but causing some noise in the dark areas that were lightened.
There's also a contrast setting.
Just thought I'd try to sneak a photography question in here. I'll probably start trying out these adjustments myself to see what happens.
Joe