Better to avoid bright sun for portraits,too. Regards.

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A common problem with dynamic range, it's limited. If youve shot with a relatively low ISO, you can pull up the shadow/darker areas in post processing without introducing too much noise. Alternatively, overexpose the highlights and accept they will somewhat blown out..

Wedding photogs deal with this routinely. Its not necessarily about having perfect exposure across the complete image, it's about what you want others to see in the image. Nothing wrong with overexposed/blown highlights, if this is not an important part of the shot..

Work within the DR of your camera, pose your shots to maximize the DR, dont worry about blowing some highlights if they are not important to what you want convey in the image..

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AHightower wrote:.

In short, I can't get clear faces when there's a lot of contrast.I'm talking about candid, day-to-day shots, I won't often have timeto adjust the lighting or pose them....

Try selecting Spot Metering so that then you can make the camera meter only off your kid's face and ignore everything else in the scene..

In contrasty sunny situations, spot metering off baseball cap shaded darker toned faces will cause brightly lit areas in the scene to be blown out..

Also adjust Exposure Compensation (+/-) up or down as needed (upon review of an image)..

If kid's face is coming out too dark (under-exposed) then dial in positive (+) Exposure Compensation..

If kid's face comes out too light (over-exposed) then dial in negative (-) Exposure Compensation..

NOTE: or could try leaving metering where it's at and just increasing (+) the Exposure Compensation until the face(s) look how you want - I see the E410 has a large range, allowing for adjustment all the way up to +5.

Or could also use fill-flash as another mentioned, to throw some light on the shaded face..

Good Day,Roonal.

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After having played around with the Olympus Master editing software, I'm pretty satisfied with my ability to correct any faces that come out too dark, after the fact. Not as time-consuming as I expected. I'll continue to experiment with the camera settings. Thanks for the responses, and I've read a lot of good advice in other threads as well...

1) Folks wearing ball caps in mid-day sun is exactly what fill flash was made for..

2) Try doing some test meter readings in light like they play using the palm of your hand or their palms as a gray card. The palms of the hands are about the same reflectance regardless of race and it's about 30% so open up 1 stop from your test reading...

You've received some good advice.1. Use exposure compensation to lighten faces.2. If you have Photoshop, try the shadow/highlight tool..

3. Most important: remind your kids that wearing baseball caps with the bill to the back is high fashion nowadays...

I have similar problems. Sometimes I end up taking the exposure off the palm of my hand, using it as a neutral grey card. It is not perfect but it is close enough...