Factoring landing lights into exposure.

[Joe Copalman]

I've been wanting to catch a head-on shot of a Piaggio Avanti on final at Falcon Field and I finally got my chance yesterday, but the landing lights were so bright that it drastically darkened the rest of the image:

I was able to "save" it somewhat, but it still looks too dark.  Any further attempts to lighten the image blow out the white on the aircraft.

Does anyone have any input on how to tweak what I'm getting on the front end to even out the exposure a bit, or is this just something I'll have to deal with in editing?  What I would really like is to be able to have my settings on Manual set up for this kind of exposure so I can quickly switch from AV or TV if it looks like landing lights may present a challenge like this.  I may not go for this shot again on the Avanti, and instead go a little off-boresight to put some deflection between me and the light beams.

Relevant data on this shot - TV, ISO 100, Center-Weighted Average, f/16, 1/250.  Shot in JPEG for burst rate without buffer stall, so no ACR tweaks possible.  Any input would be greatly appreciated. 

[Jay Beckman]

This is just one of those instances where you have to be smarter than your camera...

Your options are:
1) Pre-meter empty sky and use those settings in Manual mode (maybe +1/2 stop)
2) Spot Meter the sky away from your subject and use Exposure Lock
3) Take what the camera is giving you and dial in some Exposure Compensation for the point light source

You kind of "double damned" yourself also by using Center-Weighted metering which is making the camera "see" even less of the surrounding sky and more of the white plane / landing light.

Just as a way to double check where blue sky falls in terms of exposure, consider this image:


You'll notice that:
A) I've selected only the sky
B) The spike in the histogram (at upper right) is pretty much dead nuts in the middle of the scale

Basically, daytime blue sky (30-40 degrees above our normally hazy horizon) is right about perfect in terms of luminance as a "rule of thumb" / "in the ballpark" subject for metering.