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Fix Your Dead Sony ZV-1 Photos

Writer: Stephanie Mumford
Stephanie Mumford
Jul 18
3 min read

I almost deleted this whole set.


I was shooting solo: no one behind the camera, just me running back and forth to the tripod and hoping. And the glare coming off the water was so intense I genuinely could not see my screen. I'd take a shot, walk over, squint at a washed-out rectangle, and have no real idea whether I'd got anything.

Shooting into bright sun off the water, my Sony ZV-1 metered for the sky and left me sitting in shadow. Every frame came back flat, dim, and lifeless. The kind of photos you scroll past on the card and think: well, that day's gone.



It wasn't gone. Here's what actually saved it.


Shooting RAW + JPEG saved this photo set


This is the single habit that turns a dead shoot into a recoverable one. The JPEG is what the camera decided your photo should look like. The RAW is everything the sensor actually captured, including all the detail hiding in those shadows that the JPEG threw away.


When I put the original JPEG, the edited JPEG, and the edited RAW side by side, the difference isn't subtle. The edited JPEG improves. The edited RAW comes back to life.


If your camera lets you shoot both, turn it on today. Storage is cheap. Regret isn't.


The RAW file let me add light back into the image


The first move was simple: boost the exposure. Because I had the RAW, I could lift the whole frame without the shadows falling apart into muddy grey noise. That latitude is the entire reason RAW exists.

But a global exposure lift only gets you halfway. Brighten the whole image, and now your sky is blown out while your subject is still sitting in shadow, which brings me to the part that actually did the heavy lifting.


Masking is your best friend

Lightroom's subject masking is genuinely the best thing that's happened to editing in years. One click, and Lightroom selects the person in your frame and nothing else.


From there I could push exposure on just my subject: a modest lift, some shadow recovery, and suddenly the person in the photo is lit like the sky is lit. No selective brush work, no painting around hair strands. Lightroom handles the edges better than I ever could by hand.


This is the fix for backlit photos. Not more exposure everywhere. More exposure exactly where the light was missing.


Lightroom magic: the light panel and the curve

Once the mask was doing its job, the global adjustments were small and boring, which is exactly how it should be:


Exposure up. Shadows lifted to open the darker areas. Whites pushed to give the frame some brightness at the top end. Blacks raised slightly, which sounds backwards but keeps the shadows from crushing into pure black and gives you that softer, less digital feel.


Contrast and highlights I left alone entirely. The curve got one gentle point in the middle. That's it.

The lesson buried in there: good edits are usually a lot of small corrections in the right places, not one big dramatic slider drag.


What actually changed

Before: way too dark, subject in silhouette, water reading as flat navy.After: the person is properly exposed, the water has depth and colour, and it looks like the day actually felt.


Same file. Same camera. Just RAW, a mask, and about four sliders.


Coming in Part 2

Everything above is light correction: getting the photo back to true. Part 2 is the fun part, where I put my filmic preset over the top and show you exactly what it does to the grain, the warmth, and the overall mood.


This is also why I don't panic about a shoot going wrong anymore. When you can't see your screen and you're the only one there to check, RAW is your safety net. You're not editing to fix a mistake, you're editing because you shot in a way that left you options.



xo Steph


Thanks for reading.

If you want more like this, I write about compact camera photography, film-like colour, and how to get your camera looking like you. Every Wednesday, sometimes more.


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