I set up a webcam so my wife could record the comming and going of birds at our bird feeder .It works great ,except in some conditions the light in the background ,mostly the sky ,is brighter than the feeder area . This makes the feeder and birds a greyish color .It seems that with the naked eye the same thing happens .I don't mean sunlight in the webcam just bright background. I remember seeing professional photographers taking outdoor photos and holding up a 2foot square piece of plywood with tinfoil glued to it . Would this be some kind of cure for backlighting ? Any advise will be appreciated Neil
Unfortunately this is what happens to cameras as they are not capable of such a wide dynamic range that the human eye can see. It is compensating for the bright background to avoid overexposure and is not intelligent enough to isolate the main subject.
The tinfoil on a board solution is to modify the lighting and illuminate the main subject. What this does is bring the details from out of the shadows. You can do this by pointing reflected light to your bird feeder. If you cannot move/modify the camera move/modify the light.