OK what did I mess up
I decided to bring out my D300 and shoot some pic's on the water ( river with trees as a background)
Everything I shot was way to dark and I am trouble adjusting the brightness and contrast even with software. I was using an 18-200 zoom with center weighted metering and wb and ISO on automatic I was shootin JPeg in fine quality. What should I do in the future?
Everything I shot was way to dark and I am trouble adjusting the brightness and contrast even with software. I was using an 18-200 zoom with center weighted metering and wb and ISO on automatic I was shootin JPeg in fine quality. What should I do in the future?
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My guess (without seeing an image) is that your metering was probably thrown off by sunlight reflected off the water, or perhaps the sky if it was included in the shot.
Why center-weighted rather than matrix metering? I'm not sure how much difference it would make, but matrix metering is pretty much the norm these days.
Got bored with digital and went back to film.
Yes, posting photos and shooting data helps. Sometimes it is incredibly easy to spot what you did wrong.
However, this sounds like a very normal problem. Nothing to do with the camera or lens.
Sunlight on the river, moving water, light meter reading off the dark trees, highlights blown, whole thing dull and not recoverable, a sad reflection of what you saw.
You at least need to increase the amount of light hitting the sensor when you take the shot. I don't know D300 but there is an easy way to force 1-2 stops additional exposure above what the light metering thinks is correct - it is a standard feature on all DLSRs. You can also use the bracketing feature to shoot a sequence of shots, say at normal, +1, and +2. Then you have some quick feedback on the end result on your lcd - even better info when you learn to use the histogram and the blinkies.
Even so the results may not be what you desire. Digital cameras have much less dynamic range than the human eye/brain combination. I have a similar dilemma and am coming to the conclusion that I had better learn how to do HDR in post - so take several identical images (raw+tripod) over a wide exposure range and merge them in post. My next project.
There is a big difference between Point and Shoot Cameras and DSLR. The P&S guys try to please the average human brain and make all sorts of trade-offs and decisions in camera to give the average Jill a decent image. The DSLR guys try to please the "serious" photographers who insist on "What I shot (arithmetically) is what I got". This is why a lot of newcomers to DSLR think the images are crap and have a lot of explaining to do why they shelled out a few thousand dollars to take worse pictures than they took previously with a 100$ camera - especially when they start to play with manual modes.
Most of the shots were at 1/2500 and generally F11,
The reason for the center weighted metering was for a while I was using multiple flashes indoors at night. I guess I was :dgrinand never reset the metering to Matrix metering.
Nothing wrong with centre weighted metering. It averages light from the entire image and gives additional weight to your central area. I use it when light is extreme and I have no particular focal point - eg landscape scene. The other settings take a subset of the picture depending on your focus point, so strong light or shadow outside the matrix area may be discounted.
Your settings do seem extreme to me. I look for a shutter speed which gives stable pictures, so 1/250 will do it for me and I have shaky hands. If I can go below F11, I will normally. Most lenses seem to have their sweet point a bit lower.
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