Tips for black dog images

mrmatt

This may sound silly but I'm trying to get back into SLR photography and learn more about my digital SLR and my best test subject is my lab / pointer / border collie mix. The only problem is that she is predominatly black and the camera either has a difficult time finding her to focus on (inside) or it blows the levels and washes out anything but the dog. My 50mm and 85mm prime lenses should do decently in indoor lighting, and they do work when focusing on a person or another object, it's just that camera can't figure out what to do with the dog. With just the dog in the picture and f stops around f/4 or so, it's not like I can pick a nearby object to focus on and then reframe, at least much of the time it's not possible. I figure there must be a trick that I'm just not figuring out so I thought I'd ask. If this is too off topic I apologize.

stephiewilliams

Why don't you use manual focus...that is if you are doing portrait type work.

Dick on Aruba

If you're in the position to choose your background, you might consider to choose a scene with the brightest luminosity of about 140-170 and choose a centerweighted average metering and highkey focus on the dog.

Dick.

mrmatt

I don't usually do manual focus but maybe that's a good place to start to fix the hunting problem. If that worked then maybe I could concentrate on the bracketing and figure that out.

spider-t

mrmatt wrote:

This may sound silly but I'm trying to get back into SLR photography and learn more about my digital SLR and my best test subject is my lab / pointer / border collie mix. The only problem is that she is predominatly black and the camera either has a difficult time finding her to focus on (inside) or it blows the levels and washes out anything but the dog. My 50mm and 85mm prime lenses should do decently in indoor lighting, and they do work when focusing on a person or another object, it's just that camera can't figure out what to do with the dog. With just the dog in the picture and f stops around f/4 or so, it's not like I can pick a nearby object to focus on and then reframe, at least much of the time it's not possible. I figure there must be a trick that I'm just not figuring out so I thought I'd ask. If this is too off topic I apologize.

It really is hard in low light. I find direct bright light works best. Enough light and even a black dog grows some contrast.




Or if your dog is a swimmer, a wet dog in the sun is really easy to focus on. Even if he's moving.




And don't forget to underexpose. Something like -1 is where I start for a black dog.

cheers!
Trish

pathfinder

Excellent point - If you are metering off the dog, you will want to use - Exposure compensation of -1 to -2 stops, or the dog will just look grey.

Focusing on black, soft, fuzzzy objects in dim indoor light is very challenging for any autofocus system. Increase the light or the contrast will help. But furry, black dogs can always be difficult to focus on indoors.