Just over exposed?

photocat

I always shoot on aperture pref. For once I changed to P-program, with this result. What am I doing wrong here, I have had my D200 for more then a year, and never had shots like that...
Are they just over exposed (which would be kind of a drag, as I rarely have those kind of over exposures in Aperture pref mode)

What is the exact difference between P and A? If I dial the aperture on A-mode, the shutter speed changes accordingly...

When I dial back dial when on P, both aperture and shutterspeed change accordingly...

So to me and my peanut brain it seems that P and A or S are in fact more or less the same.
Why would you want to choose P over A mode?

Can anyone enlighten me on this subject? My most urgent answer needed is the effect though... What causes this?
Any input will be greatly appreciated!

Shizam

Exposure compensation.

I think you know what A and S do (I'm EOS so I assume those are aperture priority and shutter priority). In A you pick the aperture and the camera picks the shutter, in S its the other way around. In P you let the camera pick both aperture and shutter, what you're changing with the dial is exposure compensation (I imagine) which lets you shift the exposure to the right or left.

Now, if you ask me, that photo isn't really strictly 'overexposed', the boy and the man are exposed pretty well as is the tin thing (which is pretty impressive). Its just that the highlights have no detail in them (the white shirt with its CA and the white in the tin but your camera had to make a decision and it decided on what you got. If you had total control over the situation you could have made the decision that you want to underexpose the child some in order to bring down the highlights. I'm actually impressed the camera exposed as it did, I would have expected severe underexposure as it was metering off a lot of bright highlights.

EDIT: I just realized I recall a Nikon friend lording a feature over me that if you are in P then rotate either dial it automatically switches to A or S depending on which dial you moved, or was that the Minolta nerd... maybe somebody can confirm that.

saurora

Cat, I would guess Portrait shoots with your lens wide open and adjusts shutter accordingly. I imagine because you would be shooting a portrait (face) it is also using center weight metering (I'm only guessing here...). You may not be getting an average of the scene in Portrait mode for one thing. So like Sizam said, the boy is not that badly exposed, just the highlights in the background. I ran some quick unscientific tests on my Canon. It consistently under-exposed all shots by 1/3 of a stop, which kind of blew my theory as I expected the opposite. My only thought is that I would only use Portrait mode for multiple shots requiring a fixed, fully open lens and only under controlled lighting situations, where each shot is in the same light. Frankly, I never use it. Why are you starting now? Are you using your fast lens?

Shizam

I think by 'P' cat means Programmed Auto, the green P on your EOS dial.

photocat

Sizam wrote:

I think by 'P' cat means Programmed Auto, the green P on your EOS dial.

Yep, I do, it is program... I had never looked into that one before, as I always shoot on aperture priority. A friend told me she had far better results with shooting on program, but it ruined most of my gypsie shots...
Bugger bugger...

Thanks Sizam for the explanation, this is the first time that I actually hear the difference between Program and the other two modes.
As my nikon D200 always underexposes, I had 1 stop over exposer bias, but I had no idea that my metering was on centre weight instead of my normal matrix. I also noticed that if I do lightroom magic and put the photograph in black and white, the bad exposure goes away, I can solve somewhat for my wrong exposure...

So it was a combination of severe low lighting, the biassed exposure, very high ASA (1100) and after a year shooting with my D200, still not enough knowledge about my machine. I am depressed now...
Thanks Sizam and Saurora for the input... It helped me tremendously...I will post a link to the gypsy gallerie when I am done...
Thanks again for the input!