What am I doing wrong?

lifesdisciple · November 26, 2006

Please help me. I simply love shooting nature photos, espicailly waterfalls and brooks but lately I am having serious exposure issues. I don't know if I'm just simply an idiot or what but I can't figure out what I am doing wrong. I am using a Sigma 24-70 f2.8 lens, tripod, shutter release button, manually adjusting my shutter speed and trying to meter off the spot I want as my main focus of attention and this is what I am getting. I'm even using expsure compensation if I feel they are too bright. They look very bright in my LCD on my 300D but then I get them home and they are dark and underexposed. Please help me. Grnated, I have been able to salvage most of the shoots in post editing but thats not my goal in life. I want the pics to be exposed properly. I want my photography skills to be what gets the great shot not my Photoshop skills. Here are three shots from yesterday's hike. They are unedited with camera details. At the bottom of this post will be a link to the same shots and some others that I post edited and tried to save. Please, any and all feedback will be greatly appreciated.

#1 - f/13.0 ISO 100 24mm exposure time 0.8s no flash

#2 - f/14.0 ISO 100 45mm exposure 1s exposure bias -0.6

#3 - f/18.0 ISO 100 30mm exposure 1s bias -0.6

and here is the link to the thread with the post edited photos.
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=48117
Thank you for your time and I really appreciate your comments and advice.

lifesdisciple · November 26, 2006

please...is there anyone who can help?

photocat · November 26, 2006

lifesdisciple wrote:

please...is there anyone who can help?

I wonder if your spotmetering is the cause...
What happens when you use matrix metering (which should give you an overall exposure of the whole image).
Mind you, I am not an exposure genius, I often struggle with it too.

Is the camera cheating you on a dark environment? (The black dog against a black wall question, you have to underexpose him to see him better - as you need to overexpose a white polar bear on the snow to see him better)
Is there reflection on the water that triggers your camera in cheating the metering?

One of the pictures also has a negative exposure, bias -6... Why did you give -6 if you suspect that your pics will come out too dark?

Just thinking out loud here, one of the guru's might be of more help to you! ;o)))

gus · November 26, 2006

No possible idea but if i was to have a guess then i would say that you are just plain old lacking in ambient light.

lifesdisciple · November 26, 2006

photocat wrote:

I wonder if your spotmetering is the cause...
What happens when you use matrix metering (which should give you an overall exposure of the whole image).
Mind you, I am not an exposure genius, I often struggle with it too.

what is matrix metering?

photocat wrote:

One of the pictures also has a negative exposure, bias -6... Why did you give -6 if you suspect that your pics will come out too dark?

because, when i was chimping my LCD showed it to be overexposed. my LCD is set to the lowest possible brightness, so i thought it was getting too much light so i underexposed it. thanks for your tips and your time.

photocat · November 26, 2006

lifesdisciple wrote:

what is matrix metering?

because, when i was chimping my LCD showed it to be overexposed. my LCD is set to the lowest possible brightness, so i thought it was getting too much light so i underexposed it. thanks for your tips and your time.

I think it is time to take up your manual. You can spot meter, which is meter just in the center or the spot you point on. Matrix has several points to meter on divided on the full screen, and there is usually a center weigth, which meters matrix but with a stronger emphasis on the center of what you see in the viewfinder.

Why are you setting your LCD on the lowest brightness?
Again, use your camera a lot and keep the manual at hand, I have had my last camera for more then eight months now, but still read the manual...

I would suggest that you set your LCD closer to reality to avoid surprises...
(Although the LCD itself has nothing to do with exposure, it just shows you what you did - the histogram tells you if it is under or over exposed).
Mountain more to the left is too dark, mountain more to the right is too bright.

eye-max · November 26, 2006

never use you LCD to judge the quality of your exposure, its backlit. The histogram is the best for assessing your exposures. You stated that you meter off what you’re focusing on. In these examples I’m assuming that’s the water itself. The water is the brightest object in your images which would underexpose the rest of the image. Try the matrix or take spot readings off various parts of the image then determine a mean of the readings to use. Bracketing will also help.
Good luck.

LiquidAir · November 26, 2006

When you use a spot meter, you almost always need to use exposure compensation unless you are metering on a grey card. For instance, if you metered on the waterfall which is white, without exposure compensation the waterfall would end up middle grey which is not at all what you want. If you want to meter off something that should end up white in the final image, you need to use exposure compensation to bump up the brightness by at least two stops.

Here is a rough idea of how much exposure compensation you need based on the tone of your metering spot:

Whites: +2 to +3
Light tones: +1
Mid tones : 0
Dark tones -1
Blacks -2 to -3

In addition, if the point you are metering on is in a shadow, you want to bump the exposure down about one to three stops. You really have to practice judging a scene to decide where to put the spot. As an example, in bright direct sun I will typically put directly lit whites close to +3 and whites in the shadow at 0. If I am shooting in the shade, I might put whites at +2 and shadowed whites at +1.

If you want to go in the direction of spot metering it is worth reading up on the zone system. Remeber though that the zone system was a process invented by Ansel Adams for process control in black and white exposure, developing and printing so not all of it applies to digital photograhy where we now use RAW processors to achive the same ends Adams was getting in the darkroom.

Mongrel · November 26, 2006

Hi Mike...
I saw the shots in the other post-I saw nothing wrong with the final product there.

I don't do this type of shot, but several things come to mind...

1. Shoot in RAW. This will allow you several stops of adjustment in post using a single slider. No real 'photoshopping' going on there. Just a tried and true method of getting some latitude out of a shot.

2. Use exposure bracketing if you don't want to shoot in RAW. Not sure what settings you have on your camera, but I believe it should be adjustable to shoot something like 1 stop over\1 stop under or 2 stops over\2 stops under. This will give you three jpg's all at different exposures with one shutter press.

3. Set your in-camera metering to 'evaluative' and see what the camera 'suggests' for exposure. Try using that as a baseline for your manual settings.

4. Do a search on using the histogram. This will give you a much better idea of your exposure than the lcd.

Also, I believe for this type of shooting an ND filer\s would be something you should look into. Maybe not on a day like these were shot on, but on a day when you have *too much* ambient light, the ND filter will allow you to use much slower shutter speeds than using aperture and ISO alone.

I really thing you have the technique down-you just need to fine tune your exposure by getting better aquainted with your camera.

lifesdisciple · November 26, 2006

LiquidAir wrote:

When you use a spot meter, you almost always need to use exposure compensation unless you are metering on a grey card. For instance, if you metered on the waterfall which is white, without exposure compensation the waterfall would end up middle grey which is not at all what you want. If you want to meter off something that should end up white in the final image, you need to use exposure compensation to bump up the brightness by at least two stops.

Here is a rough idea of how much exposure compensation you need based on the tone of your metering spot:

Whites: +2 to +3
Light tones: +1
Mid tones : 0
Dark tones -1
Blacks -2 to -3

In addition, if the point you are metering on is in a shadow, you want to bump the exposure down about one to three stops. You really have to practice judging a scene to decide where to put the spot. As an example, in bright direct sun I will typically put directly lit whites close to +3 and whites in the shadow at 0. If I am shooting in the shade, I might put whites at +2 and shadowed whites at +1.

so if i want my water whiter or say snow whiter, i need to over expose not under expose? so it's kind of the opposite of what you think it would be? i'm trying to make sense of everything. i did some test shots in the house using raw. not sure if i am comfortable with that or not and then i did some the way i normally shoot setting a +1/-1 bracketing. that seemed to teach me a bit. i guess i'll have to just play around a little more and take more shots with different exposure settings for each shot until i figure out what the best combonation is. thank you for your advice

lifesdisciple · November 26, 2006

Mongrel wrote:

I saw the shots in the other post-I saw nothing wrong with the final product there.

I don't do this type of shot, but several things come to mind...

1. Shoot in RAW. This will allow you several stops of adjustment in post using a single slider. No real 'photoshopping' going on there. Just a tried and true method of getting some latitude out of a shot.

2. Use exposure bracketing if you don't want to shoot in RAW. Not sure what settings you have on your camera, but I believe it should be adjustable to shoot something like 1 stop over\1 stop under or 2 stops over\2 stops under. This will give you three jpg's all at different exposures with one shutter press.

3. Set your in-camera metering to 'evaluative' and see what the camera 'suggests' for exposure. Try using that as a baseline for your manual settings.

4. Do a search on using the histogram. This will give you a much better idea of your exposure than the lcd.

Also, I believe for this type of shooting an ND filer\s would be something you should look into. Maybe not on a day like these were shot on, but on a day when you have *too much* ambient light, the ND filter will allow you to use much slower shutter speeds than using aperture and ISO alone.

I really thing you have the technique down-you just need to fine tune your exposure by getting better aquainted with your camera.

thanks. someone else i know mentioned the ND filter for bright days. i need to get me one of those. gonna be a bit costly for an 82mm lens though i bet.

Sam · November 27, 2006

Michael,

My 300D would always under expose, and it looks like yours is doing the same. I tend to use AV a lot so with the 300D I always seemed to have +1 or more exposure compensation dialed in, but you do need to continue to keep checking while shooting.

Forget the LCD (LCD BAD!) Use the histogram, (Histogram good) Expose the right and watch your clipping points. At first it's a little hard because if your used to loooking at the LCD and you expose to the right the LCD will look blown out, but it won't be!

Do some reading on using the histogram. It's well worth it.

RAW is great, but try to get the exposure right in camera.

Sam

douglas · November 27, 2006

lifesdisciple wrote:

so if i want my water whiter or say snow whiter, i need to over expose not under expose? so it's kind of the opposite of what you think it would be? i'm trying to make sense of everything. i did some test shots in the house using raw. not sure if i am comfortable with that or not and then i did some the way i normally shoot setting a +1/-1 bracketing. that seemed to teach me a bit. i guess i'll have to just play around a little more and take more shots with different exposure settings for each shot until i figure out what the best combonation is. thank you for your advice

Correct if your meetering off white you need to over expose. It is the opposite of what one might think. What ever you meeter off it is telling the camera its 18% gray so it will come out gray instead of white thus you need to over expose to compensate.

pathfinder · November 28, 2006

Michael - do a search here on dgrin for shooting snow scenes - rutt and I have had several threads about shooting the highlights in snow scenes and they are pertinent here because your image highlights are very underexposed.

When I meter the highlights in the water in your images, they read barely neutral grey, no higher than 170, 168, 175 not in the 240, and 250s I would expect for specular highlights.

Evaluative metering ( Canon ) or Matrix metering (Nikon) meters the whole scene and tries to compensate for the variable brightness of the scene.
On the Rebel the Evalautive Metering symbol is (*) {only turned sideways}.

LiquidAir · November 28, 2006

lifesdisciple wrote:

so if i want my water whiter or say snow whiter, i need to over expose not under expose? so it's kind of the opposite of what you think it would be? i'm trying to make sense of everything. i did some test shots in the house using raw. not sure if i am comfortable with that or not and then i did some the way i normally shoot setting a +1/-1 bracketing. that seemed to teach me a bit. i guess i'll have to just play around a little more and take more shots with different exposure settings for each shot until i figure out what the best combonation is. thank you for your advice

Here is an experiment to try around the house. Take a blank sheet of white paper and put it in a scene. Take shots using the spot meter on the paper with varying exposure compensation values until you feel the exposure is right. My guess is that you will be happy somewhere between +2 and +3. That will give you a feeling for spot metering on something that is white. You can also experiment with spot metering on other tones. Skin tones are particularly valuable as a reference point for spot metering.

In this day and age I think the histogram has largely replaced zone system style metering. The histogram essentially treats each individual pixel on your sensor as a separate spot meter and shows them all in a way that lets you quickly judge exposure. In situations like landscape photography where I have the time to take a shot, look at the histogram and adjust the exposure I will rarely choose to use the spot meter. The primary time I use the spot meter is in situations where I want consitant skin tones in rapidly changing light.

jcl · November 29, 2006

I don't know if you figured out your problem yet but I recently had a similar situation with my new 400d. On that I found that I had accidentally changed the picture setting to "neutral". I did a couple tests using "neutral, standard, landscape, etc" after discovering that and it made huge difference of course. The "neutrals" cleaned up very nicely in Photoshop though as yours did as well.

Definately not an expert and this is only my second post and all but it's worth a look if everything was looking good at one time.

good luck

jcl

What am I doing wrong?

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