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Helped needed.
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| Leprechaunsmademecrazy Sun 27th Jul 2008 21:53
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Hi all.
I'm really hoping that someone can help me out with this.
I'm having troubled with my camera either shooting too dark or over exposing my shots. I was at the beach over the weekend taking photo's of my niece, but my shots were either too dark or too bright and washing out the sky, I tried everything I could think of, I even switched it into auto to see the results, and got the same same outcome. I changed the WB from auto to sunshine and it still had the same problem.
I'm shooting a party soon and really worried about how it's going to go if I can't figure this problem out. I've been told by a load of people to shoot AV for it, so I have more time to focus on what I'm doing, and just capture what's going on around me. But I'm having the same problem in AV, the lighting just washes everything out.
Another issue I'm having is that in really low lighting, ie 6" or thereabouts, my camera won't fire and again, I can't see why. If I hike it up 1/50th or anything like that, it will. Again I've tried this in Auto too, and it won't fire either.
Has anyone got any suggestions on what could be the problem?
Thanks in advance for the help!
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| Captivelight PRO Mon 28th Jul 2008 05:32
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Too dark or too bright on the beach. Sounds like the camera is having problems evening out the exposure between sky and land, basically the difference in exposure between the very bright sky and the darker land is too great for the camera to even out, resulting in the fact that when the land is exposed correctly the sky will be washed out, and when the sky is exposed correctly the land will be way too dark. One way round this is to get some Neutral Density Graduated (ND Grad) Filters to balance the exposures. These are a filter with a gradual change from dark grey to clear that slide into a filter holder mounted on the lens, and you place the grey part over the sky to bring it more or less in line with the land... Another way round would have been, photographing people on the beach, to have exposed for the sky and used a flash gun depending on how far away they were, but this could have got complicated as the exposure will change so much depending on how much beach or sky was in the shot. Another tip, especially in the evening, is to shoot with the sun behind you and lighting your subjects, which is often enough to light up your subjects enough to bring them out of the dark beach area.
Hope some of that made sense.
Low lighting ... I would guess that the camera has "low lighting noise reduction" switched on in the menus. You take a six second exposure it takes another six seconds to process the image, during which time everything stops... I can't remember the technical explanation but it is a bu**er when you are shooting 30 second low light images. Personally I don't mind the time delay as if I'm shooting something with a six second shutter speed it probably isn't going anywhere so I don't mind waiting the extra six seconds after the shot before the camera is ready to go again, and I would prefer the shot to be as noise free as possible.
Anyway... hope that all helped a little. I would suggest that you find your self a nice non contrasty scene to photograph a few times just to make sure that the camera meter isn't playing up. Just something simple like a grassy field, and fill the frame with grass all at the same light levels with no sky to throw things out and see how that comes out. If that is fine, the camera meter is fine. Don't use anything white! Camera's like to change white to mid grey. Also check that the Exposure Value (EV) settings are on zero. I know people who have sworn their camera shoots dark all the time when in fact the EV setting was set to minus 2 stops somewhere along the line... but you say that the shots were both light and dark, so that would be unlikely in your case.
Another (last idea) is that you were using spot metering instead of pattern. If you were then the camera was only metering which ever spot you had chosen. Pattern would give the most "average" metering possible, although you could have used spot metering as a way to keep the exposure on the children correct, but at the cost of the rest of the image.
Beaches are notorious for either blowing the sky out or shadowing the land areas. A bright sky, lots of light bouncing everywhere off the sea and wet sand, and your camera meter is completely fooled...
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| Leprechaunsmademecrazy Mon 28th Jul 2008 14:01
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Thanks a million, thinking about it, I did change the metering to "spot metering" last week, after reading a lot of wedding photographers use it, so thought I should give it a go...that could be the reason for it alright, I'd completely forgotten I'd done that.
Thanks a million for all your help, really appreicate it, was going nuts there for awhile.
THANKS!
E
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| LisaSam67 PRO Mon 28th Jul 2008 14:32
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Originally posted by Leprechaunsmademecrazy:
I did change the metering to "spot metering"
yup that little setting can make a world of difference and has driven me nuts as well when I forget I've changed it! A bit upsetting when you think your wonderful high end camera is on the fritz and a relief to find it's operator brainfart instead ;-)
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