Exposure?

[Roy]

How do y'all figure out the the settings for the right exposure. Is it just experience? Are there some shots where you just cant get it right. This is one sample I'm talking about. But lots of my shots come out darker than I thought they would at least on my monitor. Shooting mostly AV priority.

[Silvernic]

Have someone go stand out in the fountain with a grey card! Or take your exposer settings off of something neutral like a tree trunk. A shot like this one is always going to be hard though.

[sbp]

Is it possible that he can zoom and focuse on tree behind fountain. hit * for expose lock backtrack and take whole picture?

[srwatters]

If I have a complex scene that I want to shoot, I usually select the aperture value to give me the desired DOF (using aperture priority mode), then use the spot meter function to determine the shutter speed that exposes the most important part of the scene properly. Once the shutter value is noted, I switch over to full manual mode setting both the aperture and shutter speed, then shoot bracketed shots up and down 1/3 or 1/2 stop and up and down one step in shutter speed. Evaluate both the histogram and preview to make sure I get what I want. If you can't get the shutter fast enough, then I go to adjusting the ISO sensitivity higher to get a faster shutter (remember to start over if you change ISO).

Of course all that only works while the light stays the same and the subject isn't here and gone. Moving targets are most difficult, but you can pre-shoot some images to have the right settings for that 'Kodak moment' or 'Kodiak movement' if you're shooting bears in the woods...

Man I crack myself up!

[jordankreationz]

This conversation soooo makes me know I need to go to a few more classes. I guess the great thing about photography is that you never learn it all. (or at least I won't )

DJ

[David Price]

Roy,

An old trick to use, if you're exposed to the same light as your subject: Turn the palm of your hand so that it's exposed to the same light as the subject, meter the palm of your hand and open up one stop. So, if you're shooting in AV, go ahead and set your aperature then see what the cam wants to do for shutter speed......plug those settings into manual and you're set. Then like Scott said you can add the 1/2 or 1/3 stop brackets in there as well.

Hope this helps and I really enjoy your shots. Thanks for sharing.

Regards,
~dp

[brad]

Part of the problem here is that the human eye can "see" a lot more "stops" of contrast than film or digital sensors... to get this exposure right, especially on digital, you may have to get tricky and expose it twice (film) or expose it in RAW (digital) so that you can use two different stops.. then merge the images. (In RAW, shoot it for "average" and then in the converter, convert it twice, once for a stop under for the fountain and once for maybe a stop and a half over for the trees.. then merge the photos in photoshop.)

The other choice is to make the choice to completely blow out the whites in the fountain and just expose for the trees in the first place.. but you'll have to meter the trees without the fountain in frame.. then set M(anual) exposure...

Oh.. one last choice is to shoot it at a different time of day, when the contrast of the scene isn't so high.

[jeffkohn]

Starting out, I think the easiest thing to do is just use the matrix metering and keep an eye on your historgrams. Matrix meters have gotten pretty darn good in the latest cameras.

Getting beyond that I think spot metering can be really useful for landscape/scenic shooting, but it does take practice and experience to learn what to meter off of. Judging "middle gray" tonality for colored objects can be difficult but through trial an error it gets easier. (That's the nice thing about EXIF, no need to take detailed exposure notes).

[jeffkohn]

Oh.. one last choice is to shoot it at a different time of day, when the contrast of the scene isn't so high.

Yeah for this particular scene shooting on an overcast day would make things much easier. Then again it might also make for a less interesting picture without the specular highlights in the water.

[Nevyn]

Originally Posted by Roy

How do y'all figure out the the settings for the right exposure. Is it just experience? Are there some shots where you just cant get it right. This is one sample I'm talking about. But lots of my shots come out darker than I thought they would at least on my monitor. Shooting mostly AV priority.

A couple of things.
1) As others have said, there's too much exposure range in the scene you posted for the camera to capture it all in a single shot. You need to either shoot raw (and process to get 2 images that combine to give you the required range) or shoot 2 images and combine them
2) You say all your images are dark on your monitor? Have you calibrated it? It seems strange that all your images are too dark. You should also check that you don't have and exposure compensation dialled in on your camera.

Originally Posted by Roy

Are there some shots where you just cant get it right.

Yes, there are. See above.

[Guther]

Yep, their (all above) 100% correct, but we cant have you thinking all is lost though can we?

I wanted to see what I could get out of your image, hope you don't mind?

PS-CS2-Shadow/Highlight tool, and thats it.

[Roy]

Wow, that's a load of information. Thanks everybody, I understand a little bit of what most have said. Nevyn, this monitor is not calibrated. It's just a 21" Viewsonic crt and I've had it for several years back to when a new one cost $1300. Might be time to replace it anyway. I don't mean ALL my photos are dark but some are and some I see posted on here from others are also. I can't always make out the dark areas that others seem to be able to see based on responses.

When I saw that fountain it was the glow of the sun thru the water that caught my eye and I captured that, it's just my eyes saw more light into the trees in the back Like Scott mentioned almost like the shadow/ hightlight tool Ryan used and Ryan, I don't have a problem with you doing that. Looks like a cool tool. Too bad PS7 doen't have that, at least I don't think it does.

Anyway thanks to all for your contribution. I'll try and digest as much as possible.

[Roy]

This is a different fountain about 10 minutes later in the day with the sun behind me and to the right. This one doesn't look too dark even on my monitor. Focus was on the droplets where they hit the water just because that's where I wanted it.

[bburton]

The two histograms are the inverse of one another with the second shaped correctly like the "Bell Shaped Curve" of light distribution.

Seems like the only real reliable way to get around the dilemma of the first picture, if it has to be taken then and there, is to learn to merge, I think it's called "stacking," two separate images in PS with each image exposed differently for the light and dark area. A skill I've postponed acquiring.

The reverse use of a neutral density filter might have helped the first shot as potentially a circular polarizer might have.

Short of software and hardware adjustment, however, waiting for better light or moving to get better light seems the most straightforward solution, as happened in your second shot. I think many of the extreme contrast issues of the first photo came because of the partial backlighting.

We'll just have to keep fiddlin' and learnin'. I'll encourage you and you encourage me.

[jeffkohn]

Well, I think the backlighting in the first image makes for a better picture after post-processing to boost the shadows. Front lighting is certainly easier to shoot in, but rarely makes for a better picture because the light is usually flat and featureless.