exposure problems

[DEMDeepEllumMusic]

Since you have a lot of available light use a reflector to add light to the girl. *cheaper than the flash and if you have one of those dashboard car things that is reflective it can work as a short term stand in. With the reflector you can spot her and the bear with more light and not light up the adjoining tree-you can vary the light intensity by how far away the reflector is from her and angleing the reflector so that you vary how much light that it catches and throws onto the subject. Only drawback is on windy days you need to really weight it down because it is a giant sail. (there are also different sizes and colors of reflectors which will give you different tones and volumes of light thrown back onto the subject) One plus about the reflector is that you can control if you just want to light up part of the scene vs a flash which pretty much will light up everything.

But you need to add light to the girl since you can't really subtract light from the lake.

A polarizer would tone the water down but may make the girl too dark in the exposure.

[mattchow]

didnt read the replies, but it seems weird that the shutter is limiting to 1/250 with that much available light, might have to do a merge with hdr to capture every detail in that scene. to me it almost seems like you are using an onboard flash, forcing the aperture into 2.8 and having the max shutter speed default to 1/250.

[LoungeLizard]

Originally Posted by mattchow

didnt read the replies, but it seems weird that the shutter is limiting to 1/250 with that much available light, might have to do a merge with hdr to capture every detail in that scene. to me it almost seems like you are using an onboard flash, forcing the aperture into 2.8 and having the max shutter speed default to 1/250.

Shutter limited to 1/250 is usually an indication of a flash being used and NOT set to high speed synch.

[Justin]

Hey Lizard, did you figure out your FEL problem? I have a 20D and don't do much flash photography, but that seems wierd. Almost sounds like the exposure lock timed out??

J

[LoungeLizard]

Originally Posted by Justin

Hey Lizard, did you figure out your FEL problem? I have a 20D and don't do much flash photography, but that seems wierd. Almost sounds like the exposure lock timed out??

J

no...didn't figure it out. Haven't had a chance to. It couldn't have timed out as it was a matter of seconds between * and shutter press. You could see it register 1/200s FEL, and then drop down to 1/20s!

[Gordon]

The other approach to 'fixing' this sort of shot (other than the various technical and lighting solutions mentioned above) is to not take it in this sort of light. Recognising that the light is bad or at least bad in parts of the scene is a great thing to learn. Learning how to deal with that - changing camera angle, changing subject location, waiting until the right time of day/ right weather - will hugely improve the pictures that you take.

If you had to take it right then and there, then lights and light modification will help (exposure isn't the problem - the light and in particular, the quality of light is the problem) However, even with a lot of fill flash to bring the subject up to the level of the ambient light, the end result is only going to be ordinary.

Sometimes the best thing to do is to not take the picture - or alter it significantly.

There's a term in movie making called the 'magic hour' around dawn and dusk. [really about 30-15 minutes either side of actual sunset and sunrise - often it is better even before the sun is in the sky] The light is the best it gets all day. If you can shoot then, the pictures improve dramatically, just because of the quality of the light - tough if you are on a commercial time scale, but vital for beautiful light.

[engstrom]

Originally Posted by LoungeLizard

no...didn't figure it out. Haven't had a chance to. It couldn't have timed out as it was a matter of seconds between * and shutter press. You could see it register 1/200s FEL, and then drop down to 1/20s!

Jesus, if you engaged flash exposure lock instead of auto exposure lock then I would expect the exposure to change when you recomposed but the flash power level to remain the same as determined by the scene when FEL was engaged. If you saw FEL then that could be what's going on. I don't remember but maybe there is a custom function that sets * to be FEL instead of AEL when a flash is present?

[mattchow]

Originally Posted by LoungeLizard

Shutter limited to 1/250 is usually an indication of a flash being used and NOT set to high speed synch.

"to me it almost seems like you are using an onboard flash, forcing the aperture into 2.8 and having the max shutter speed default to 1/250."

by setting the camera into f/2.8 and using the onboard flash, the maximum shutter speed would default to 1/250.

[kimberley]

I hardly ever use my onboard flash not used this time either.....probably time of day...it was a sunny day in shade of tree around 11:00.

hummmmm