Cordell Okie Loc: Edmond, OK

Thanks everyone for replying. I am starting to understand how to adjust exposure when you have white subject. I'm 74 years young, learning ever day, and I am having a great time with my hobby. You guys are the best for your willingness to help me learn.

Dewayne

Cordell Okie Loc: Edmond, OK

Thanks Bob for the suggestion. Will check the box .

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

Dewayne, you're quite welcome. You'll find a bunch of enthusiastic assistance on this site. You'll also find some of us who enjoy humor, as well as photography. I hope you enjoy it as much as we do.
--Bob

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

No, you weren't. According to the EXIF you actually were using spot metering, not center-weighted.

Spot metering probably was primarily measuring what's reflected off the white bird, causing underexposure. I bet in the other shots that were "better exposed" you didn't have a bird as centered as you do in this case, so the metering was reading more of the background and lightening it up.

So, part of the problem is that you weren't careful about what metering mode you were using.

The best solution here would be to use a fully manual exposure mode to "lock in" your exposure. Auto exposure of any kind leaves it up to the camera to guess as best it can, and in tricky lighting like these white birds in a relatively dark setting it's going to guess wrong as much as it guesses right! And different metering modes with AE would give somewhat different results.

It might be good to settle on one type of metering mode and use that most, so you learn how it will act in different situations... Probably a "general purpose" mode such as matrix/evaluative metering (center-weighted is sort of an "old school" general purpose mode... some folks prefer it since they've used it all their lives). Then experiment with the other metering methods to learn how they work in various lighting conditions. Spot metering is relatively specialized.

If you still wanted to use an auto exposure mode (say, if you were also needing to shoot some subjects in different lighting, switching back and forth), on tricky lighting like this and with spot metering you would need to override what the camera is wanting to do with some Exposure Compensation. In this case, +1 stop of E.C. if metering off the bird... Or -1 stop E.C. if mostly metering off the background. And maybe 0 E.C. if evenly divided metering off both the white bird and the dark background.

A broader metering mode (such as matrix/evaluative or center-weighted) reads more of the scene and should average things out with the extreme light and dark in these scenes, so would likely need less E.C. in a situation such as this.

Cordell Okie Loc: Edmond, OK

Thanks for the detailed response. It gives me something to study and learn. It is very much appreciated.

Dewayne

rpavich Loc: West Virginia

OR....you could forgo all of the varied (and sometimes conflicting) responses when shooting in lighting conditions that aren't changing rapidly (and let's face it...it really doesn't in many cases) and get an incident meter, set your camera on what the meter tells you and then forget about it and shoot away without a worry.

As folks said, your camera's meter tries to make everything this "middle of the road monolithic grey" tone and depending on what's in the field of view, you can get some wildly differing meterings and thus settings.


Think about it this way.

You are outside enjoying the sunshine and you see a great looking gator beside the swamp...so you swing your camera around and zoom in to take a picture. Since your camera is on aperture priority it sets what it thinks the shutter speed should be for "Gator+swamp grass" tonality.

So having taking the picture of the gator you continue to look around and you see your white birds and you think what a great picture it will be, so you zoom to fill the frame with the birds and you snap another shot.

But this one is much differently exposed than the other one due to the presence of the white tones.

You really think that these birds look great so you REALLY zoom in to fill the frame with just one white bird and you take another shot.

And you get yet ANOTHER exposure from the EXACT SAME lighting conditions.


But wait...did the light change between each of these pictures????

Nope. Only the camera's PERCEPTION of what needed to happen has changed.

Now what?


Which of these exposures is the correct one and how do you know?


The answer is...you don't.



What you will do is bring all of these photos into Lightroom and fiddle with them until they are "good enough" as seen on your specific monitor.


If you went the route of getting an incident meter you'd do the following:

When you got out of your car you'd pop the meter to see what exposure the lighting conditions provided. You'd set your camera manually to those settings.

No guessing, no wondering, no chimping or adjusting.

Now, no matter if you are taking pictures of gators, white birds, black birds, green grass, swamp grass, anything at all, your exposure will be spot on! (as long as the conditions don't change significantly, like it suddenly gets overcast or the sun is now behind a giant cloud bank)

As long as your subject is in the same light that you've taken a meter reading in, you don't even have to think about it.

And bonus! No Lightroom guessing either!


Disclaimer: this is my personal take on this, having seen a hundred of these threads and other folks will disagree and say it's not necessary but in my personal experience...it's like going to color TV from black and white. If you've never seen color but only talked about it...you might not get why it's better, but after you've seen color TV, then you can never be satisfied with the black and white.

If you try using an incident meter and realize how much it improves your experience, you won't regret it.

I hope that makes sense.

Jcmarino

Very nice photo by the way. The camera metered on the birds thus underexposing the back ground, Also I bet your aperture was a small opening. You can try this again by setting your aperture to about f/16 or higher and exposing on a bright flower in bright sunlight. Makes your flowers pop! Your background black.

Cordell Okie Loc: Edmond, OK

It all makes sense and thank you for an easy to understand explanation. I have a Sekonic L-358 meter that very seldom gets used. Maybe it is time to rethink and follow your suggestions.

I have several trips planned over the next year and these suggestions will be a big help toward becoming a better "passionate amateur" photographer.

Again thanks for taking the time to respond.

Dewayne

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

Dewayne, I regularly use my Sekonic L-758DR meter. I'm not sure about yours, but if you can profile it for your camera, you're even more ahead of the game.
--Bob

rpavich Loc: West Virginia

Awesome meter...the same one that I have also.

It will work great for this. I shoot a film camera and don't have the luxury of chimping or guessing, so I'm here to say it's easy to do, and yields great results that you can count on.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Good answers about a couple of beautiful shots.

AzPicLady Loc: Behind the camera!

Whatever you did, it turned out well. Of course, knowing what you did would allow you to duplicate it. . . . .

rpavich Loc: West Virginia

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JCam Loc: MD Eastern Shore

Don't know, but the camera gave you some great pictures!

rpavich Loc: West Virginia

The interesting thing is that if you move the exposure to bring the birds up just before clipping, you get a nice picture.

I wonder if this was what the original scene looked like?