R.G. Loc: Scotland

With a bright background and a dark subject you'll have to do some PP at some point. What you want to watch out for is blown highlights, or a completely blown background. Anything else can be worked on. Lifting dark areas brings out noise, but exposing on the bright side runs the risk of blowing the brighter areas. Spot or centre weighted metering are both good answers but they're not without their risks as far as over-exposing backgrounds is concerned. They'll be fine once you know what to look out for and to avoid, but even then, a bird appearing suddenly doesn't give you much time to do a risk assessment analysis.

Until you have a bit more experience behind you, a safer option is to use evaluative metering. By experiment you can learn how much exposure compensation you can use before blown highlights become a problem. Trying to do that with any other metering mode won't give you the consistency that you need. And saving as raw gives you the ERADR (extra raw available dynamic range) that will allow you to over-expose via exposure compensation.

LouV Loc: Juno Beach, FL

Trying to shoot a small dark subject against a bright sky and have them both perfectly exposed is nearly impossible. If you nail the bird, you’ll wash out the sky and if you nail the sky, the bird will be underexposed. If your camera has a broad enough dynamic range and you shoot in raw you should be able to correct in post. In that instance, lean towards underexposing the bird a bit cause no amount of post processing will bring back a completely blown out sky. I think both of your images are well within the range of being fixable in post so I think you may be asking too much of yourself.

But if you wish to keep experimenting, beyond some of the things already mentioned, there are a few other things you can try. You can try to find an object similar to the bird nearer to you and in the same light and take a manual reading with it nearly filling the frame and just keep that setting. But, again, you’ll probably blow out the sky.

The other choices are to take a manual reading off an 18% gray card in the same light as the bird or take an incident reading with a properly-equipped handheld meter in the same general position of the bird and pointing at the camera. The latter measures the light falling on the subject rather than the light reflected from it.

Of course by the time you’ve done all that the bird will likely be gone. And, even if it’s not,
neither of those will work well when your subject is really backlit. But, I mention them because the pics you posted appear to be more a simple matter of a dark subject against a lighter background which can happen even in a front lit scene. Those methods will work well in those situations but still won’t get you everything you want. But they should keep you comfortably in the zone that post processing can fix. Which, as I said, is where I think you already are. So.........?

I hope this rambling and seemingly self-contradictory response helps.

MS. DONNA Loc: NEW SMYRNA BEACH FL

thats not nice.!

MS. DONNA Loc: NEW SMYRNA BEACH FL

thank you !! I think getting a light meter might help me..

Rongnongno Loc: FL

You mention that you shoot raw.

Shooting raw means you need to appear over exposing when you look at the camera histogram.
raw delivers your camera full potential as far as dynamic range goes.

Result:
- Change your exposure habit
- Learn to PP using luminosity masks.
In my opinion... LR while good does not come close to PS CC when it comes to editing.

You already have a good potential so getting to the next level should be easier for you.

Note that in this section you need to post as sizable non edited download (check upload original) that gives the essential EXIF needed. (Scrub personal info).

MS. DONNA Loc: NEW SMYRNA BEACH FL

Thank you very much

canon Lee

did anyone mention "ghosting" on the legs????