pappleg

There are a lot of very technical answers and some solutions offered but the single most difficult problem you had was the direction of lighting and your position relative to it. Even though the sky was overcast your scene was backlit. The sky and the amount of it included, even if by reflection off of the water, was the primary cause of your difficulty. In such cases, if you cannot reposition yourself at least get in as close as you can to your subject either physically or with longer lenses or a teleconverter and take your meter reading. If close enough fill flash can help. Pat

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

Actually yes if brown. I frequently use the ground if brown.
A lit evergreen tree works as well.
Most any mid tone material in direct light will work well.
Some say the hand works but unless I have a hand from someone else I find the adjustments are hard to make one handed. But it is an option.

mikeroetex Loc: Lafayette, LA

If your use spot metering and set exposure manually after metering your hand in the sunlight, it will be the same as the bird 60 feet away. Remember your light source is 93,000,000 miles away. 60 more feet won't make a difference.

Einreb92 Loc: Philadelphia

I am sorry if my question derails this insightful discussion, and maybe it would be good for the OP to know, since someone said it here. I thought exposure compensation does nothing, if you are shooting in raw, since everything is control by the shooter. True or false?

GENorkus Loc: Washington Twp, Michigan

EC modifies the meter which in turn modifies all the semi automatic modes. I'm not sure about full auto. That includes raw and jpeg.

The meter does not modify manual mode since you choose the settings. That includes both raw and jpeg. I'm not sure if it modifies the histogram readout though.

swartfort Loc: Evansville, IN

I believe this is incorrect. I have worked with mulitple "series" of test shots using Manual with both increasing and decreasing EC shooting against a variety of backgrounds (Granted in JPEG only). I have seen the elimination of over and underexposure when viewing images on both my LCD screen (using the "blinkies") as well as on my computer screen in post. I realize this is anecdotal, but I have spent time working and learning, and somehow I see results. I also see in the "in camera" "?" information that there is no mention that EC only works in the semi-auto mode.

Does anyone KNOW the technical answer to this?

Einreb92 Loc: Philadelphia

I found this in the manual for the 7200 and cannot say this is true for all Nikons, but this is consistent with my memory.

(Download)

swartfort Loc: Evansville, IN

Thank you so much. That makes perfect sense as I would set the EC and then meter thru the camera to center. I guess that made the difference as I was able to really minimize the over exposure/blown out highlight in the white part of the birds and most of the sky....

Thank you so much

GENorkus Loc: Washington Twp, Michigan

Thomas902 Loc: Washington DC

Cindy please consider investing some quality time with Nikon's User Manual for the D500.
It offers a very elegant and simple solution for the challenges you experienced.

Cindy turn to page 146 in your D500 Manual and review Bracketing which suggests AE Bracketing might be germane for this scenario... Press the BKT Button on the left side of the D500 and choose the number of shots and bracketing interval (page 147)

Also set your Release Mode to CH (Continuous High Speed). In your back-lit images I would suggest a 1 stop Bracket and a burst of 3 albeit you could choose 0.7 stop Bracket and a burst of 5.

So simple... so elegant... so effective... in under one second you are virtual guarantied of at least one ideal exposure... No learning curve involved... please try it, k?

Cindy I'm a commercial photographer and use this all the time with dynamic action scenarios (events) that don't afford the luxury of test shots, etc.

btw, you have to disable Bracketing by resetting the number of bracket shots to zero (0) after your photo session. It does not automatically reset by turning the D500 off... Experience is a very brutal teacher here... I only made this mistake once... lol

Hope this helps Cindy...
I wish you well on your journey...

IDguy Loc: Idaho

Use auto ISO.

My examples: https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-572677-1.html

IDguy Loc: Idaho

True for all Nikons.

IDguy Loc: Idaho

BTW being a few stops underexposed with a D500 is not a problem because above a modest ISO it is ISO invarient. You should shoot in RAW to have full advantage of that.

It means that increasing the exposure in post processing yields the same result as increasing the ISO.

https://photographylife.com/iso-invariance-explained

IDguy Loc: Idaho

False. EC adjusts the actual exposure in A,S, and P modes. It adjusts the meter in M mode. So in M mode you can leave EC alone and just as well meter to the EC you want.

You might be confusing white balance.

IDguy Loc: Idaho

Actually it can make a huge difference if you are in the sun and subject in the shade, or vice versa. That was the case for many of the images in the link I posted above.