ronjay Loc: york Pa.

I found a good pine tree for shooting eagles in the nest. I need some suggestions on settings for metering and focusing. I shoot a canon t3i and usually use evaluate metering and spot for focus. Some of my shot are over exposing the white heads and under exposing the rest of the pic. picture will follow. thanks have got some good shots mainly in good light. this photo was shot at f/5.6--1/250---6400 iso because it wea getting dark. should i have lowered the shutter and iso. this is not a good picture only kepted for analysis.

Wahawk Loc: NE IA

Excellent subject for HDR slightly underexposing to get the whites correct and overexposing to get the dark areas.

BermBuster Loc: Hi Desert S.Cal

As I understand it, you have reached the limits - of what your camera can do. There are no “settings” that can really fix this.
You can either expose the eagles heads properly or expose the ‘rest of the pic’ properly, but not both.
If you expose the Eagles heads properly, then the underexposed will become more underexposed, and conversely if you expose properly on the underexposed portion, the eagles heads will be more ‘over exposed’.
As Wahawk suggested this could be fixed with HDR…Other than that, you would need one heck of a flash to provide some “fill light”. :)

ronjay Loc: york Pa.

Thank you for replying

rpavich Loc: West Virginia

As was said...many "birders" use a flash with a snoot to get just a bit more light on the scene BUT...what you are describing isn't that the scene has too much dynamic range, what you are describing is the reason that I bought a hand held incident meter...because your camera is measuring the sky....and you get a dark picture....or then when you move slightly and meter a branch...it brightens the shot...you never know what you are going to get because the camera is always changing it's mind.

What light is there on the eagles...is there...period...it's not changing that rapidly (from one shot to the next) but your camera's settings are.

You have two options;

1.) Buy a hand held meter and enjoy years of worry free exposures in all light.

2.) pre-meter on grass or something "medium" brightness and then put your camera on manual and set it for what the camera just told you was the right setting.

As long as the light doesn't change, then your camera's needle can swing as much as it wants and you don't care...you are controlling the exposure.

Make sense?

ronjay Loc: york Pa.

yes makes sense -- what if i would set my camera to spot metering for still subjects instead of evaluate metering. this also happens to me on longer shots of white egerets

rpavich Loc: West Virginia

yes..in my opinion..(and it's nothing more than that) spot metering helps in these situations.

But...really...there is no real substitute for a meter...I know that it's popular to say you don't need it and you can chimp it in..but just watch the amount of threads like this on the 'hog on a weekly basis...and watch the amount of conflicting advice about how to meter tricky situations...

I know it's expensive...but you only buy it once and you have it for a LONG time...and bonus...you REALLY LEARN your exposure using it...trust me on that.