Spot meter on the darker background. Your camera is metering off the water reflection thus underexposing your image. Or shoot in Manual mode and meter off the background then recompose. Even if your trying to spot meter off the bird itself it is too small of a sample particularly with a big zoom.
CindyHouk wrote:
I went out to practice on birds. There is a pond by my house that normally has swans, ducks, geese, blue herons and eagles...so I thought this would be a good spot. BUT it was really overcast and I was not able to get the exposure correct and I am hoping you all can tell me what I was doing wrong. Plus there were not many birds around either...so that didn't help!
Nikon D500, Tamron 150-600, on tripod. Manual Mode, BBF set, Shutter button set to AE-L at half press, AF-C, played with Single Focus point, group and Auto, and also switched between Spot Meter and Center Weight Meter.
I was told that you should have your shutter speed a little over double your focal length...so at 600mm I would want my shutter at or over 1200, but doing that...I was not able to figure out how to get the ap/iso set so that the exposure was correct...it was driving me nuts! I played with the metering as well and just could never find the correct combination. Everything was turning out way to dark
The first pic shows how dark all the pics turned out...I even played with the exposure compensation but still nothing turned out. Just converted the raw to jpg in lightroom....no other edits made
The second pic is at a way lower shutter speed but as you can see, the duck is blurry and still too dark
The lasts 2 pics show my location, I changed my lens to the Tamron 16-150 for these
What would you have done in this situation? What settings should I have tried and what would your settings have been? I will go back and practice with everyone's suggestions.
Thanks
Cindy
I went out to practice on birds. There is a pond b... (
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