Exposure compensation

Confirming beginner status!! I just recently started learning how to use my

studio lights and it seems like most of my pics were coming out dark. I worked

and worked with my lights trying to correct this. I was having to do a whole

lot of photoshop work trying to correct the pic. I got to looking over

everything and finally notice that somehow I had dialed my exposure

compensation down to -4.3 when it should have been -0.7. Lesson learned. Now I

feel a lot better and ready to test again in my studio.

Randy,

If you are in the studio and you use a flash meter, you should be able to dial in exactly the amount of light you want, and set the camera to expose for it without the need to dial in any exposure comp.

Also if you use the in camera histogram a lot at least at the beginning you detect this kind of problem immediately .-)

 

Yes compensating -4.3 requires good PS work.

Yeah, the other day I did a whole photo shoot outside with one camera set to Tungsten light balance. Couldn't tell the difference until I loaded the images onto the computer. Did I mention how nice a desaturated cyan looks with fashion photos?<g>

With studio lights you need to be shooting in Manual mode; in-camera exposure compensation will have no effect on your exposure when shooting in manual. Adjust exposure by changing your aperture or the intensity of the lights.

OK, so I need to work on practicing more in the studio with aperture settings and understanding my lights, because I was shooting in manual mode. I adjusted my lights using a sekonic flash meter to f11. My camera was 1/250,f11, and ISO 200. I'll try to post an unedited pic to show what I got.

Randy, besides it being too dark, your photo looks very nice. Like Walter said, the histogram is your friend. Had you looked at it, you could have corrected this right away.

Unless you have specific settings you want to leave in place from session to session, a good practice is to do a 2-button reset before (or after) each session. That way you are always returned to nominal settings and are "forced" to choose the right settings for your current work.

 

If you have made changes to menu settings, you can also do a menu reset.

 

Check your manual for a chart showing specifically what each reset function does and does not set back to normal.

Randy, I suspect you may have had your flash meter set to a different ISO than the camera setting, probably ISO100? That would account for the under exposure.

 

You didn't say what camera you use - but if 1/250 is the fastest sync speed on it (as I suspect), then I would also try using one stop slower ie 1/125. In theory that should have no effect on exposure in this situation, but in practice shooting at max sync speed can sometimes cause a problem if you are using other than the camera manufacturers guns.