Exposure compensation on a D70

[david_ceruti]

I recently borrowed a friends D70 after having quite a bit of film

experience and was suprised at the amount of exposure compensation I

had to use, sometimes up to 6 stops.

 

I was shooting architecture and a lot of the shots were indoors (on

ISO 800) so there was a not much variation in the lighting. I also

had the same experience with outdoor shots on ISO 200.

 

My questions are:

 

Is this normal on a D70?

 

Is there something about shooting digital that makes this more

common?

 

I don't think my technique was too off as I have used the same

approach - setting aperture priority and letting the camera set the

shutter speed - and I got good results on film.

 

This may be a dumb question and I couldn't find anything on a search

so I apologise in advance (no flames please)

 

David

[brady_dillsworth]

I own a D70 and use it for alll types of shooting (sports, wedding, landscape, studio...). That much exposure compensation is far from normal on my D70. My camera typicaly underexposes a small amount, but I find that it can be taken care of with +/- 2/3 of a stop and rarely more than that.

 

Is there any chance that you were shooting in spot meter mode or matrix meter mode and you were working like you were in the other?

 

Were you judging the exposure comp on the camera's LCD? Maybe you were reviewing in bright sunlight and judged exposure compensation on that, maybe he had the LCD brightness turned way up or way down and you didn't know.

 

When you were shooting film was it c41, did the lab do a lot of correction on the prints making your technique look correct?

 

Brady

[errol young]

I am not sure that the underexposure is a problem with the D70. When you view the shot on a computer they look underexposed but if you look at the histogram, it is all there. The mountain does not slip off the left edge.

 

Moving the white slider to the mountain takes care of the exposure. I think that this happens with C41 as well but it is hard to see on the neg and the lab makes the adjustment.

 

Am I wrong?

[greglyon]

David, Brady may be onto something with the metering-mode hypothesis. If not that then maybe something is wrong with that camera.

 

While I don't think my D70 is on par with my F5 exposure wise, it's not THAT Far off...usually minor tweaking +/- .3 to 1.0 stop at most, and then only if the lighting is tricky.

 

I find that I do play a lot more with exposure comp when I'm using flash, though never more then +/- 1.7 or so, and that's usually if I'm trying for a subtle effect or to minimize motion blur...

[chad_van_lue]

I agree with Errol. If the D70 underexposed, the histogram would show loss of data to the

left. This is not the case as all the data is there. It has been said that the contrast is what is

turned down on the D70 stock photos, not improper exposure levels. All of these together

points to better detail that is drawn out in post processing.

[aardvarko]

My D70 exhibited dramatic meter fluctuations shortly before it died.

[fourfa]

this has happened to me when the camera decides to meter on some incandescent lights in the frame. Sometimes will, sometimes won't, with small changes in framing. I switch to manual if it happens.