D80 disappointed with landscape shots over exposing

[geoff_forster1]

Hi

 

I've been using my D80 for around a month.

I live in a mountainous are in the South of Spain.

The light is fantastic and the scenery beautiful.

 

On the preset landscape option every photo I've taken is over exposed.

My little Kodak DX6490 takes far better 'snaps' which is crazy as the Nikon

should be far superior.

 

What setting do I need to use M - A - S or P and what should I do to adjust for

this overexposure.

I have messed around with these options but as I'm a newbie with DSLR's I'm a

little bewildered to say the least.

I understand about Apertures and Shutter Speed but temperature and white balance

etc is all new to me.

 

I think the camera defaults to ISO 100 should I change this to a higher ISO?

 

Any words of guidance / help to enable me to take good landscape shots would be

appreciated.

 

Thanks

Geoff Forster

Benarraba

Andalucia

Spain

[sattler123]

Keep the camera at ISO 100. Make sure you don't have exposure compensation dialed in - that could be the reason for your over exposure. Also, shoot in RAW mode - RAW is much more forgiving than JPEG and you can adjust the exposure when you convert the RAW image to TIFF. For landscapes I typically use apperture priority because you want to maximize the depth of field - so use the A setting and dial in the aperture you want. Read your user manual - look up exposure compensation.

[waltflanagan]

Read your manual on how to use the exposure compensation button/dial. Just push the +/- button and move the dial until you get -1, -2, etc.

 

Or go to M (manual exposure) and adjust the shutter speed/f-stop until you are underexposed. This is all basic stuff covered in your manual.

[leicaglow]

Geoff, My D200 does the same thing. I always keep the exposure compensation dialed back to -.3 or -.7. However, the RAW images are usually right on.

[alan_olander1664878205]

Is the entire image overexposed or just the sky in your landscapes? In many landscapes it's difficult to obtain correct exposure for both land and sky, and that's where graduated neutral density filters and other techniques come into play. Use manual or aperture priority mode and bracket your exposures. A higher ISO isn't going to help you. It takes a little more work and knowledge to get the best out of a DSLR compared to a point & shoot, but it's worth it.

[lilly_w]

You may also want to consider using a graduated neutral density filter to balance a foreground (not necessarily 'dark' per se but 'less bright') with a very bright sky.

 

Rather than fiddling w/ exp comp in A-priority I find it simpler to use Manual Exp Mode...setting the ap exactly where I want and then adjusting shutter speed while reading meter to yield the proper exp I am looking for, rather than using a hard-and-steadfast -.7 or what-have-you. At times I will want more or less comp and find getting there is easier in Manual.

 

If nothing else steer clear of Landscape Mode. You will take great satisfaction in learning to <consistently> read and render a scene to your liking rather than leaving it to hit-or-miss on 'auto-pilot' as is the case with Landscape, Program or any other auto-mode.

[BrettPrucha]

From what I can gather from the manual the Landscape mode does not set the mettering mode (Matrix,Center,Spot).

 

"Use for vivid landscape shots. The build-in flash and AF-assist illuminator turn off automatically."

 

Besides the obvious it sounds like the saturation level of the image gets a boost but that's it.

 

Make sure you are in Matrix mode if you want to turn your brain off and left the camera do all of the thinking (or should I say guessing) of the exposure for you. The D80 isn't really a point and shoot camera. You have much more control over the camera and as such you can make more mistakes if you don't engage your brain in the picture taking proccess.

[jmoody]

I was going to say the same as Alan. Bright skys and darker valleys may be beyond your camera's reach without an nd filter or some post processing. Post an example maybe?

[jeff h.]

Make sure the white balance is set on sunlight. Set the ISO at 100. See if the shutter speed is

some permutation of the "Sunny 16" rule. Bracket your shots by about 1/3 EV and see how

your camera captures the light. Good luck.

[joseph_smith3]

All of the above are good responses. You are always better off to under expose than to over expose. On my d 200, I shoot in RAW and often set a minus .3 exp compensation to avoid blowing out the highlights. See this link for more information on exposure:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/understandexposure.shtml

 

Check out other links on this great web site. Make sure you use a lens hood. Learn how to use the histogram on your camera. I do all of my shooting in aperture priority mode. However, the mode should not have any impact on your exposure situation for landscapes.

 

Please tell us what lens you are using and post an example of a problem image. Make sure the lens diaphgram is working correctly.

 

You also might have messed up the camera settings. Reet the defaults. Check the shooting info for each image in Nikon View. It will tell you all of the camera settings used for that image.

 

Joe Smith

[juan_parm_nides]

Well, my D200 do not overexpose at all. Even if you set EV compensation to zero, the camera has a nice respetc to highlights. Try not to use matrix metering, it is better center or spot. Cheers.

[avril]

I have never found that my D200 does that.Its exposure is spot on.I use matrix and Spot according to the picture-sometimes taking same piccie with different modes.I understand that there has been a lot of problems with exposure on D80.

[oliver_foxley]

Hi, I've owned a D80 for a year now and it's a fantastic camera-capable of superb results-I've not had any problems with the exposure on this camera. the one thing you do have to accept is digital photography is a very different media to film. The exposure latitude of digital is less than film (particularly negative film)and thus when you take photos of landscapes, an unfiltered set up on a DSLR will provide underexposure of the land and correct or overexposure of the sky.

 

The only way to obtain perfectly exposed shots is to either shoot in low contrast lighting conditions, whereby the sky is not a glaring expanse of light, or to use a Neutral Density Graduated filter to balance the exposure by cutting out light in the sky but not in the lower half of the composition. I will state the obvious now but if you shoot into the direction of the sun your results will always be horribly exposed unless you mask it with a landmark or feature of the landscape such as a tree.

 

ND Grad filters come in different strengths for different lighting conditions-I use strengths 0.4 (medium strength) and 0.8 (strong strength), they are the only two i have felt necessary to use (don't bother with strength 0.2-it makes virtually no difference). I use the Cokin range of filters with my D80 however professional glass Grads (like the Lee range) can be bought for considerably more money.

 

Always use the lowest ISO you can if you want maximum detail from your D80- otherwise image sharpness will be sacrificed for noise. Also cranking up the ISO any more than 100 will increase overexposure problems.

 

I always shoot in RAW- for landscapes its a must because post capture tweaks are a very helpful addition to creating the perfect digital landscape. (If you do not have RAW support and you are running Adobe Photoshop simply go to the Adobe website and download the latest version of Camera RAW for free -use this link- http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/search/index.cfm?loc=en_us&term=camera+raw)

 

In the menu of the D80 there is a green camera symbol at the top of the list- in this menu at the top of this sub directory there is the option 'optimize image', press ok on that and then select the 'More Vivid'option, this will provide nice punchy saturated images as generally suited to landscape photography, however this is just my personal preference here of course- you may wish to experiment with some of the other options instead.

 

Good luck with it-it's a great camera so don't ditch it in vain-stick with it and it will reward you eventually