Exposure control, shots on beach

[howard_jane]

Shooting my kids on the beach this weekend. In the past, subject looks very dark against that bright sand. Clearly,

evaluative metering not working. Looking for advice here. I thought of three potential techniques: 1)use a flash on

the kids, but I'm not sure the flash will add anything in these bright conditions 2) Set exposure metering on auto-

focus point, rather than evaluative, and make sure I'm focusing on the kids' faces to expose there rather than

averaging the scene 3) Dial in a +1 overexposure, stick with evaluative metering, and shoot. How would you guys

handle this? Thanks!

[greg_moss2]

Why not try all three and see which works best for you.

Flash can fill in most shadows if you are close enough.

Meter on subjects and recompose.

Sand and snow, opening up one stop works great.

 

Every situation is different. Are you shooting into the sun? Sun on your back? After suneset?

[howard_jane]

Greg,

What is the most efficient way to meter and recompose? How would recommend that I meter for the kids' faces? I

suppose I could use center-weighted metering and make sure the face is in the center before I recompose. If using

a zoom lens, i could fill the frame with the face as much as possible, then recompose. I hope you can help me by

offering a tip on how to do this efficiently. Thanks a lot.

[tommyinca]

If just snap shot, use bigger flash and may be higher speed sync would help, not that tiny one on top of the camera. It would be too weak to do much good as your aperture is stop down. If no flash, one other thing you can do is use spot meter but the background will be all blow out. Shoot RAW and underexpose it a bit so you may have a chance to recover some of the blow high light on the back ground.

[arie_vandervelden1]

Midday bright sun is not the ideal situation for shooting - too much contrast. You may get shutterspeeds that exceed synch speed, preventing you from using flash. You can try to shoot with the sun at your back but the kids will then be squinting.

 

Suggestions: shoot during "golden hour", the last hour before sunset or else early in the morning. Shoot on a cloudy or hazy day. Use photoshop shadow/highlight tool.

[howard_jane]

Thanks. tommy - using 430EX, and I've found that in very bright conditions, I can fill with it only if I'm very close to the subject, and then in that case it looks a bit artificial, like the faces are made of light bulbs. I'll shoot RAW i guess, as you suggested. arie- your advice seems to make great sense, maybe just give up with the noon-time beach shots! Thanks guys.

[mark u]

If the light is constant then you can set a constant exposure in M mode. Use a mid tone beach towel as your metering target. If you find you are getting too much highlight burnout, then decrease exposure slightly. Pick your aperture with depth of field in mind, and the shutter speed with motion freezing: set ISO accordingly. Use the flash in high speed sync mode to lift shadows (the maximum range is limited and independent of camera settings - it only depends on the strength of the natural light it is battling against), or learn to take advantage of white towels or even the sand as reflectors. If need be, you can dial back flash, but in brighter light this happens automatically under E-TTL II metering.

[juans eye]

with subjects facing the light, my approach would be to spot meter the face of a subject, lock the exposure setting, recompose and shoot. Adding a couple of clicks of EV acompensation if that still doesnt do it.

 

/bing

[bob_osullivan]

Howard,

 

This is a tough situation but doable. First off you really need to explore M mode and get comfortable with it. This is actually very easy with digital. Just shoot, look at the lcd and the histogram and adjust.

 

At noon or with sun to back you will need fill flash. 430 should be fine if you use the correct aperture. At F2.8 you will burn out close subjects. At F8 you will not light far subjects.

 

Here's a starting point I'd suggest. ISO 200, flash set to ETTL, camera set to M, Aperture = 5.6, shutter around 1/1000th. Set flash to HSS mode so you can use faster shutter. Try this initial setting. Adjust shutter or aperture one stop at a time until you get the faces looking good and natural. If ETTL fails to deliver, set flash to M mode and start working down, 1/2 power, then 1/32, then 1/128th.

 

Your histogram should show you clipping the highlights a bit, but don't worry. You can bring back some detail in the sand, water and sky in photoshop. I recently got some help here on how to do that.

 

These particular circumstances are sometimes just too much for the parameters set into the metering system. Exposure comp only goes 2 stops in either direction. You may need more like 4 or 6.

 

Having said all that, this type of shooting is easier with negative film if that is an option for you. Film has more range for contrast.

[mark u]

"At noon or with sun to back you will need fill flash. 430 should be fine if you use the correct aperture. At F2.8 you will burn out close subjects. At F8 you will not light far subjects."

 

If using high speed sync flash this is incorrect. HSS effectively produces a constant output all the while the shutter curtains are moving. If you are using it as fill, then the ambient exposure will be correct for the background. It does not matter whether the ambient exposure is 1/400th at f/16 and 400 ISO or 1/3200th at f/2.8 and 100 ISO or 1/3200th at f/16 and 3200 ISO (all equivalent ambient exposures): the effect of the flash will be the same. This is quite unlike the situation with X sync flash. What is true is that the range of the flash is more limited in HSS mode - essentially because output is wasted illuminating the shutter curtains with only a narrow slit of the sensor being exposed at any one time, whereas with X sync flash the whole sensor is exposed when the flash fires.