photos of hans koot Posted March 30, 2009 Share Posted March 30, 2009 <p>Advise needed. Yesterday I was on the beach nearby in the great weather we photographers need. Shower on the right, sun and a low tide. I was actually on a hike with my family and brought my new 5dMKII with me My shots in conditions without a bright sky were correctly exposed, but pracitcally all shots with a bright sky/ front light were overexposed by 1 to 1'1/2 stop about. In the example the image settings are shown. Walking there with the family made it tough to look and control all settings so I started exposure autobracketing to be sure. I can only work with the files that are 1 2/3 underexposed. The 'normal' shots are overexposed and the 1 2/3 overexposed ones have little viewable data. (highlight priority was off)<br> - do i use wrong settings<br> - should I have the camera examined by canon?</p> <p>thanks!</p><div></div> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kari v Posted March 30, 2009 Share Posted March 30, 2009 <p>It shouldn't be impossible to bring back highlight detail from a RAW file. 1 2/3 may be on the verge of asking for trouble but even 400D can do one stop or so recovery.</p> <p>Wrong settings? Probably just wrong metering and the scene brightness range was great. Sometimes something got to give even with high-end gear.<br> Take more test shots in different lighting before thinking about service.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edrodgers Posted March 30, 2009 Share Posted March 30, 2009 <p>This is a difficult lighting situation. How does the camera know that you want to expose for the bright parts of the sky? Maybe you wanted to expose for the beach. You will need to take control of the exposure yourself if you want to shoot anything other than simple flat lighting. Any camera would make this "mistake". Don't send it back.</p> <p>Learn what the dynamic range of the camera is, use your spot meter to measure light and dark areas of the scene, and set your exposure according to what you want. It takes time, but it's the only way to get it right every time.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joewoo Posted March 30, 2009 Share Posted March 30, 2009 It looks like a metering problem... In a scenario like this... Try exposure compensation +2 2/3, spot meter the brightest part of the sky, exposure lock, recompose, take the shot... You have to be carefule because there's a chance you're shooting beyond what your sensor's range is... The brightest spot in the sky may be waaay too bright and create too much darkness... It would look best if you made two pictures with that raw file... One picture made to expose the sky correctly + one picture for the ground... Combine in photoshop... You can also try buying one of those graduated neutral density filters and use that when you want to "level out" such extreme dynamic range... Or get a fuji s5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
photos of hans koot Posted March 30, 2009 Author Share Posted March 30, 2009 <p>Thank you guys, I upload another, I think an example that should be easy for the cam. If you look in the post you also see the uploads on the right. the ones without bright sky are 'right' exposed.</p><div></div> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
photos of hans koot Posted March 30, 2009 Author Share Posted March 30, 2009 <p>I forgot to mention, this file is correctable in raw with no loss in the highlights, being 1 stop overexposed (in my opinion).</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
felix_mizioznikov Posted March 30, 2009 Share Posted March 30, 2009 <p>I'd go with highlight priority enabled at iso 200 and -1 exposure on the sky. then process one -2 for the sky and +1 for the sand and photoshop together. your not going to be able to face the sun ang get perfect exposure for the sky and the ground, unless your in snow.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steven_f1 Posted March 30, 2009 Share Posted March 30, 2009 <p>Clouds are always a problem, regardless of your camera. I don't see any reason to send it to Canon. </p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jamie_robertson2 Posted March 31, 2009 Share Posted March 31, 2009 <p>In my experience, Canon's DSLRs always overexpose compared to their film bodies. Personally, I find it annoying although my 5D2 does appear to be a little more accurate with its exposure compared to other Canon DSLRs I have used. With my 350D I always ended up shooting at -2/3rds of a stop. I have only had my 5D2 a week so it's a little early to tell yet although I reckon it's overexposing by around half a stop from the few shots I've already taken.</p> <p>Get a feel for your camera over the next few weeks and work out how much it is overexposing on average. Dial in compensation and leave it set at that permanently. I spoke to a couple of pros two years ago and they also agreed that their 1Ds MkII bodies needed to be permanently set to -2/3rds of a stop in order to get the best out of their RAW files.</p> <p>It's better to leave highlight tone priority off and do any adjustment at the RAW stage to get the best results. It depends on how much post processing you want to do although a minute or so per image should be more than enough generally.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elliot1 Posted March 31, 2009 Share Posted March 31, 2009 <p>Light meters are not intelligent and in difficult lighting situations they sometimes require photographer intervention. The results you are getting are normal and typical for the lighting conditions. Most cameras regardless of brand would give the same results.</p> <p>Is your camera overexposing 100% of the time or just in difficult lighting?</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
photos of hans koot Posted March 31, 2009 Author Share Posted March 31, 2009 <p>First thank you all for your reactions, I must say I think my xti does better job in these circumstances, see if I can do a comparison soon.</p> <p>Elliot, it just does in difficult light, especially high contrast /front light.<br> here is the histogram, no blacks available</p><div></div> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elliot1 Posted April 2, 2009 Share Posted April 2, 2009 <p>Using the Recovery slider "Herstel" will correct your problem. The latest version of DPP also has Recovery and Highlight sliders and works quite effectively.</p> <p>Under difficult lighting shots like this, most DSLR cameras to not have the dynamic range to capture the scene properly straight out of the camera. There are several ways to shoot scenes like these and several ways to fix them through software depending on how you shoot them. Typically you would want to underexpose and brighten the darker areas using a program like Photoshop or DPP.</p> <p>But the bottom line is your camera is functioning properly.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
photos of hans koot Posted April 2, 2009 Author Share Posted April 2, 2009 <p>Thanks very much Elliot, and all that responded, I will do some serious shooting to see how it works. Yesterday I did a shoot with the exposure adjusted to -1 and the shots seem ok on first sight.</p> <p> </p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hawkman Posted April 2, 2009 Share Posted April 2, 2009 <p>Hans,<br> your 5DMKII meter is fine, dynamic range in your example is very high and there will be, inevitably, some blow ups and lost shadows, meter will expose for the best balance between highlights and shadows, if you want to expose for highlights you need to dial in negative EC, also make sure HTP and ALO are off so they don't interfere with what you are trying to get.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
photos of hans koot Posted April 6, 2009 Author Share Posted April 6, 2009 <p>Thanks for the addition Arash.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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