K10d Photo How can I improve exposure

[steve917]

I took this and Many other photos this past Monday of nesting Osprey's with My K10d and My bigma at 500mm.
I am not happy with the colors I am getting. Can anyone help me out with some ideas to improve color rendition
and by the way that is 2 ospreys trying to raise the population count of osprey on the Jersey Shore

Shutter Priority 1/500, f6.7, ISO 100, spot metering (center), auto white balance, contrast normal, saturation normal, sharpness, normal

Steve

[Jonas B]

Exposure or colors?
To my eyes that picture seem to be underexposed by about 1.5 stops. Even when using the spot meter you have to compensate for the background if it is a lot of light there, in this case by at 1 stop or maybe 1.5 stops. The colors are what they are and with a correctly exposed picture you get something to work with. I hope they all aren't that dark and murky.

Wish those birds good luck from me!

[WildSioux]

I may be wrong here, but why are you using "Spot" metering? Wouldn't you want to use center weighted?

[Ole]

You can use exposure bracketing in a difficult situation like this. Then you'll get 3 or 5 differently exposed images and you can pick the best.

[Donald]

When I am composing shot that I'm not confident about exposure I will try greatly different exposure parameters. In your example, although I'm not familiar with this lens, try fast exposure wide open, your setup, slow exposure stopped down, and a few in between. In addition to others suggestion, also try manual exposure and purposely expose different than what your camera is telling you. Eventually, you will learn exposure modes you like with your equipment for certain scenes.

Also, your shot is notorious for difficult exposure: looking up at sky exposing dark detail object in foreground.

[KennJ]

Donald makes a good point on shooting into the sky and exposure values. Spot metering may be of some help in this type situation.
Kenn

[slipchuck]

I would download the newest firmware and see if that improves things.... also possibly put the exposure compensation up +2/3 of a stop and leave it there.
You can also bump the ISO to 200 as the noise will not be a factor.
If you are using CS2 or lightroom, shoot in raw, leave the setting on default and see how much your shots are underexposed on average, and next time you go out under the same conditions bump the EV compensation accordingly... or even 1/3-1//2 stop above that... a bit overexposed in raw seems to give less noise then underexposed.

As far as colors goes.... I don't own something that long, but I remember from my film days anything above 200mm had a bit of a "hazy" look to the shots, lacking saturation.... could have been the lenses but I hear others note this... maybe try the "bright" mode instead of the "natural" mode in the k10

hope this helps

randy

[Ivan Glisin]

Originally Posted by steve917

Shutter Priority 1/500, f6.7, ISO 100, spot metering (center)

I think described parameters explain everything: using spot meter with P, Av or Tv modes and especially without exposure lock and exposure compensation is a pure gambling.

I would recommend center-weighted with P, Av and Tv in combination with exposure compensation. Here is how it works: every camera always sets aperture and shutter speed to record any scene as average gray. Then, YOU use that as a starting point and dial in exposure compensation -- positive if scene is bright, negative if scene is dark. This way you are "telling" you camera how would you like final result to be recorded: brighter or darker than calculated average gray.

Without YOU your camer can not possibly know what to do. Try this: find one black and one white t-shirt (or towel, or any fabric just to avoid reflections for now). Set your camera to P mode and any metering mode, and come close enough to fill the frame. Take a shot of a black then white t-shirt. Compare results, and... SURPRISE!!!

So, for good results you'll HAVE TO compensate.

Here is my mapping of exposure compensations to shades of gray: -2 black with details, -1 dark gray, 0 average gray, +1 light gray, +2 white with details. (Just for completeness, let me add that in manual mode I use -3 to get pure black with no details and +3 for pure white with no details).

How to practice this? With my "parking lot exposure exercise" (tried several times with my friends with great success):

Set your camera to P mode and center-weighted metering. Go to a parking lot: you can find cars of various colors there. Take a series of photographs filling your frame with a car but choose angle to avoid reflections and to have actual color filling most of the frame (not windows or wheels). You can take pictures of only doors for example.

Now, learn to think this way (focus on luminosity only, ignore colors!):

Gray car: "My camera will record gray and this car is an average gray. That is what I want, so I change nothing."

Navy blue car: "My camera will record gray but I want it darker, although not black. I dial -1."

White car: "My camera will record gray but I want it white. I dial +2."

Light blue car: "My camera will record gray but I want it lighter gray. I dial +1."

Black car: "My camera will record gray but I want it black. I dial -2."

Yellow car: "My camera will record gray but I want it bright, although not white. I dial +1.5."

And so on... Go slow at first, THINK before taking each shot about the compensation required. After some 30-40 shots it will go very easy. DO NOT review each shot immediately. Just shoot, review later on your computer monitor. Once downloaded, examine EXIFs and histograms and compare appearance with compensation. Ask yourself for each shot: do I like it? If not, check compensation value and see why it is not good: too much/little compensation? Perhaps -2 would have worked better than -1? Perhaps leaving it at 0 would have been the right choice? (and so on).

Repeat this exercise two or three times and I guarantee you'll improve your exposure accuracy 10X! Practice on buildings, benches, cars, furniture at home, just about anything.

Next step would be to learn how to use spot metering in M mode or in combination with AE-L in "auto" modes for even better control (for assigning and examining tonal values), but mastering "auto" modes with exposure compensation would suffice in 90% of situation.

Hope this helps.

[Photomy]

"... 1/500, f6.7, ISO 100 ..." This is EV 14.5 at ISO100 which is 1/2 stop less than bright sunshine (EV =15) . Was the lighting near bright sunshine conditions, or closer to cloudy, or was it 8:15 in the morning? At least know about what the exposure settings should have been based on time of day, weather, and shading as starting point to compare.

If your settings were right on, and the lens/camera/sensor did not deliver as they should have to those settings, then you need to find out what is at fault. A cheap handheld meter would have been good to easily verify the outdoor settings.

Could be the lens, could be the camera/shutter/sensor combination.

Just go out tomorrow and shoot a gray card in sunny conditions at f5.6/ISO 100 and see if it recommends 1/1000 shutter speed. Maybe the meter is correct but the mechanics of the camera are not delivering what the meter recommends. Start out verifying if the meter is close. Good luck.

[steve917]

I think this is a much better exposure than the previous one I posted
Iso 200 f10 1/640 normal program center weighted, no exposure Bias, 345mm in 35mm, auto WB

What do you think??


Steve

[Ivan Glisin]

Much better! In situation like this I would personally add +0.5 or +1.0 since it is a well lit scene with sky dominating the background which is brighter than the average gray, but this is close enough and minor post processing could make it perfect without over stretching the image data.

[Kaimarx]

Nice improvement, and some solid advice from the posters here. Dont be afraid to overexpose with digital photography. I would recommended to overexpose by at least 1 stop minimum to capture the shadow details. Once youve lost the shadows its difficult to pull them back without posterizing whereas the latitude for highlights in digital photography is more flexible. This does however require that you shoot in RAW and you will be spending time developing the shot, overexposing in jpeg will leave you with......an overexposed jpeg

[button]

Hey Steve,

If you have photoshop, what happens to the colors of the first image you posted if you use the levels command and slide the far right triangle to match the highest point of the histogram? I underexpose lots of my shots, and bumping their exposures helps me out a lot (I use 16 bit mode when doing so- seems to help). Could you post a leveled version of the first image?

John

[davek]

Would not using the histogram have helped alot here? My camera is set so that my histogram comes up on immediate preview after every shot. I then will compensate the shot based on the histogram (I try to expose to the right).

Many times I don't even look at the captured image, I do a quick glance at the histogram and adjust.

[fuzman]

Many times I don't even look at the captured image, I do a quick glance at the histogram and adjust.


Even better Check your histogram ( Preview mode) prior to taking the shot. I use mine all the time.