first mudrun of 2014 at the toyfarm. I brought the 50-200 lens out of the dog house, it did a fairly good job under harsh lighty conditions. I have a question for the pros that post here, what would you use when shooting in bright sun, when ground is reflective light color and that is surrounded by lush green background, mostly trees,. I started with spopt but most pictures came out way under exposed, switched to center weighted, got better, would multi-segment handle this type of lighting better?

[wtlwdwgn]

Harsh midday light is tough work. With the bright glare off the cars I would try using +1 EV or so. The meter would see the bright reflections and lower the exposure. A CPL might work on the glare but only if it's 90 deg to the sun. Just my two cents. Otherwise you captured some really good action shots.

[Jens Lyn IV]

I am not a pro; heed me at your own peril.

I always shoot raw and spend a lot of time processing my images; this influences my approach to shooting. If you shoot JPEG only, read no further because I'm going to recommend that you underexpose your images and recover in post, and this should not be done on a JPEG file. I also don't know how the sensor noise and dynamic range of your camera compare to my K-5, but I'm going to hazard a guess that it's not quite as good but not terrible either. That said, here's how I would approach this situation:

Given the difficult light, I would generally underexpose by a stop or so. I always use matrix metering, possibly by habit, with exposure compensation as needed. Looking at the metadata, I notice the aperture is f/14. I wouldn't use such a small aperture unless I either doubted my ability to focus on the subject or needed maximum possible depth of field. Assuming I could focus reliably, I'd go for f/8, or, if the lens has a particular "sweet spot", that. I would generally try the fastest shutter speed possible to really "freeze" the mud, unless I wanted something else blurred by motion such as wheels.

Looking at your results, the first 3 are a bit bright, and number 3 in particular might have benefitted from a darker exposure, although I don't know how much you could really do about that extremely bright glare (the CPL filter is a very good suggestion). Number 4 is excellent: technically very good, with correct exposure and just the right shutter speed to blur the wheels but still freeze much of the thrown mud, and from a good angle that makes it look like the damned thing is emerging from underground. The blue smoke prevents the in-focus background from becoming a distraction and adds yet more drama. Number 5 has similar qualities in terms of composition, but the exposure is a little too bright, notice e.g. the clipped highlights in the hat.

Finally, the very first thing that caught my attention was the extreme compression artifacts in all images. In the first shot, look closely at the mud splatter in front of and above the windscreen - it's all a pixelated mess. The file size is a fairly generous 400 kB, and that really should be enough for an image 1280 pixels wide. I'd like to know what caused this.

[daacon]

Wow now that's a lot of mud looks like a blast ! Some good advice above my rule is I would rather underexpose than overexpose.

[wtlwdwgn]

Okay, but it's the meter that needs to know the light conditions so it doesn't cause the image to be TOO underexposed. The OP did say his images were "way under exposed." That's why I suggested going +1 or more on the EV. The histogram should be more to the right than left as long as it's not too far to the right. Just two more of my cents.

[Michael Piziak]

Very good mud photos - love em!
Perhaps a polarizer filter could help - to answer your question.

[sunrepairer]

thank you wtlwdwgn for your input. I was shooting in manual mode and i tried to keep the indicator to the positive side by 1 to 3 ticks as much as possible. Just slight movement of camera would
cause meter to move in some cases quite a bit. When some of these vechicles get going you don't have much time to play with settings. I tried a cpl to cut down glare, but it also took my shutter speed down to low to capture the action without bluring. I was using a 50-200 dal lens and I tried to keep the shutter speed up, most of the shoots were at 320, some were at 250, and that is with iso at 800. Most of the shots cameout a little dark and i brightened most of them especially in the shadow area. I tried the camera in auto mode for a couple of shots and the picyures were way blown out, histogram way to the right.

---------- Post added 07-03-14 at 02:13 PM ----------

thankyou Jens lyn iv for your suggestions and time to post them. I did shoot in jpeg, because i take around 400 shots at these mudruns for space and time purposes i choose the jpeg route.
Most of these shots came out a little on the underexposed side so I brightened them a little, and then I use pse10 to burn and dodge areas of the picture that need it, the glare of the sun off the vehicles and mud are tough. Your last comment on the extreme compression would that have anything to do with the pp used, i use windows live photo gallery to do the initial pp and then i will use pse10 if it needs further work.

---------- Post added 07-03-14 at 02:17 PM ----------

thankyou Michael Piziak I tried cpl but it took the shutter speed down below where i wanted to shoot. I try to freeze the mud put have the tires blurred and keep every thing else in focus.

[sunrepairer]

Here is an example of the way the pictures were coming out for the most part, before I brightened them

[wtlwdwgn]

If those last two are SOOC I would say they look pretty good to me on my monitor.

[sunrepairer]

They are couple I didn't get too , so maybe it's my monitor is a little dark, as I look at them on an iPad they look ok.

[sunrepairer]

Sorry for last post, first attempt posting from an iPad, not successful, this is a second attempt at getting picture to post from iPad.

[sunrepairer]

have not mastered posting more than ones picture at a time using the iPad so here is the second picture I pp with photogene.

[sunrepairer]

Another picture redone in photogene

[sunrepairer]

Sorry about multiple posts, can only get on picture at a time.