[jmbower]

As much as I have loved my k100d thus far, I find myself much more challenged in getting good exposures than I have with my venerable old K1000 or the P&s digitals I have owned until last year.

I know some of the really great shots here involve a good deal of post-processing. But even the out of the camera shots tend to come out looking better than mine. I don't blame the camera, I blame my lack of study on proper exposure technique. I tend to shoot a lot of landscape images, and have a guilty love for panoramas. The ubiquitous bright sky/dark ground problem really got the better of me on my recent honeymoon in Maui. (lots of bright cloud cover at Haleakala, Iao Valley, road to Hana, etc).

Can anyone give me or point me toward some good general tips (other than getting off my butt and getting a decent graduated ND filter) on getting good exposure in general, and specifically and more importantly, squeezing the best results out of my K100d?

Thanks!

[Lowell Goudge]

talk about a wide open topic.

you really need to post some "bad" shots so they can be evaluated.

[jmbower]

heh sorry about that. I'm kinda starting from square one on doing this properly, so I'm not even sure the proper questions to ask.

I just got back from the honeymoon yesterday and have not had any time to download all the pics yet but will try to tonight. Sunrise at Haleakala completely kicked my butt 10 ways to sunday. And everytime I tried to get a shot of the mountains/volcano (which were constantly enshrouded by clouds/fog even when quite bright) I had a hard time getting detail/light on the ground without having losing the clouds/sky in burnt out highlights. Even in the daylight shots where contrast wasn't as big of an issue, I seem to be getting a color cast/saturation issue. I was using a CPL for some of the shots, but it didn't seem to completely solve the issue (in fact it gave quite a different effect than the linear polarizer I'm used to using on my manual lenses..)

[Lowell Goudge]

one thing you may wish to do, (assuming you are shooting jpeg) is to set contrast to minimum.

I did some tests, and found that in a photo editor, when you look at the exposure histogram, the range of 0-255 is divided into 3 regions, from about 0-25 it is very compressed, most shadow detail, range from 25-230 is more or less linear, and range from 230 to 255 is also compressed, and is the highlight detail.

At maximum contrast the bottom and top ranges are really only about 1 to 1.5 stops each and the middle range is 4 stops.

At minimum contrast the top and bottom ranges are about 1.5 to 2 stops each and the middle range is 6 stops.

When I was in france this summer, I had almost always very bright skys and had to fight all the time with shadows.

By setting to minimum contrast gave me a lot more to work with and I found better than using graduated filters, because the shadows never follow a straight line on a filter any way

[mattdm]

Digital sensors have less dynamic range -- the difference between the darkest shadows and brightest highlights that still retain detail -- than (especially) negative film. Slide film also has a relatively small dynamic range, but as i understand it, it deals with blown highlights more gracefully than digital. So that's part of your problem.

I also have found the matrix metering on the K100D to be worse than that on my old Olympus C5060 "bridge" P&S camera -- you might want to try center-weighted instead, and then use EV compensation as appropriate. (Annoying with the auto-ISO misfeature in P/Av/Tv modes, though.)

[fishy]

Digital sensors have less dynamic range -- the difference between the darkest shadows and brightest highlights that still retain detail -- than (especially) negative film.

Really? I always thought that the DR of film was between approx 5 and 8, 8 being B&W film..
Digital is generally rated around 10, significantly higher than film..

For the K10D (and, I guess in general) it helps to shoot RAW for a higher DR, and I like the suggestion of trimming down the Contrast in camera (although that should have no effect shooting RAW)

For a (but there are many) test on DR for the K100D, see:
Pentax K100D Digital Camera Imatest - Full Review - The Imaging Resource!

or the K10D
Pentax K10D Digital Camera Imatest - Full Review - The Imaging Resource!

Unless of course I am totally mistaken, in which case I hope to be corrected

(there are of course loads of ways to simulate higher DR with PP, including combining pics with different exposures)

[JCSullivan]

Somebody wish this guy Congrats and Good Luck.
Are you sure you're not marrying your 100D and hobby.

Congrats buddy

[and]

The bright sky dark ground problem is a classic.
A CPL filter will help to a certain degree, I unfortunately dont own one so I cant say just how much, actually Im planning to go pick up some Kenko pro 1D ones tomorrow as a matter of fact.
A GND filter will help even more, but its more of a special use filter than the CPL which also has other uses.
A flash is also a solution, an external flash with some knowledge of how to do fill flash will help in certain situations, such as shooting a person against some background and the bright sky. but it wont help for ladnscapes since the flash obviously cant light everything.

unfortunately all these solutions invole buying some gear, because has has been said, you cant get around the limited DR.

a free option is multi exposures and PP. but this dosnt work well for objects that might move.

You can do the digital GND technique or variations of digital blending. Requires 2 frames
You can do single RAW HDR to use the extended DR of RAW. Requires 1 frame
You can do multi exposure HDR. Requires 2-N frames
You can expose for the highlights and do contrast masking. Requires 1 frame.

Luminous Landscape has a ton of articles on those>
Digital Blending
Contrast Masking
Digital Split
Blended Exposures

I normally find the in-camera solutions to look better in the end though. But then Im not the greatest PP wiz

[fishy]

Somebody wish this guy Congrats and Good Luck.
Are you sure you're not marrying your 100D and hobby.

Congrats buddy

Huh?
Care to elaborate?

[jmbower]

Thanks for the advice (and the congrats it's still sinking in..luckily I have a wife who's mostly patient with my photo taking)

Much appreciated.

If anyone has any general tips on getting the best exposure (not just in the sky ground issue) otu of the k100d, I'd love to hear them too. At this point I'm absorboing everything I can

[gpaual]

study....practice.......study.......practice.........study...... practice.........congrats jm,

Ultimate Exposure Computer

the above may prove useful/

[JCSullivan]

Huh?
Care to elaborate?

I swear I replied in a different thread - the guy coming back from his honeymoon. This must have been a glitch in the system.

[MPrince]

If anyone has any general tips on getting the best exposure (not just in the sky ground issue) otu of the k100d, I'd love to hear them too. At this point I'm absorboing everything I can

Getting the best exposure out of the k100d is no different than getting the best exposure out of any other camera. You need to develop the skill to evaluate the light and adjust camera settings accordingly. In addition to the the link from gpaual for the ultimate exposure computer, you really should buy Bryan Peterson's book Understanding Exposure. These two resources will be far more valuable to you than anything anyone can type into a forum post in a few minutes. (IMHO)

[Photo Tramp]

Generally the best exposure is with out a doubt the element of surprise. In colder weather I would suggest a good trench coat. ( Oh wrong forum sorry. ) I think Matts link is one of the best articles you could read and the practice, practice , practice advice is very good also. However i have a k100D and never have gotten bad exposure with this camera. Are we talking manual lenses or AF lenses? Also what settings do you have set in your menu? The settings in your camera are very important to exposure. When focusing what type of metering do you have set? What is your EV set to? These are questions that need to be addressed first before Your general exposure question can really be answered.

[jmbower]

Thanks for the links, checking those out...

as per the last post, that's a good question....what settings SHOULD I be using? Is there a general rule of thumb for when to use center weighted, etc? Or is it all just experience...I'm looking for a good starting point or two.

Thanks all! Help was much appreciated. Got some reading to do.