Exposure and metering ?? Now I'm becoming obsessed :)

[rvrkids]

I've been posting quite a bit here lately with lots of questions. I am a hobbyist and have taken thousands of pics of my kids playing sports but now they're older and I'm getting more interested in more planned photos and portraits. My daughter just had her senior pictures taken and now I want to be able to take photos like these (just for personal use)....so, much to her dismay she is going to be my guinea pig. Every question I get answered just makes me think of more questions....I am become obsessed :sillysmi: and I am the type of person that needs to know why things work the way they do.

I just took some raw photos of her in my backyard. We were in the shade and I was on manual (although you can see sun in the background in some...don't know if that affected my readings). I kept my aperture very big for shallow depth of field. I was using my Tamron 28-75 and tried different focal lengths. Every time I made sure my metering was spot on and adjusted my shutter speed when needed. Nikon D50, ISO 200, Center metering

I have several questions...sorry so many:

1. Most of them seem to be underexposed.....why, if my metering was right on? Should I always step up my exposure or is it something else I did?

2. My eyes are going bad so I do use auto focus and focused on the eyes. I would normally then recompose but some of these today are boring as I was just testing for lighting and sharpness. They don't really seem to be as crisp as I would like. Is this the nature of the Tamron lens? I do have a Nikon fixed 50mm f/1.8 lens. Would you expect me to have better luck with that lens instead? I just thought being able to zoom to affect depth of field would be nice.

3. Some pics seem to have a bluish-green tint. Does white balance setting have an effect when in raw? I thought it didn't. My white balance was on auto but just because I didn't think I needed to worry about that while in raw. Assuming it does not have an effect, why would my pics be bluish?

4. She likes photos taken in the sun so you can see the light shining on her. How do you know where to take a meter read? They were vastly different just on 2 different spots on her skin that were fairly close to one another (her cheek away from sun and neck which look very similar re: light). And, the highlight has completely washed out her hair in one spot, is that avoidable if you want the sun shining on the subject? Or is this just a see what works best scenario?....Actually I now see why her hair is washed out in that spot...the background in that spot is light also so I guess there is nothing to contrast it against??

I have attached some of the pics that I exported to jpg with no edits....I did edit one of them in lightroom (the last one, had to increase exposure 1.31 among other things). Please help and Thank You Much !!!

 

[Michel88]

Well the white balance sure does make a difference! Also in raw. But the good thing about raw is that you can adjust the white balance during post processing. But thats the only question I know the answer to I'm afraid

 

[Derrel]

The blueish tint is the way most digital cameras will render shaded conditions. In the raw converter, you would do best to adjust the white balance or color temperature upward, until the blueish tint disappears. The first three images are what would be called "cold", meaning the white balance is too low. The last two are "warmer".

One thing to keep in mind is that NIKON has for a decade now, encrypted the white balance settings of its d-slrs, beginning with the D2x in late 2004; this means that on MANY shots, Adobe or other brand software will take its best guess at the proper white balance, and it will guess wayyyyyyyy too low; as low as 1,000 or more degrees Kelvin lower than what most photographers would consider to be the proper white balance. That encrypted white balance, one of Nikon's dumbest and most asinine corporate moves in recent memory, means that in many cases, non-adjusted RAW images converted straight to JPG format might have this blueish tint to them.

Your last shot has the most pleasing lighting!!! Open shade, as seen in the first three frames, is pretty flat lighting, and does not show much facial shape, and shows very little shine or texture or highlights.

In the last shot for example,the lighting is decidely DIFFERENT than it was in the first three shots! See how her lip gloss picked up some shine from the brighter, overhead light of the sky, which added a tremendous amount of depth to the shot, and the sides of her nose are highlighted gently, which added additional depth clues, and the side of her face on the camera right side has a nice, soft, diffuse highlight? This is just simply much more interesting lighting than in any of the other four shots. This is mostly shaded light that is located in the TRANSITION ZONE from a shaded area to an area lighted by a large expanse of open sky.

Look for these transition zone areas! Do not shoot under a tree, wayyyy in close to the trunk of the tree, but instead, move outward, away from the tree, to the area where the tree still creates shade, but where there is BRIGHTER light very close by. Shoot at the edge of the shade-to-light transition zones, and you can get this same type of lovely natural lighting effect. With the subject in the shaded area, but the brighter, sky-lighted areas behind your back, the subject's eyes will pick up lovely catchlights, that will really add wonderful dimension to the shots.

 

[rvrkids]

Thanks.

So should I have my white balance set different when taking raw images outside or just leave on auto and adjust in raw converter?

Actually Derrel, the last shot is the one I edited in lightroom, here is what it looked like before editing , again quite underexposed...and this is one where we were both completely shaded under a patio roof.

So are you saying I should stand where there is more light (but not necessarily in the sun), near the edge of the transition zone with my subject in the shade? In some of these photos I was very near to the transition zone.

Do you think they are clear/crisp enough and what about the ones with the subject in the sun?

 

[CameraClicker]

Centre weighted and spot metering generally compare some part of the viewfinder to mid-grey. Centre weighted is a larger spot than spot metering. Your photos have a lot of brightness in the background due to the sun or white wall. If the meter is seeing more than your daughter, it will advise less exposure to make what it sees average out to mid-grey. If you want your daughter to be correctly exposed and don't care what happens to the background, try out the smallest spot meter the camera has, or meter with her filling the frame, then walk back to where you need to be for your composition. Keep in mind that if you are not in manual mode and have not locked exposure, it will change when you recompose. If you care about what happens to the background, it gets more complicated. You get into setting exposure for the background and lighting your subject, usually to be brighter than the background. A third option is to strike a balance for subject and background then use fill flash to ease shadows on your subject.

If you are using a very large aperture you probably have a small depth of field. Focus and recompose frequently suffers if you have a very shallow depth of field because you rock slightly and move the camera forward or backward slightly when recomposing. If the dept of field is a foot, moving half an inch does not have too much affect. If depth is 3 inches, moving the camera half an inch may make the nose or ears out of focus. Top camera models have a lot of focus points so you can get the focus you want without the need to recompose when using very wide apertures. Lower models can still do that, but you have less spots to choose from.

Raw files are sensor data combined with camera data. There is a white balance indicator based on what the camera thought (or was set to) when it made the JPEG that it displays if you ask to review the shot. Raw data has no colour, however. It is information about how much light was at each photosite and it knows the position of each photosite. With that information and knowledge of the Bayer filter position, the camera or conversion software can decide how to build the image. Most conversion software will use the white balance setting the camera had, from the file, when doing the conversion but since the raw data is available, you can change it to any white balance you like and the conversion will change based on that. Usually I leave white balance set to Auto in the camera, then tell the conversion software what I want it set to for a group of photos, or I set it on a photo by photo basis depending on how much the light was changing. If light is changing and Auto White Balance was set, each shot will have a different white balance written into the file. If you set White Balance to other than Auto, the same value will be written into the file for each photo until you change the setting.

 

[WayneF]

I've been posting quite a bit here lately with lots of questions. I am a hobbyist and have taken thousands of pics of my kids playing sports but now they're older and I'm getting more interested in more planned photos and portraits. My daughter just had her senior pictures taken and now I want to be able to take photos like these (just for personal use)....so, much to her dismay she is going to be my guinea pig. Every question I get answered just makes me think of more questions....I am become obsessed :sillysmi: and I am the type of person that needs to know why things work the way they do.

I just took some raw photos of her in my backyard. We were in the shade and I was on manual (although you can see sun in the background in some...don't know if that affected my readings). I kept my aperture very big for shallow depth of field. I was using my Tamron 28-75 and tried different focal lengths. Every time I made sure my metering was spot on and adjusted my shutter speed when needed. Nikon D50, ISO 200, Center metering

I have several questions...sorry so many:

1. Most of them seem to be underexposed.....why, if my metering was right on? Should I always step up my exposure or is it something else I did?


3. Some pics seem to have a bluish-green tint. Does white balance setting have an effect when in raw? I thought it didn't. My white balance was on auto but just because I didn't think I needed to worry about that while in raw. Assuming it does not have an effect, why would my pics be bluish?


I have attached some of the pics that I exported to jpg with no edits....I did edit one of them in lightroom (the last one, had to increase exposure 1.31 among other things). Please help and Thank You Much !!!

View attachment 83924

White balance is the biggest issue. Auto WB is just a computers approximation, but it is pretty dumb. If you know it was Shade or Cloudy, set Shade or Cloudy for JPG. If shooting Raw, this really does not matter until post processing of the Raw, but White Balance almost always needs full attention.

Here I simply clicked on the white wall, with the Adobe Levels tool (Elements or Photoshop, both are the same). The middle eyedropper (marked by red) is a white balance tool. Select it, and then click a point in the image that ought to be a neutral color, pure white or pure gray. The software will make it be that neutral color, which affects the entire image.

Lightroom has a better White Balance tool, simply just click on a natural or an added neutral color (white or gray). We find lots of white objects in our picture, and many are intended to look pure white, and many times, this works pretty well. It would of course be better to include a known neutral card in the first test picture, which (esp if Raw) you can use to correct all images in that same light.

The wall has two colors here (sun and shade), and I picked shade, because the girl is in shade there. I don't think WB is perfect yet, but it is greatly improved over the original (which had no attention). Again, the idea is to include a known white card in the first test picture (in the same lighting as the subject), then there are no more questions about WB. I use the $5 Porta Brace card from B&H.

That is what Lightroom and Raw is about - to correct white balance and exposure, to make the pictures more perfect.

See White Balance Correction, with or without Raw for more.

If you have a few minutes, see the video near top of Why shoot Raw? (about Raw and WB)

 

[Derrel]

Yes, I am saying that it's a good idea to look for shaded areas that are near the transition to areas that have a large area of open sky, or sunshine. Like for example, under a patio roof; that is a small area of shade, and then there is a much, much larger area that is lighted by open sky, or even sunshine. For example, "open shade" can be the area near where I used to live, where a small hill of about 400 acres rises up; in the late afternoon, the entire area is in open shade, so the proper exposure there has basically flat, low-contrast light. That's a different type of light than what I am suggesting. I am suggesting that areas physically near to brighter areas are a good place to position a person.

Look at the last shot, the patio's shaded area, and then look at the HUGE area behind, that has sunlight or skylighting. The BRIGHT AREAS on either side of her nose are causing definite highlights on the nose; this adds interest. Her knuckles have highlights, because although she is in a shady area there also is BRIGHT light close by. This is what I mean by transition zone. Patios and awnings, as well as overhead scrims and diffusion panels have long been used as good places to do outdoor portraits. The famous photo educator Monte Zucker left behind a legacy of instructional articles on this type of light-finding.

Check out some of his writings! Monte Zucker

 

[cynicaster]

again quite underexposed...and this is one where we were both completely shaded under a patio roof.

The photo of the girl under the patio roof with the bright yard in the background has pretty strong backlighting, which will always make the subject appear underexposed, unless you take measures to address the problem.

If your camera is set to one of the “general purpose” metering modes that samples from a large area of the sensor to decide the exposure, the bright background—which takes up a good portion of the frame—is going to trick the camera into underexposing the subject.

I think a lot of people would say to “spot meter” on the subject’s face, which will indeed brighten the face some, but IMO is not the right answer in this situation. Why? Because the camera will try to expose the face to middle grey, but the background will still be a few stops brighter than the subject’s face, which makes for a crappy/dull portrait.

IMO, the best solution here is to throw some light onto the subject’s face with a flash or reflector, and attempt to balance the background light with the subject’s face such that the background does not distract from the face.