Any Tips, Weird exposure

[Holydiver]

Hey so I'm a newb to photography I bought my girlfriend a d5000 for chirstmas so iv been playing around with it a bit.

I took my first tyipod pic today I tried to get the water with the running affect (I didnt set the 2 second timer stuffs a lil blurry from movement)

All my photos turned out completly white untill i edited the exposure in photoshop. I'm just wondering what im doing wrong I set f32 + I think about 4 seconds exposer.

Here is the photo can you tell me what things I need to work on any advice or comments are welcome. Thanks

http://www.flickr.com/photos/59696125@N06/5720702396/

For some reason I cant get the img tag to work so there is the link

 

[Josh66]

Did you happen to look at the meter? (That little scale in the viewfinder that looks something like this: -2 | | -1 | | 0 | | +1 | | +2 with a needle under it)

You generally want the needle to be somewhere around zero (depends, but generally that's where you want it). It sounds like yours was way off to the + side.


edit
You shoot Nikon, so I think the plus and minus will be on opposite sides of the scale, but hopefully you know what I mean...

 

[Holydiver]

IS that it? I was reading a instruction guide the other day and was playing with it a bit maybe that was my problem. When should it be adjusted ?? I don't know the purpose of it im still only 10 pages into "Nikon d5000 for dummys"


Edit: Also I just looked through my camera options theres a Metering setting that shows three pictures for options 1. Young girl 2.Flower close up 3.White table with bottles/lamp ? No clue what this is

 

[Josh66]

No - that's not what I'm taking about. When you are actually looking through the viewfinder, there should be some sort of display that shows what your current settings are, and there will be an exposure meter somewhere in there too.

Find the part of the manual that shows what all the crap you see in the viewfinder is. It should be near the front of the manual. One of them is the meter.

 

[Josh66]

^^^That.

See the thing in the center, on the bottom - that's what I'm talking about.

 

[Holydiver]

Ok I see that now. It was set to zero

 

[Overread39]

Check your manual for "exposure compensation" this lets you bias the meter reading to either over or under expose a photo from the read reading. In Nikons this mode is also present in the manual mode as well as the aperture and shutter priority modes.

 

[OrionsByte]

The exif on that photo says it was shot in manual using f/22, 1/2, and ISO 200.

It's overexposed, plain and simple. Did your meter indicate the exposure was good before you took the shot? Chances are it was just too bright for those settings.

I'll assume it's a bright, sunny day. There's a "rule" called the "Sunny 16" rule that says that on a bright, sunny day, you can shoot at f/16 with a shutter speed that is the reciprocal of the ISO. So if you're ISO is 200, "Sunny 16" says a good starting point would be f/16 1/200.

You shot at f/22 which is a stop below f/16, so that means you'd have to slow the shutter speed down to 1/100 to come up with the same exposure. Let's count the number of stops between that and what you used (1/2)...
1. 1/50
2. 1/25
3. 1/13
4. 1/6
5. 1/3

So assuming it was a bright, sunny day, you overexposed the shot by more than 5 stops. If it was cloudy, or close to sun-up or sun-down, then maybe you were closer than that, but not having been there, I can't know for sure.

To make this shot come out better next time, you'd have to find a way to compensate for those extra 5 stops. Closing down the aperture to f/32 would give you 1 stop, but for the other four you'd need an ND filter or just wait for a cloudy day.

 

[Holydiver]

Check your manual for "exposure compensation" this lets you bias the meter reading to either over or under expose a photo from the read reading. In Nikons this mode is also present in the manual mode as well as the aperture and shutter priority modes.

Thx I will take a look.

 

[Holydiver]

The exif on that photo says it was shot in manual using f/22, 1/2, and ISO 200.

It's overexposed, plain and simple. Did your meter indicate the exposure was good before you took the shot? Chances are it was just too bright for those settings.

I'll assume it's a bright, sunny day. There's a "rule" called the "Sunny 16" rule that says that on a bright, sunny day, you can shoot at f/16 with a shutter speed that is the reciprocal of the ISO. So if you're ISO is 200, "Sunny 16" says a good starting point would be f/16 1/200.

You shot at f/22 which is a stop below f/16, so that means you'd have to slow the shutter speed down to 1/100 to come up with the same exposure. Let's count the number of stops between that and what you used (1/2)...
1. 1/50
2. 1/25
3. 1/13
4. 1/6
5. 1/3

So assuming it was a bright, sunny day, you overexposed the shot by more than 5 stops. If it was cloudy, or close to sun-up or sun-down, then maybe you were closer than that, but not having been there, I can't know for sure.

To make this shot come out better next time, you'd have to find a way to compensate for those extra 5 stops. Closing down the aperture to f/32 would give you 1 stop, but for the other four you'd need an ND filter or just wait for a cloudy day.

Yeah It was a overcast day but extremely bright white sky. I took a few photos and i seemed to get it every time.

Awesome your post was ver yhelpfull Orion, I am learning alot already.

Thank you both for all your help.

Cheers