Help with exposure

da007man · Sep 1, 2010

Hi, i have an Alpha from sony A100, and i read the instrucion manual (which was already very complicated

) and then i went to the manual setting on the camera because i will use it for skateboarding pictures. I set the shutter speed and aperture to the settings that i wanted, and now the exposure is WAY too low so the pictures are pratically black! PLEASE HELP ME because i have to use my camera 2moro!

Peanuts · Sep 1, 2010

... can you please put at least one picture up with settings and we can tell you what to do?

Chances have it you have to crank your ISO way up to start with.

da007man · Sep 1, 2010

Sure wait 10 minutes! :lol:

AdrianC · Sep 1, 2010

Well how did you decide what settings you should use? Did you use the camera's light meter?

You will need to increase the exposure time or ISO to lighten up your picture. A wider aperture will also work.

da007man · Sep 1, 2010

I choose the settings thanks to the manual. You cant see too well but the ISO is on AUTO, the shutter speed on 4000 and the aperture on F16. How do you add a picture? I don't have a URL for it...

Peanuts · Sep 1, 2010

Can you upload it to photobucket, flickr, facebook? Then you right click, say "grab photo URL" or something to that likes. then click on that little image with the camera and orange sunset with a palm in the foreground, past it in there and wa-la.

Sport photography can be challenging. If it is indoors the light is usually abysmal and you need a high shutter speed to freeze motion (assuming you want to do this). So, in short, don't be frustrated, it isn't the easiest thing to start with.

AdrianC · Sep 1, 2010

You need to upload it to a picture hosting service.

From your settings tho, I don't even need to see the pic. 1/4000 sec with F16 will be incredibly dark. You need to raise the exposure time and open up the aperture. Your camera has a light meter which will tell you how much you should change these settings to properly expose a picture.

da007man · Sep 1, 2010

i just uploaded it to my gallery, does that work??

da007man · Sep 1, 2010

I want to take outdoor pictures for street skateboarding. I will have the multiple frame option on so im sure not to miss the perfect moment!

da007man · Sep 1, 2010

AdrianC said:
You need to upload it to a picture hosting service.

From your settings tho, I don't even need to see the pic. 1/4000 sec with F16 will be incredibly dark. You need to raise the exposure time and open up the aperture. Your camera has a light meter which will tell you how much you should change these settings to properly expose a picture.

But how do I raise the exposure time? And opening the aperture means the number should increase or decrease?

Peanuts · Sep 1, 2010

Well.. that kind of helped.

The actual picture may have been more but I am pretty sure with those settings it will just be all black. So.. explain and we can probalby give you a base exposure to go off of. So, is this outdoors and waht time of day?

Just ballparking you will want your settings to be around 1/200 f/8 at ISO 400 if outdoors.

Indoors I would start around 1/125, f/4 ISO 800-1600 depending on lighting.

AdrianC · Sep 1, 2010

Well right now you have your exposure at 1/4000 sec. So change it to like 1/100sec. The F number should decrease. Maybe set that to F 5.6.

I'm not familiar with your particular camera, so I can't tell you exactly which buttons to push. Check your camera's manual for that.

The numbers I gave you are fairly random. You can try taking a couple of pics and see what happens. You should, however use your camera's light meter. It will basically tell you what settings to use.

da007man · Sep 1, 2010

Peanuts said:
Well.. that kind of helped. The actual picture may have been more but I am pretty sure with those settings it will just be all black. So.. explain and we can probalby give you a base exposure to go off of. So, is this outdoors and waht time of day?

Just ballparking you will want your settings to be around 1/200 f/8 at ISO 400 if outdoors.

Indoors I would start around 1/125, f/4 ISO 800-1600 depending on lighting.

This will be outdoors and all day long. The kind of pictures will be tricks, so I need to be able to capture a fraction of a second, so do you think 1/200 is enough? And you are right the pictures are all black, even the sun looks like a dying fluorescent bracelet!

Peanuts · Sep 1, 2010

Which lens do you have? In any case use the smallest number it allows for your F-stop (so... f/3.5 as opposed to f/16).
I am not overly experienced with photographing skateboarding but... 1/500 might be a better bet. Just check your LCD to see if it is freezing the motion. Then adjust your ISO where ever it needs to be for the image to be properly exposed (ie. look at your histogram (look this up in the manual) and try to get it so that most of the information is somewhere between the middle and right hand side).

It is better to have grainy pictures from high ISO then blurry photos. Since it is outdoors you might not have to use a high ISO though

da007man · Sep 1, 2010

Peanuts said:
Which lens do you have? In any case use the smallest number it allows for your F-stop (so... f/3.5 as opposed to f/16).
I am not overly experienced with photographing skateboarding but... 1/500 might be a better bet. Just check your LCD to see if it is freezing the motion. Then adjust your ISO where ever it needs to be for the image to be properly exposed (ie. look at your histogram (look this up in the manual) and try to get it so that most of the information is somewhere between the middle and right hand side).

It is better to have grainy pictures from high ISO then blurry photos. Since it is outdoors you might not have to use a high ISO though

its a 3.5-6.3/18-200 sony lens