Need some much needed advice

[hamlet]

I need some advice on how to improve my pictures, please point out all flaws and how i can improve upon it.


I used the d3200 18-55vr on M mode with a circular polarizer filter.

I put the camera on Matrix metering and i used the face to get the exposure meter balanced
Original:

I tried to even things out in lightroom, but the colours look all weird. I don't like what i did to it, but i also don't know why i don't like it.
Edited:

Any advice or critique is welcome.

 

[pgriz]

The first thing is to decide what part of the overall image you actually care about. In this case, it appears to be the man's face. Since his face is a very small part of the overall image as you've framed it, you need a lightmeter reading off his face, which can be done using spotmeter mode. Or, if you had a hand-held incident light meter, you'd hold it up to his face to determine how much light is falling on his face. The matrix metering looks at the whole image, and adjusts the exposure for a balance of the various bits and pieces in the image. The sky is a large part of the image, and it is bright, so the camera (not knowing what YOU are interested in) is trying to adjust the exposure to made the overall image equivalent to medium grey. Therefore, his face is underexposed.

Same thinking needs to be applied to the white balance. If the light source on the subject is different from the rest of the image (he appears to be lit primarily by the sky above, which is usually quite blue), you either dial in the nearest WB setting (shade), or put a white object into the picture which you can then reference as a "white" object in LR or whatever software you're using. That will then correct the overall light to give the "white" object a neutral tint.

 

[hamlet]

What if i used spot metering? Would that help? I guess it would. Hmm - i will look into purchasing one of those light meter.

 

[hamlet]

Do the colours look weird to you? It looks artificial.

 

[kathyt]

I would have spot metered in this situation. You probably needed some type of fill light as well.

 

[pgriz]

The main value of a hand-held meter is that it measure the amount of light falling on a scene (or object), independent of the reflectance or tone of the object. So let us assume we have a large dark object (say a dog) surrounded by bright objects (say, sand on a beach). You could take an incident light meter reading of the scene and get something like 1/100 at f/16 at ISO 100 (this happens to be the sunny-16 exposure rule). If you took a spot-meter reading off the dog, chances are the meter would require an exposure of maybe 1/10 sec because it is trying to get the black of the dog to look medium grey. If you took a spot-meter reading of the white sand, the chances are you've have a reading requiring 1/500 sec at f/16, because the meter again will be trying to adjust the exposure so that the result is medium grey. Of course, neither of the two exposures will be correct, because the dog "should" look black, and the sand "should" look white. If you're using only the reflected light meter (which all camera meters are), you would need to adjust the exposure compensation to "tell" the camera that the reading off the dog should be 3 stops darker than what it is trying to do. If you were using the spotmeter reading off the sand, you want to keep the sand white (not gray), and you will need to dial in an exposure compensation of about +2 to have the sand show up as white. Using an incident light meter, you don't have to fool around with exposure compensation, because it doesn't care about the actual reflectance of the objects in the scene.

However, these are just tools to allow you do get a "proper" image. Don't forget as well, that the camera has a limited dynamic range. My own camera (Canon T1i) has an apparent range of -4 and +3 (it takes 4 stops to change a medium grey object to solid black, and 3 stops to change it to solid white), and whatever detail I want to see in the image must fit into that range (that is, without using additional tools like HDR, tone-mapping, blending, etc.). So in my case I take a spot-meter reading off a highlight where I want detail, and assuming it is a white object, I'll increase the exposure by 2 stops to give me the "correct" exposure. If the important stuff is in the shadows, then I take a reading off the shadow detail and reduce the exposure by 3 stops. If the dynamic range of the scene exceeds 7 stops, then I have to use blending or HDR techniques to squish the dynamic range into one the image can show.

There are times when there are different light sources and they interact. You could have something in direct sunlight, with a portion reflected off a nearby object, and a portion partly in shade and lit only by the overhead sky. So there are at least three light sources that I need to take into account when figuring out the exposure. The simplest way is just to use the incident light meter to read the light at each relevant point, and then make a decision on how to bias the exposure setting. If I can't get there with an incident light meter, then I would take spot-meter readings, and adjust for the tonality/reflectance of the objects. Once I have an appropriate exposure, I'll take a test shot and check the histogram to see where the clipping/blocking appears and how the overall scene is distributed. From there, I'd adjust. Once I've dialed in my settings, I generally don't look at the histogram again unless the light changes.

 

[pgriz]

Do the colours look weird to you? It looks artificial.

The colours can look weird if you don't have some kind of calibrated standard to guide you. The most common way is to use an exposure target (either grey card or a colour card) in the image, so during post processing you can tell the software what "neutral" or "red" or "white" actually looks like in the image. Then, it can calculate the corresponding colour shift offsets to make your reference objects the correct colours. Of course, it is important that the monitor on which you're doing this is calibrated as well.

 

[KmH]

You used Matrix metering which averages the light in the entire scene. With Matrix metering you can't do this "i used the face to get the exposure meter balanced"
You can only do "i used the face to get the exposure meter balanced" when you use Spot metering mode.
The bright sky behind him and him being in hard shadow caused the maximum amount of averaging to be done leaving him badly underexposed.
So part of the problem is the direction of the light in the scene relative to the time of day.

If you had used Center weighted metering, again the entire scene is averaged, but the center 70% or so of the frame is given more 'weight'.
Center-weighted metering is often used for portrait type photos.
When your subject is tall and narrow, turn the camera 90° so the image frame is also tall and narrow (vertical or portrait camera orientation)
The framing you used is the horizontal or landscape camera orientation.

You framed his face so it was in the exact middle of the frame, which weakens a photo by eliminating tension and drama.

With bright sky behind him, the only way you could have balanced the exposure of him with the background would be by using flash.

The top of the fence effectively splits the middle of the image frame, again reducing tension and drama adding to the lack of any compelling point of interest in the photo.

He looks like he did not want his photo taken (crossed arms/facial expression).
He looks like a father that is reluctantly humoring a child that has been pestering him to pose for a photo.

 

[The_Traveler]

You included a great deal of empty but bright sky and so the lightmeter attempted to average everything to middle grey, with the result that the man and his surroundings are deeply unexposed.

The colors look funny because the shadows are getting pumped up as you increase the exposure and the various colors are reacting differently.

Expose for what is important.

Stop buying crap and perseverating about 'the best ways' and just learn to take a basic, decently exposed picture.

 

[hamlet]

You used Matrix metering which averages the light in the entire scene. With Matrix metering you can't do this "i used the face to get the exposure meter balanced"
You can only do "i used the face to get the exposure meter balanced" when you use Spot metering mode.
The bright sky behind him and him being in hard shadow caused the maximum amount of averaging to be done leaving him badly underexposed.
So part of the problem is the direction of the light in the scene relative to the time of day.

If you had used Center weighted metering, again the entire scene is averaged, but the center 70% or so of the frame is given more 'weight'.
Center-weighted metering is often used for portrait type photos.
When your subject is tall and narrow, turn the camera 90° so the image frame is also tall and narrow (vertical or portrait camera orientation)
The framing you used is the horizontal or landscape camera orientation.

You framed his face so it was in the exact middle of the frame, which weakens a photo by eliminating tension and drama.

With bright sky behind him, the only way you could have balanced the exposure of him with the background would be by using flash.

The top of the fence effectively splits the middle of the image frame, again reducing tension and drama adding to the lack of any compelling point of interest in the photo.

He looks like he did not want his photo taken (crossed arms/facial expression).
He looks like a father that is reluctantly humoring a child that has been pestering him to pose for a photo.

Almost right. My father actually wanted his photo taken inside, but i asked him to do it outside. How very observant of you. I just don't have the basic equipment yet to get proper lighting inside yet. I would have loved to do it in a room with artificial light where i can tell the light what to do.

 

[hamlet]

You included a great deal of empty but bright sky and so the lightmeter attempted to average everything to middle grey, with the result that the man and his surroundings are deeply unexposed.

The colors look funny because the shadows are getting pumped up as you increase the exposure and the various colors are reacting differently.

Expose for what is important.

Stop buying crap and perseverating about 'the best ways' and just learn to take a basic, decently exposed picture.

You sure know a lot, that is why my colours look so weird to me.


One thing i didn't actually tell anyone on here and forgot to mention is: this was supposed to be a picture of just him. So only he would be cropped out of the picture, the background was never intended to be part of the final product. I just included it so i could learn why my colours look so weird.

 

[KmH]

Crop in the camera viewfinder, not post process.
If Your Pictures Aren't Good Enough, You're Not Close Enough | Black Star Rising

Post process cropping thows pixels away.
Fewer pixels means less resolution.
Less resolution means lower quality prints.

 

[hamlet]

That makes sense. Thanks.

 

[hamlet]

Crop in the camera viewfinder, not post process.
If Your Pictures Aren't Good Enough, You're Not Close Enough | Black Star Rising

Post process cropping thows pixels away.
Fewer pixels means less resolution.
Less resolution means lower quality prints.

Just a quick question. Even when i crop a small part of my picture, i still have to resize it because my camera produces images in 24 megapixel. So does it really matter in the end when i still have to resize my picture to a smaller format?

 

[pgriz]

For the web, probably not. but when you go to print, the pixels come in handy.