Over exposed, under exposed, & just right

Grimgard · May 14, 2010

Derrel said:
For sports shooting in daylight with a "modern" d-slr, you need to start with an ISO value of around 500,640,or 800 when using consumer lenses like the 55-200 or 70-300. Your widest aperture at the longer zoom settings is only a moderate f/5.6....so using ISO 100 will hamper your ability to freeze really fast motion. In the late afternoon, if the sun is low in the sky, or is blocked by clouds, or goes down behind distant hillsides, the light level is simply going to be way too low to use anything but ISO settings in the 800,1000,1250,or 1600 range.

In daylight, under a lot of conditions, using high ISO values will not ruin your photos...in bright,even lighting, with a good exposure, high ISO values will not lead to excessive noise. Daylight and high ISO settings are vastly different than low-light or night-time or reduced-spectrum, artificial light situations where you need to use high ISO settings, and the dark areas of the scene noise-up or develop banding to a terrible extent. So, don't be afraid to jack up the ISO to really help your picture taking of your daughter's softball games.

Sir you are a saviour ! Thank you for putting it in simpler terms for me to understand. I had a feeling it was my ISO being so low that is was interfearing with my exposure. I read somewhere that it is optimal to have as low as an ISO as you can, and as you put it my lense is limited by f5.6
Thank you and much appreciated!

Dallmeyer said:
i'll pm you some good info and links. :thumbup:

Thank you!

burstintoflame81 · May 14, 2010

Grimgard said:
Thanks I think keeping my ISO at 100 was the reason the pictures were so under exposed.

I did try M mode this morning and noticed the light meter working and telling me to either go up or down with the TV/AV values but in other modes the meter was always centered. Not sure why it would not tell me if its to dark/bright like in Manual mode.

I am learning fast that taking pictues with a SLR camera is a ballancing act between TV,AV,ISO

I understand the basics of the camera TV (time value) is the time lenghth the shutter stays open & is great for creative shots with blur in them (waterfalls) and AV (apature value) is the size of the hole and is good for taking pictures with the back ground out of focus or everything in focus. ISO the lower the better but in low light situations you want a higher ISO but not so high you get noise.

I am just not sure on the rest of it lol and some of the terminology. When I said light meter I ment the display that shows you a graph and how much light was or was not in the picture...think it's called histrogram?

My camera came with a DVD that explains the basics but that is about it. I did read the manual but some of it was over my head and there is a lot to absorb.

I will get the books you guys advised getting but there is a 3rd addition coming out in 08/10 so I'll wait for that.

Once again thank you for your help and advice it is appreciated.
:albino::smileys::albino:

If you are shooting in Av or Tv, it is showing that it is at the right exposure on your metering bar, because that is what those settings do. You choose the shutter speed and the camera adjusts the apeture to get proper exposure or vice versa for Av. So if the shot is too dark, either you had the wrong metering type chosen ( this is how the camera figures out how to make those adjustments and what a proper exposure should be ) or given that your ISO was set at 100. If you were in shutter priority mode and set it to 1/1250 and given that you were zoomed to 250mm the physical Apeture was probably 5.6. Maybe at that time the meter WASN't telling you it was correct because at the point you weren't even aware of said meter. Alot of times if its physically impossible, the camera will take you as close as it can get you ( in that case 5.6 when maybe you needed 4.0 for proper exposure ) . In that case you would have had to bump up the ISO.

Also, I will add, stick to the Av or Tv modes. If you don't even have these basics understood, stay away from Manual mode. But DO pay attention to that metering bar in the viewfinder. If one of the numbers blinks it usually means proper exposure is out of reach.