Terribly washed out shots on Manual mode -- please advise

[480sparky41 40]

My guess the EC is not set to 0.

The Auto shot isn't underexposed..... it just needs the white point brought down.

 

[batmura]

If you look at the scene with your eyes and it is dark, such as the sky in your shot, and you know that the meter is going to make that middle gray, then you will know that you are going to have to underexpose a good bit to get things back to where you want them.

So what I should have done is ignore the meter reading and set the time 2 stops earlier instead? What about changing the black in dark night shots to a blueish colour?

 

[batmura]

I took this one around 9pm in July and metered the sky and the bring the shadow back during post.

Dao, I love this shot. Can you give me the EXIF for this one? How many seconds was the exposure?

Since I metered off the sky, what do you think caused the overexposure? I too watched the same video by Peterson and tried to do the same thing except that the sun hadn't set yet.

480: Should my EC normally be at 0?

 

[480sparky41 40]

..........? What about changing the black in dark night shots to a blueish colour?

If you're asking about long exposures at night, the sky doesn't 'turn blue'. The night sky IS blue.

 

[480sparky41 40]

480: Should my EC normally be at 0?

Yes. I'm wondering if either you forgot to reset it to 0 at one point, or somehow you accidently changed it.

 

[batmura]

If you're asking about long exposures at night, the sky doesn't 'turn blue'. The night sky IS blue.

So? Does this mean long exposures at night work while before sunset they don't and will yield overexposed shots like mine?

 

[Dao]

17mm, f/5.6, iso100, 20 secs on tripod

Next time, maybe try spot meter the sky instead of matrix. Whether you need to + or - the exposure depends on the scene. Over exposure a little is better. My shot was not too good since I did not overexpose a little so when I bring the shadow back, it introduce more noise.

Again, EC to 0 or not depends on the scene. I guess you can bracket the shots and see how they turn out.

 

[480sparky41 40]

If you're asking about long exposures at night, the sky doesn't 'turn blue'. The night sky IS blue.

So? Does this mean long exposures at night work while before sunset they don't and will yield overexposed shots like mine?

We're talking about two different time periods.... Your shots are during 'daylight' hours. I was asking about shooting at night, under a dark, starry sky. A long enough exposure will render the sky blue, especially if the moon is out. Contrary to popular belief, the sky is not black at night. It's blue.

 

[KmH]

I did not change any meter modes as I don't even know how.

What did I do wrong?

What you have done wrong is you apparently haven't yet read the D3100 User's Manual so you know what basic exposure adjustments are available to you.
Read the manual with your camera at hand so you can make the changes the manual describes. In fact, you will need to read the manual several times, and always keep it handy for reference in your gear bag.

See pages 79-32, that's the user's manual section that covers the D3100's metering features. They explain the 3 metering modes you have available to choose from, exposure compensation, and exposure lock.

It's like you're trying to learn how to drive a car, without first finding out how to change from parking lights, to the regular headlights, to the high beams.

 

[jwbryson1]

I did not change any meter modes as I don't even know how.

What did I do wrong?

What you have done wrong is you apparently haven't yet read the D3100 User's Manual so you know what basic exposure adjustments are available to you.
Read the manual with your camera at hand so you can make the changes the manual describes. In fact, you will need to read the manual several times, and always keep it handy for reference in your gear bag.

See pages 79-32, that's the user's manual section that covers the D3100's metering features. They explain the 3 metering modes you have available to choose from, exposure compensation, and exposure lock.

It's like you're trying to learn how to drive a car, without first finding out how to change from parking lights, to the regular headlights, to the high beams.

.

 

[480sparky41 40]

.........It's like you're trying to learn how to drive a car, without first finding out how to change from parking lights, to the regular headlights, to the high beams.

Most of us started learning to drive..... during the day.

 

[amolitor]

Looks like the auto mode did ok. Which is really the weird thing, because everyone KNOWS that auto mode is for losers, and produces terrible pictures!

I don't know what, exactly, is going on here, but you have a basic problem in your process. Sure, you need to understand how the meter works and so on, and if you're going to shoot manual you should know what exposure compensation does in manual mode (hint: experiment and see what happens, photographs are cheap when you're shooting digital).

Most of all, just look at the picture on the back of the camera. Read the manual so you know how to make it show you a histogram, and read up on what the histogram means. When your metering is wrong, you should be able to pick up on that quickly, and make corrections. Then just delete the overexposed ones, and nobody will ever know about them!

 

[kundalini]

Please advise.

Never take only the one shot when trying something new, like Manual Shooting Mode.

With the tripod handy, run through the settings in a practical manner. So if you metered f/13 | 2.5 seconds | ISO 100 | 20 mm, run up and down the scale for shutter speed since you are doing a landscape scene. This gives you a reference point to pull from in the future for what time exposure does to your images. Then reset to your original settings and do the same thing with aperture.

Rinse and repeat.

 

[enzodm]

My guess the EC is not set to 0.

Batmura: in you EXIF there should be also info on exposure compensation. Look at it.

 

[pgriz]

It's a good habit to set your camera to a baseline. In my case, with a Canon T1i, it's ISO=100, mode=Manual, EC = 0, AF=on, IS=on, WB=cloudy, Metering mode = spot, etc. If I grab the camera to shoot something, I know what my camera is set to. When I deviate from the baseline for whatever reason, after I'm finished it's a goodhabit to reset the camera back to the baseline values.

When you meter "off" something, it is good to have the meter in "spot" mode, as usually you want to get a measurement of that spot only. Then based on what you metered, you can make a decision as to how to use that reading. As discussed by Sparky and other contributors to this thread, knowing that the meter always gives the reading AS IF the target was 18% grey, you can decide whether to under- or over-expose relative to the meter reading. Let's say that you did meter off the sky in spot mode, and had a reading of f/5.6, 1/30sec (assuming ISO 100). You decide that the sky was brighter than 18% grey. So you need to over-expose the image so that the sky will end up being brighter. Let's assume you will try f/5.6 at 1/15 sec. (1 stop overexposed relative to the meter). Now look at the histogram of the image and see where the distribution of values lies. If they are mostly to the right then the image is over-exposed. If they are mostly to the left, then the image is probably underexposed. And once you see the result, you can adjust from there.

But keep in mind what the other posters also told you - you have to be sensitive to the overall tonality of your subject. If you're shooting a black cat sitting on black velvet, you would expect the brightness values to be mostly on the left side of the histogram. if you're shooting a white dress on a snow-covered field, you can expect most of the values to be on the right side of the histogram even with the correct exposure.