Two sawns pictures for C&C

[Flash Harry]

Ah! Swans! I was wondering what a sawn was.

Both pictures have blown out areas in the swans themselves. A faster shutter or higher f/# would have fixed that.

I think you missed the focus on the second picture. It's close, but just a bit off.

They are white, a slower shutter speed would have helped and a higher F number would only have increased DOF, they are underexposed and have been PP, to get detail in whites you should intentionally overexpose, as you do with snow shots etc. H

The swans are over exposed already. There is no detail in the whites. I think you are assuming that the OP metered the whites, in which case he would have to compensate the exposure because the camera will try to render the white as 18% gray. In that case your recommendation would be a good one.

My guess is that the OP metered the water which, in contrast, is much darker than the swans causing their detail to be washed out.

Either way, with the disparity in contrast, compensation needs to be made to get the shot looking better.

I am assuming the OP focussed and metered from the whites then recomposed the shot which would make sense as newbs tend to point at the subject they wish to shoot then lock focus/exposure by depressing the shutter half way, this results in underexposure and needs to be compensated for by overexposing as you also state. H

 

[LCARSx32]

They are white, a slower shutter speed would have helped and a higher F number would only have increased DOF, they are underexposed and have been PP, to get detail in whites you should intentionally overexpose, as you do with snow shots etc. H

The swans are over exposed already. There is no detail in the whites. I think you are assuming that the OP metered the whites, in which case he would have to compensate the exposure because the camera will try to render the white as 18% gray. In that case your recommendation would be a good one.

My guess is that the OP metered the water which, in contrast, is much darker than the swans causing their detail to be washed out.

Either way, with the disparity in contrast, compensation needs to be made to get the shot looking better.

I am assuming the OP focussed and metered from the whites then recomposed the shot which would make sense as newbs tend to point at the subject they wish to shoot then lock focus/exposure by depressing the shutter half way, this results in underexposure and needs to be compensated for by overexposing as you also state. H

I see. I assumed that while he focused on the swans, that the camera metered the whole image (the default, on my camera at least) so it over exposed the swans because *most* of the image is dark. I had the same problem when I was doing moonshots. I ended up ignoring the meter and shooting with a fast shutter speed to get proper exposure.

I need to do some more reading on metering. That's one area that my knowledge is severely lacking. Sorry H. My mistake.

 

[Flash Harry]

Lcars,
one that everyone makes as this stuff can be really confusing especially when trying to absorb it from a book, the only way we'll know really is if the OP posts an unedited version sooc, rather than the conversion, you could still be right, I'm only assuming this is what he/she did, but overexposing by 2-3 stops should render white properly without blowing and retain detail in the feathers etc. H

PS. I only jumped on you as you replied on another post with similar information and as its a newb section the whole bunch gets confused, yes you can bring up whites in PP but its usually at the expense of other elements in an image.