How could I have made these photos better?

Pentax DA 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 AF

03/15/2010 03:31:21 PM · #1

I had gone to Sea World on Saturday and attempted to take some pictures of both the Dolphin and Orca shows. My problem is that where I was seated (actually both stadiums were this way) it was a shady area. You can see from the photos I was shooting from shade to sun or shade to shade. I was using my 75-300mm Canon lens pretty much for all shots taken. To be specific it is the Canon Zoom Lens EF 75-300mm.

Before the shows I messed around with the F-Stop and shutter speed. Neither one seemed to help with getting the picture to be a little more bright in those shady shots. I am still very new at this, so I am always willing to learn.

This is a shade to sun shot:

Shade to shade:

More shade to shade:

I'm not sure what I could have done to make these look any better in regards to the condition I was shooting in. The shutter speed needed to be fast since I am stopping motion.

Any tips as to what I could have done?

vxpra

Pentax K100D

03/15/2010 03:41:43 PM · #2

Looks like for the shady shots you needed about two more stops (roughly). Easiest way to do it would have been to give yourself +2 stops in exposure compensation and then up your ISO to still give you the higher shutter speeds.

MinsoPhoto

Canon EOS-7D

Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM

03/15/2010 03:48:19 PM · #3

Anyway you can post your settings used for those shots? ISO, Aperture, Shutter Speed.

Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark III

03/15/2010 03:56:03 PM · #4

Sure can.

1st picture F-stop f/25, exposure 1/250 sec., and ISO 800

2nd picture F-stop f/14, exposure 1/250 sec., and ISO 800

3rd picture F-stop f/14, exposure 1/250 sec., and ISO 800

4th picture F-stop f/20, exposure 1/250 sec., and ISO 1600

5th picture F-stop f/22, exposure 1/200 sec., and ISO 1600

There are more pictures, but what I have posted are representative of all the shots that I took.

Yo_Spiff

Olympus 12-100mm f/4.0 M.Zuiko ED IS PRO

03/15/2010 03:57:57 PM · #5

Such conditions are always tough. I've learned a post processing trick that can help to bring out some of the details from the highlights and dark shadows if there is some detail there and they are not totally clipped:

-Duplicate layer
-Desaturate upper layer
-Negative image upper layer
-modest gaussian blur of upper layer
-Overlay and adjust opacity to preference (I find an upper layer opacity between 20% and 50% works for most images.)
-Flatten

Here's what it did using it on your images. Not a complete solution by any means but it does help to bring in some detail and it's a technique I regularly use with many shots.

03/15/2010 04:16:44 PM · #6

Use a different metering mode on the camera. Does your camera have a spot meter? Why use 1600ISO and F22?

Use AV mode and exposure compensation. while viewing your histogram and adjusting accordingly. You could also have
went to full manual and adjusted your shots as you went. Shutter priority and no EC dialed in the cameras evaluative metering
mode is full by the very bright areas and you are trying to expose for the shadows in your photos.

Matt

03/15/2010 04:20:19 PM · #7

Originally posted by MattO:

As I said, I am still very new at this and am learning as I go. I used 1600 ISO because of the lighting conditions. Not sure why I used F22, it just seemed to be better when I was taking test pictures before the show.

EL-ROI

03/15/2010 04:23:15 PM · #8

Originally posted by MattO:

Can you repeat this sentence in a different way please? I don't really understand what you have written here but I am sure there is something I could learn from this if you would restate the sentence. Thanks.

03/15/2010 04:31:34 PM · #9

Originally posted by EL-ROI:

Originally posted by MattO:
Use a different metering mode on the camera. Does your camera have a spot meter? Why use 1600ISO and F22?

Use AV mode and exposure compensation. while viewing your histogram and adjusting accordingly. You could also have
went to full manual and adjusted your shots as you went. Shutter priority and no EC dialed in the cameras evaluative metering
mode is full by the very bright areas and you are trying to expose for the shadows in your photos.

Matt

Can you repeat this sentence in a different way please? I don't really understand what you have written here but I am sure there is something I could learn from this if you would restate the sentence. Thanks.

Shutter priority essentially locks the shutter speed and the camera then uses the metering type that you have selected to give proper exposure, adjusting your F stop(Aperture) to get what it believes is correct exposure based on the highlights(bright stuff) and shadows(dark stuff)... you can tell your camera to expose up or down off what it thinks is correct by dialing in Exposure compensation(EC) in other words you could tell it, the bright stuff in the photo is stuff I don't care about and it's telling you to underexpose the stuff I really care about, the stuff in the shadows, so adjust what you think is right by Xstops(the amount that you tell it too) and it does.

Hopefully that makes sense, if it doesn't perhaps it will be easier to understand in the manual that came with your camera.

Matt

Message edited by author 2010-03-15 20:32:26.

03/15/2010 04:34:07 PM · #10

Originally posted by LoneGreyWolf20:

Originally posted by MattO:
Use a different metering mode on the camera. Does your camera have a spot meter? Why use 1600ISO and F22?

Use AV mode and exposure compensation. while viewing your histogram and adjusting accordingly. You could also have
went to full manual and adjusted your shots as you went. Shutter priority and no EC dialed in the cameras evaluative metering
mode is full by the very bright areas and you are trying to expose for the shadows in your photos.

Matt

As I said, I am still very new at this and am learning as I go. I used 1600 ISO because of the lighting conditions. Not sure why I used F22, it just seemed to be better when I was taking test pictures before the show.

OK let me start over, do you understand the relationship between F stop, shutter speed and ISO in relation to exposure? If not I will try to help you understand and perhaps what I am saying will help you understand what you could have done to make your photos better.

Matt

Pentax DA 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 AF

03/15/2010 04:40:00 PM · #11

I probably don't understand as much as I should, no. I took a digital photography class in college this past fall, but we didn't really get in depth with the relationship between all three.

I know we did some photos messing around with f-stop for DoF. We used shutter speed for doing stop, pan and blur shots and ISO was for daytime and night time photography. I'm not really sure what each does in relation to each other or how they each effect each other.

vxpra

Pentax K100D

03/15/2010 05:04:36 PM · #12

I know there are people around here that can explain this better than I, but simply put:

F-Stop (aperture) is the amount of light coming through the lens (larger the number the less light coming through)

Shutter speed is the amount of time the sensor is exposed to the light coming through the lens.

ISO is how sensitive the sensor is to light (higher the number the more sensitive)

All three combine to make the proper exposure.

In shutter priority mode, you set your desired shutter speed and the camera picks the aperture to create the proper exposure (taking into account your ISO setting).

In aperture priority mode, you set the F-Stop the camera picks the shutter speed.

In auto- the camera does everything based on the in camera light meter. (Often cameras have multiple types of light metering that you can select- Spot Metering- looks at a very small percentage of the image to calculate the exposure, Centre-weighted- looks at a larger overall percentage of the image area than spot, but still a relativly small percentage, evaluative (I think thats the right Canon term) looks at the majority of the frame to determine the proper exposure).

Looking at your photos above I would guess your camera was set to evaluative metering. The reason I say this is because of the appearance of the images with the shady foreground and bright backgrounds. Your camera basically made the choice to balance the exposure between the two. In this situation spot metering probably would've resulted in a better exposure on the foreground subjects.

I have to admit, I wouldn't have messed with my meter settings. I probably would've gone with an ISO 400, set to aperture priority and f/8 (maybe f/11) and a two stop over exposure compensation. The compensation simply tells the camera that once its figured out the exposure I want it to over expose the image for the equivilent of two stops- in aperture priority this would mean the camera would adjust the shutter speed, resulting in a slightly longer shutter speed.

Why you ask would I have gone with f/8. Simple most of the lenses in my bag perform at their peak sharpness wise at f/8 (I'll let bear_music or one of the engineers on here explain that one).

Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro

03/15/2010 05:16:46 PM · #13

Originally posted by LoneGreyWolf20:

This is a simple interactive feature that shows the effect of Shutter speed and Aperture on your photos. Play with it a bit and see if it helps you understand a bit. This is not mine btw just one I found online. There are many.

Linkie

Matt

MinsoPhoto

Canon EOS-7D

Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM

03/15/2010 05:29:08 PM · #14

Originally posted by LoneGreyWolf20:

Is this surprising to anyone else? Nothing against the OP I am speaking of a college photography course that doesn't explain the relationship of those 3? I thought that was pretty much a standard beginning to photography.

In my opinion I would look up and learn the relationship between Shutter Speed, Aperture and ISO and that will go a good ways in helping your exposures.

Marty

Canon EOS-400D Rebel XTi

03/15/2010 05:31:51 PM · #15

In the future you may want to consider saving images in RAW format. It gives you more wiggle room for exposure corrections after the fact.