Exposure Help

Seajay

Seajay

Suspended / Banned
Messages
1,493
Name
Cathy
Edit My Images
Yes
Gosh i feel like the daily pest right now so i do apologise but I am trying each day to get something right.

Today I was at my daughters home and her friends kids were there just watching the TV so i decided to try a few shots.

Now i am not going to bombard you again with photos but I really struggled to get any clear photos at all today they were all too dark.I started out on AV changing the aperture and ISO as required but nothing good at all, them moved to the P setting not much better and then TV and so on .Now the light was poor and her xmas tree had lots of blue lights.I was so tempted to use auto and took a couple, well of course the flash went off and they looked nice and clear but I hated the look of the flash version very harsh!

Do i need to purchase a flash gun or do i need to study my camera settings a bit more.

I feel i may have moved something in the settings that I have not put back.Also what metering is the best for normal daily shots.

The couple that were anything near ok were very grainy but that will be because I used a high ISO but not one I could send to the parents.Shock Horror!



Another day of not great photos but then there is tomorrow..LOL!
 
Did you take a meter reading? This is a good way to tell if a shot is even possible. Very roughly, you will need to be able to use a shutter speed of 1/30th (preferable faster) to get a decent shot with people in it (and even at that speed even slight movement will show, but you can get a shot at that with luck and patience). If you can get them to sit very still, you may get something usable at a slower speed, but...

Your 550 should give reasonable results up to 3200 ISO, and higher than that if you use noise reduction software. So put the camera into M (manual), set 1/30th, 3200 ISO, and your widest aperture, and see if the meter needle is anywhere near the middle. If it's off to the left, you will need more light - flash, daylight, the room lights, possibly even the reflection from the television could give you a shot. You could also push the ISO up to its maximum; a grainy shot is better than no shot at all in many cases. If you shoot in RAW you can get away with a shot underexposed by a stop or even more depending on how fussy you are about the result.
 
Seajay said:
Gosh i feel like the daily pest right now so i do apologise but I am trying each day to get something right.

Today I was at my daughters home and her friends kids were there just watching the TV so i decided to try a few shots.

Now i am not going to bombard you again with photos but I really struggled to get any clear photos at all today they were all too dark.I started out on AV changing the aperture and ISO as required but nothing good at all, them moved to the P setting not much better and then TV and so on .Now the light was poor and her xmas tree had lots of blue lights.I was so tempted to use auto and took a couple, well of course the flash went off and they looked nice and clear but I hated the look of the flash version very harsh!

Do i need to purchase a flash gun or do i need to study my camera settings a bit more.

I feel i may have moved something in the settings that I have not put back.Also what metering is the best for normal daily shots.

The couple that were anything near ok were very grainy but that will be because I used a high ISO but not one I could send to the parents.Shock Horror!



Another day of not great photos but then there is tomorrow..LOL!
Click to expand...

Good photography needs good light, and good quality light (ie attractive light). If the flash popped up, that's a sure sign the light level is low. It almost always is indoors, unless you have bright sun streaming though the windows. Our eyes can see well in a lot of conditions where the camera struggles.

The pop-up flash can provide enough light, but it's generally not attractive. So buy a flash gun by all means, but you must learn how to use it - eg, bouncing the light off the ceiling or walls to soften it, balancing with the ambient light etc.

You just have to learn and practise, then learn and practise some more.
 
Jon and Richard thank you.

Jon I wish I had know about the meter today I did not even look at it at all.

Only because it is something i have not used before.I followed your settings and used a teddy as my model moving it from bright house light to poor house light and can now follow what the meter does.It will take me a while to get used it but i think i like manual.A lot of the shots today were placing the shutter speed very low down so when i was clicking it was taking too long to snap the picture.Can i ask when it is not suitable to hold your camera what shutter speed requires the tripod?
 
Oh and should I have the camera set on evaluative metering or spot etc I have it on evaluative right now.
 
Shooting in dim rooms present quite a few difficulties, as you have discovered. Using flash kills the ambience so it's nice if you can get by without. Depending on how dim the room actually is, this leads to wide apertures, which means a narrow depth of field making focussing tricky to get spot on, high ISO which leads to noise and slow shutter speeds, which results in movement blur. In really tricky situations, a combination of all the above may be required to get anything that closely resembles a correctly exposed image.

Personally I would set the aperture to it's widest, the shutter speed to the minimum I felt I could get away with to avoid motion blur, leaving the ISO setting to be increased as far as it needs to go to get the right exposure. Those settings may result in slightly noisy photographs, depending on just how high the ISO has got to go, and your particular camera, and there may be a few with missed focus due to the small depth of field but short of adding extra light to the scene, it's about as good as you can do.

ETA: using a tripod will eliminate motion blur as a result of the camera moving, but will not prevent it from movement of your subjects.
 
Last edited:
Derek thank you I will remember your advice.Using the meter reading should have helped but I had never used it before.I could not understand why the lens was zooming in and out at times and not focusing then when it did Argh!!

Below is one I salvaged and ran through Photoshop and reduced with the noise filter and also sharpened a little but the hand is out of focus.



Deep in Tought by cooriedoon, on Flickr
 
Seajay said:
Derek thank you I will remember your advice.Using the meter reading should have helped but I had never used it before.I could not understand why the lens was zooming in and out at times and not focusing then when it did Argh!!

Below is one I salvaged and ran through Photoshop and reduced with the noise filter and also sharpened a little but the hand is out of focus.



Deep in Tought by cooriedoon, on Flickr
Click to expand...
that hands not OoF it's moving.
overall its good and i wouldnt mind the hand movement, it is slightly oversharpened though.
 
if your lens is hunting in and out trying to focus , try putting lens into manual focus and i think you have a small green light when you look through the view finder that will come on when your focus is spot on check camera inst book . that's what i do with my nikon if your flash makes the pic to harsh try using a diffuser on the flash or dial in some flash compensation.
hope this helps a little
 
With small apertures and very small depth of field, it's probably inevitable that some part of your subject will be out of focus. When shooting like this it's important that the eyes are in focus, which you have managed to achieve in the shot above.
 
Morning everyone just a quick note of thanks to all of you.
I hope you know that the time you take to help is truly appreciated . I am learning from each of you and a week or so ago I would still be clicking away in auto.

Many thanks and if you tire of my questions please let me know I don't want to be a pest

Cathy :)
 
If the camera is struggling to focus in low light (hunting), try using the centre focus point.
 
Thank you Mat I will remember that.

Today I used all my new info and was shocked that on manual only not great light and with all your advice I got some really good pictures not great yet but hey!! Rome wasn't built etc.

I am sure I am getting better thanks to all of you.


Smiler by cooriedoon, on Flickr
 
Seajay said:
Thank you Mat I will remember that.

Today I used all my new info and was shocked that on manual only not great light and with all your advice I got some really good pictures not great yet but hey!! Rome wasn't built etc.

I am sure I am getting better thanks to all of you.


Smiler by cooriedoon, on Flickr
Click to expand...

Yay! :clap:

And keep asking questions (applies to everyone reading this, of course)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top