What "mode" do you use for Bird photogrphy?

Personally I use the manual settings, I can't say that I've ever used the sports mode for any kind of photography. I tend to like to set my camera so that there is a good DOF so that the main focus is on the bird.
 
Ignore using all the preset modes on the camera, either use Shutter Priority or Aperture Priority.

I personally use Aperture priority to ensure the camera chooses the fastest shutter speed possible, they do move pretty fast.
 
Well my history of bird shots has not been great, but I use Tv to get the shutter speed I want, or sometimes I will use manual depending on the light conditions at the time. I have only seen a kingfisher though as it was flying through and I did not have time to even raise the camera!
 
In order of preference - manual, Av, Tv.

If the lighting is constant (clear blue skies or evenly overcast) then manual is the obvious choice. Imagine that kingfisher flashing past, firstly with a backdrop of water reflecting a bright sky, then some golden bullrushes, then some green bushes, then some dark, shadowy trees. Which autoexposure mode would get that lot right without a bunch of faffing around with EC? Probably none of them. If you had manual exposure preset already for the ambient (incident light) conditions you could have fired off a sequence of four perfectly exposed shots. With autoexposure you might have been lucky to get one correct exposure out of four.

Take this shot, for example. It was an overcast day and birds were flying past trees and the gaps between them. Metering for autoexposure would have been a nightmare, unless I settled for only shooting birds against the sky or birds against the trees. With manual exposure already set for the ambient light I was able to take shots whenever I fancied, regardless of backdrop, and still the bird was exposed correctly. This was shot raw and has had no edits, just straight resize and convert to JPEG in Lightroom

20080803_141208_6391_LR.jpg


If the light is changing a lot (sun darting in and out behind clouds), but the background is constant, then I will likely choose an autoexposure mode rather than manual.
 
I've been using Av for my bird shots. Although as Tim has said that can cause odd effects. Tim, if I may ask, in your example with the water, rushes etc... where would you meter on to get the correct exposures ?
 
i change between what i like doing at the time.
ive started using tv if i dont have a lightmeter handy although i seen switching back to manual alot if i dont like it.
 
jgs001 said:
I've been using Av for my bird shots. Although as Tim has said that can cause odd effects. Tim, if I may ask, in your example with the water, rushes etc... where would you meter on to get the correct exposures ?
Click to expand...

A few options spring to mind....

1. If you are standing in the same lighting as your subject you could (spot) meter off the palm of your hand and set the exposure to +1.3 EV on the camera meter. This is akin to using a standard grey card for setting exposure but, as the palm is paler than the grey card, you need to make an allowance for that. My palm is +1.3 brighter than a grey card. Yours may be a little different so you need to perform a test to see what your correction factor should be. See the next section for one way to test.

2. If you are shooting in bright, direct sunshine, with clear blue skies then there is a useful little guideline for exposure called the "Sunny 16 Rule". The rule states that in bright sunshine and with an aperture of f/16 your shutter speed will be the reciprocal of your ISO. e.g. if you are shooting at 100 ISO your shutter speed will be 1/100; if you are shooting at 800 ISO your shutter speed will be 1/800 etc.. Obviously you can open up your aperture to something other than f/16 and then you will need to adjust the other ratios to maintain a correct exposure. e.g. you might prefer to shoot at f/5.6, which is 3 stops faster than f/16. Thus you could keep your ISO at 100 but achieve a shutter speed of 1/800 for a correct exposure. That's a pretty sweet combination for bird photography. You might even choose to bump up the ISO a smidge to 200 and that would then give you a shutter speed of 1/1600 - even better :)

So, back to the palm exposure test/check.... Assuming bright, sunny conditions, set the exposure in your camera to anything that equates to a sunny 16 exposure - e.g. f/16, 100 ISO, 1/100. Now hold your palm up, facing the sun, and take a meter reading from your palm with the camera. What does the meter say - +1.0? +1.3? +1.7? I'm pretty sure it will be one of those values. Whichever it is, that is your correction factor when metering off your palm. Now you are set to meter from your palm in any light conditions, not just bright sunshine. All you have to do is set an exposure that puts your palm at +1.x on the meter. Incidentally, you use your palm because it does not tan and thus remains a fairly constant reference all year round.

3. If you shoot raw, as I do, a favourite technique to maximise IQ is to Expose To The Right. This means that as far as your histogram is concerned you want an exposure that pushes the histogram as far to the right as possible without blowing/clipping any important highlight detail. With the scene as described for the kingfisher you might consider that you want to retain detail in the highly reflective water, and this is the brightest part of the scene that may be presented before the camera. This means that you want the exposure for the water to be at the right hand edge of the histogram. To achieve this, spot meter (or partial meter if you don't have spot) off the water and manually set the exposure to a reading on the meter of +3 stops. This is almost the limit of the camera before it will start to clip highlights. If your camera meter does not go up as far as +/-3 then simply adjust the exposure till it reads +2 and then increase the exposure by one more stop. The meter will probably blink and will not be able to tell you exactly how far over you are, but you will know that you are at +2+1 = +3.

This is the technique I used for my picture above. I spot metered off the brightest part of the sky and set my exposure for a reading of +2+1=+3. This meant that I would blow nothing in my capture regardless of whereabouts I pointed the camera, yet ensured that I captured as much image data as possible for all parts of the scene - classic ETTR.

By the way, it is very important to check the histogram in the camera to double check that you do have everything set correctly. I usually set things up as I think they should be and then fire off a test shot or two, checking that I have everything correct, before going ahead and shooting for real. It also does no harm to carry out periodic spot checks to make sure all is good as you continue to shoot.

4. With practice you can develop an eye for how bright things are within a scene and can judge how bright or dark they are relative to "middle grey". For example, grass is normally quite close in brightness to a grey card. I find that if I expose for the grass at +0 on the camera meter then everything else falls into place pretty well. Sometimes you do get "dark" grass, other times, especially if dried out and turning yellow, the grass might be brighter than middle grey. Use your judgement to determine what shade of grass you have, set your exposure and fire off a test shot. Check the histogram and see if you like what you see. If the whole scene fits well, with little or no clipping at either end - especially the highlights - then you are set. If it's a bit off then adjust and try again. Once you are happy then that's your exposure set for a good while until the light levels change.

You could meter off the rushes and maybe guess that they are similar in tone to your palm so maybe set an exposure at +1.3 off the rushes and fire a test shot. Check the histogram, adjust if need be and then you are set once more.

5. The really important thing is that you should never trust the image displayed on the camera as an indication of how good your exposure is. The brightness of the LCD display is fixed (I know you can adjust it but basically it remains unchanged whether you are viewing in bright daylight or the pitch black of night) but your eyes stop down in bright light and open up at night, so they will play tricks on you. I've shot pictures at a garden party at night which looked great on the LCD but in practice they were underexposed by at least one stop and the images suffered from noise when I fixed them up later. If only I had paid more attention to the histogram than the pictures.

Hope that helps :)

EDIT : Some articles....

http://ronbigelow.com/articles/histograms-1/histograms-1.htm
http://ronbigelow.com/articles/exposure/exposure.htm

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/understanding-histograms.shtml
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/expose-right.shtml

http://medfmt.8k.com/mf/sunny.html
 
Wow, thanks very much for taking the time Tim, I'm going to read that several times and take notes, a lot of very useful info :thumbs:
 
tdodd, thats a brilliant write up.

I think I will need to read it through a fair amount of times to get it to bed into my brain though lol.

I think the bit about not trusting the LCD is a very good point, I've started looking at the histogram's with my shots now and the improvements are alot clearer but still need lots of improvements.
 
Wow tdodd what a great post and with excellent links.

Cheers

Steve
 
Here's an example (lousy photos but a reasonable example) of how manual exposure can help. These two images were shot just moments apart - actually about 2 seconds apart. The scene has changed quite a bit from one frame to the other and I'm sure that, left to its own devices, autoexposure would have calculated two quite different exposures between the two. But why? There would be no sense in that. The light hitting the scene is identical from one shot to the next. The dogs should have the same exposure regardless of what appears in the background. But you just know that the expanse of sky in the first shot would have had some effect and its absence in the second shot would have changed things. By shooting in manual mode I maintained consistent exposures from one frame to the next. That is how it should be. I'm not sure anyone could react in time to fiddle with EC between these two images, or check the histogram in between times. The exposure needed to be set up and ready before the first image was captured. With even lighting and manual exposure that bit was easy.

By the way, these have had no edits. They could be improved with some tweaking but I don't think either one is worth keeping. They merely serve as reasonable examples in this discussion about exposure.

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If we look at the histogram for the first one, note how close the histogram is to the right hand edge of the histogram, yet there is no sign of highlight clipping at all. Now I actually set this exposure by using evaluative (pattern) metering but I shot a test image with manual exposure and just fine tuned till I was close to clipping point without actually clipping anything, using the histogram and looking for blinkies in the preview image to ensure all was good.

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Looking at the second histogram, note that the large peak has vanished from the right because the sky has mostly vanished from the scene. This is the sort of change that could easily upset autoexposure. Yet the histogram still extends very nearly to the right hand edge, which suggests a pretty good capture of the scene as a whole. Note that the green/yellow/red peak in the middle, for the grass, is in an identical position from one histogram to the next. The heights differ because there is more grass in the second image than the first.

Picture no longer available.

The great thing about manual exposure is that the benefits apply in all sorts of shooting situations - team sports with one team in light colours and the other in dark. Both are in the same light so both require the same exposure. Autoexposure would be a nightmare. Ditto a wedding with a bride and groom - bride in white, groom in black but they both want the same exposure in the same light. I can't be messing around chimping and tweaking EC with every shot I take. I'll set the correct exposure for the ambient (incident) light and then get on with more important stuff like framing and timing my shots.
 
Here's a daft question then... and OK, perhaps I ought to know the answer but I don't. How does one meter for ambient light...?
 
This is going to ramble a bit but hopefully it will all make sense....

By "ambient" I mean the actual light all around that is illuminating the subject/scene as opposed to the reflected light coming back off the subject and the scene itself. It may have been a slightly poor choice of words. Normally the distinction made is between "incident" light - light falling upon the subject - or "reflected" light - the light reflected back by the subject.

The problem with reflected light is that things reflect back different amounts of light. That's why some things look darker than others. The camera meter is designed to measure reflected light from the scene in front of it. But cameras are really quite dumb. They don't know whether a scene should be dark, like in a forest, or dazzling bright, like on a snowy mountain in bright sunshine. Their aim is to set an exposure that will result in an image that averages out to a middle tone - middle grey if you prefer. The problem with that is that the thing you meter from may well not be middle toned. That means you have to guess, or judge by experience, how much compensation to dial in to let the camera know that the scene is a bit (or a lot) darker or lighter than middle grey.

The problem that then leads to is that when you use the camera to set exposure automatically, and the scene changes from one image to the next, you have to keep compensating for slight tonal changes in the scene. That is normally time consuming and/or not completely accurate.

What I am doing, by metering the way I do, and setting the exposure manually, is to put to one side the problems caused by all those differing degrees of reflectivity and effectively, although I am metering from the scene rather than the incident light, I am achieving the same result as though I had metered the incident (ambient) light and set the exposure from that.

The beauty of a grey card is that it is a subject of known reflectivity and thus by metering the brightness of the grey card you are effectively metering for the light hitting that card. It's the same thing with metering from the palm. The point is, you know how reflective that item is so you remove the uncertainty about how reflective the thing you are metering actually is.

If you had a hand held light meter you would turn it towards the sky and measure the "incident" light, which is basically the equivalent of "ambient" light as far as my meaning was intended. Apart from the expense, and incovenience of having a light meter as well as a camera, it is actually a very good tool for easily determining an accurate exposure for the lighting conditions. My approach removes the need for the light meter but gives results equally as good.

EDIT : While I'm in posting mood, here's another example where manual exposure made my life super easy. I shot something like 140 frames in 40 minutes of skiers/boarders coming off a jump. Some went high and I got a lot of sky; some went low and I got a lot of snow. Some wore light colours, others dark. I set a manual exposure at the beginning of the session, fired a test, tweaked and re-checked exposure and then I was ready to go for the whole session. It did not matter how I framed my shots or what was in them. Every one was exposed as perfectly as the next. Here's an example with no edits....

20080125_155353_2555_LR.jpg


Here's the histogram. In truth I have clipped a handful of pixels, perhaps a few hundred, but that is of no consequence in this snow scene. That was actually deliberate, as I wanted to squeeze all I could from my ETTR technique. So long as the snow is not blown out as a whole, and shadows and shapes are still clearly visible, I have a good capture that can easily be tweaked as necessary for aesthetic purposes. I'm actually pretty happy with this just as it is as far as tonality goes. Framing could have been improved though.

20090813_140439_39_LR.jpg


Autoexposure definitely has its place but sometimes (often) manual exposure can actually be so much easier.
 
Absolutely brilliant write up.

I understand what you mean now with the exposure. I’m looking forward to trying this method out.

This only works though if the light levels stay the same throughout the shoot though, so if its patchy clouds then clear sky this method wont work aswell.
 
:agree: thanks very much again Tim, for taking the time here :thumbs:
 
Dal said:
Absolutely brilliant write up.

I understand what you mean now with the exposure. I’m looking forward to trying this method out.

This only works though if the light levels stay the same throughout the shoot though, so if its patchy clouds then clear sky this method wont work aswell.
Click to expand...

Correct. The plus side of it is that if the light is constant it hardly matters at all what subject/scene you have or how you compose it or whether you zoom in and out. Once your exposure is set for that lighting you're done.

In other words, Manual mode is great for constant lighting and a varying subject/scene while Autoexposure is great for a (fairly) constant subject/scene with variable lighting.

Where things get tricky is when the light is changing and you also have a changing subject/scene to contend with. You can either battle with autoexposure and exposure compensation or battle with manual exposure, or just be grateful for whatever the camera spurts out when left to its own devices. The big problems arise for autoexposure when a scene deviates to a large extent from being largely mid toned. If you suddenly include a load of sky, or no sky at all then you may need to get a bit more involved in what the camera is doing for the exposure. If your subject is mostly pale coloured (bride in a white dress, or a white car or a white house) then you will need to let the camera know that the subject/scene should be brighter than "average" by adding some +ve EC. If the subject/scene is mostly dark the reverse applies. The beauty of digital is that you can check that you (or the camera) got it right (histogram) before moving on to the next shot.
 
I've always got annoyed taking pics and getting the dark ones then the light ones and I've always played around with the metering modes to try and solve it. So I think this method is going to come in very handy, ie when I tried an Ice Hockey game as the lighting is constant.

Thanks so much for posting up all this info.

I will hopefully have some results from this at the weekend. :D
 
Tim ... fantastic post ..... i have been getting so frustrated with my photography lately and if I can get my head round this technique it maybe the thing that takes me up a notch .... here's hoping????
 
Some excellent information-many thanks Tim for spending time providing it :thumbs::thumbs:
 
I know I'm being a bit thick here, but could you explain the technique involved for setting this? I fully understand everything you have said, I think, you talked about palms and grey cards but I didn't quite see what to do with them.

Do you point the camera at your palm to set it up and how exactly does the set up work from there?

Sorry to be such a dunce.
 
Trapper, you need to have the camera in manual exposure mode. You also need to be standing in the same lighting as your subject. It's no good if, for example, your subject is in bright sunshine while you are standing in the shade of a building.

You face your subject/scene and aim the camera roughly in the right direction as though you were going to take a picture. Then you lift up your left hand and put it in front of the lens, palm facing towards the lens, but leaving enough of a gap for your palm to be well lit by the light behind and above you. You need to be sure that the lens does not cast a shadow onto your palm. Then you use the exposure meter in the camera as a guide and adjust the exposure until the meter in the camera indicates +1 1/3 (or 1.3 in decimal). Once you've done that your exposure is set for those lighting conditions.

Note that it's probably best to use spot or partial metering in order to make sure that you meter from only your palm and do not end up including sky and other things, which might be easily done with a short zoom or wide angle lens.

If you are standing in light that is different from the subject/scene itself then either you will have to move into the same lighting or instead choose something within the scene to meter off. Don't forget that you can just meter the whole scene with evaluative/pattern metering if you want to, fire a test shot, adjust if need be and try again.

If you Google for something like "grey card exposure" then you should get plenty of explanations for how a grey card should be used. The only difference between a grey card and your palm is that your goal when using a grey card is to set the exposure to 0 on the meter instead of +1.3 as you would when using your palm as a grey card substitute.

The important thing about all this is that you are setting a manual exposure so that anything and everything before you will be correctly exposed, within the limits of the camera, and so long as the lighting stays the same. Quite how you arrive at that exposure setting is really up to you. I've given a few ideas but there are many ways to skin this cat.

It is probably also worth mentionig, before someone else picks me up on it, that sometimes the variations in light levels within a scene are simply too great for the camera to handle. You may be able to capture all the detail you need in the shadows or all the details you need in the highlights, but perhaps not both at the same time. For example, suppose you want to photograph your black dog, but in the background are fluffy white clouds. The camera will not be able to record full details in both at the same time. You have to choose which part of the scene is more important, biasing your exposure in favour of the subject, and which to sacrifice.

You might choose to expose for the dog, so that you can capture some detail in the fur, and let the clouds blow out to pure white blotches. Alternatively you can change your composition, perhaps zooming in tighter so that you remove the clouds from the scene altogether. Another option would be to use flash to fill in the darkness of the dog's fur, or a reflector to bounce more light back onto the dog. Maybe you could adjust your angle of view a bit so that the dog is against a background of trees, grass or a wall instead of fluffy clouds. So again there are many possible approaches to the challenge. The skill of the photographer is in choosing what to do for the best, artistically and technically.

In the pictures of the dogs I posted earlier I would actually say the dogs and the foreground are a bit underexposed. Parts of the black dog look almost totally black, with no detail. This is a consequence of choosing to preserve highlight detail in the sky. The reason I had the camera set up that way is because moments earlier I was shooting waterfowl flying in to land on a lake and I wanted to hold detail in the sky, the water and white areas on the birds. The consequence of that is that my poor dog is looking very dark indeed. Technically my exposure for the dogs is not wrong but it is probably biased too far in favour of the highlights rather than the shadows. As I shot raw I expect this is easily remedied with some editing tweaks.

Here's a rough fix for one of them. Remember that when shooting raw you might be shooting to capture as much data as possible, not to capture the finished image straight out of the camera. Also don't expect great looking photos in flat lighting, as this was....

Picture no longer available.
 
Thank you very much Tim, I'll print that out and go and study it in relation to the other things you have said.

Very good of you to take the time.

Nick
 
There is a DVD by "Photoshop Cafe" called "Perfect Exposure For Digital Photography" which, although a bit long-winded, is quite good at explaining how to go about metering accurately from a scene....

http://www.photoshopcafe.com/video/products/zones.htm

It might be a bit expensive so if you can borrow a copy or maybe find it second hand that would probably be worthwhile. Perhaps LoveFilm have it in their library. There is a short review of it here....

http://fershrek.multiply.com/reviews/item/172
 
Nice thread. I use Aperture Priority set to f/5.6 or f/8 at 300mm, and just the centre AF point, because on my D80 it's the fastest and most accurate. It also means I'm at the sharpest point of the lens at its sharpest aperture, so I'll keep it central and crop the image to place the frame. I also use spot metering, so that everything I want is concentrated on the one point. If my target is central, the metering, AF and sharpness are as good as I can get them. At 300mm, Depth of Field is pretty shallow at f/4 - so even when I used my 300/4, it was stopped down a bit. Eyes in focus, and it had better be sharp - or I'll bin it.

I shoot jpeg, so generally WB according to the conditions. On my D80, I like +1 on my cloudy setting to cool it down a bit, but everybody's tastes vary. If I do custom WB, green grass is about 18% grey.

I use Auto ISO for anything where light changes frequently, with a maximum ISO of "whatever it takes to get a sharp shot". Ideally, minimum shutter speed is 1/250 [but see my thread in the 'birds' section for my recent error..]. On overcast British days, sometimes even at ISO 1600 the light's just not good enough for a 1/250 shot.

I have a genuine question here - this has always puzzled me, and maybe I'm missing something, so I'm going to ask here as you all seem experienced...

If you're metering through the lens, and therefore trusting the camera's judgement, why bother with manual mode? I mean, if you're just going to accept the lens metering as correct exposure and then dial in some adjustment +/-EV, why not just use one of the PAS modes and miss out a step?

This has always bothered me. P[A]SM and PAM modes just place the control dials in a different priority, and both effectively use the TTL meter as a starting point, with a rapid +/-EV Control. If you use TTL and then just dial in what it suggests, isn't that just adding an unnecessary extra step? I was always of the opinion that manual mode works best in controlled lighting conditions where you can, say, spot meter in front of a model's face in a studio. Your help on this greatly appreciated!
 
danbroad said:
If you're metering through the lens, and therefore trusting the camera's judgement, why bother with manual mode? I mean, if you're just going to accept the lens metering as correct exposure and then dial in some adjustment +/-EV, why not just use one of the PAS modes and miss out a step?
Click to expand...

I'm not sure what you mean by the bit in bold. I trust the camera to meter accurately, but the camera has no idea whether I'm aiming it at a pile of coal or a snowdrift. All that the camera knows is how to turn whatever it is metering into a mid tone. It is down to me to know what I am metering and what the camera will make of it. Then I can instruct the camera on what adjustments are required to expose correctly for those conditions. I can do that with EC, and keep doing it every single time I aim the camera at something different, or set that adjustment once in manual mode.

For manual mode to be efficient and effective you don't need controlled lighting in the sense that you are in charge of it. What you need is constant lighting that you can rely on to stay the same for a while at least.

If you rely on the automatic modes then every time you point at a new subject, with different reflectivity, you're going to get a different meter reading, or more specifically a different exposure calculated. If you zoom out and get more sky in the shot your exposure will change. Well, as I'm sure I said before, if the light falling on the subject/scene remains constant, why would you want your exposure to change just because something in the scene changed? I wouldn't want a new exposure and I wouldn't want to fight with estimating how much EC to dial in either.

Here's a scenario.... You're shooting portraits of dogs at the end of an obedience training session. Most of the frame will be filled with the dog sitting and facing you. The lighting is constant. It might be overcast; it might be blue skies; we'll assume we're outside for the shoot and the backdrop is grass and trees. Now the dogs will be all colours, shapes and sizes, from skinny white ones to big fat black ones and every shape, size and colour in between. You can choose to shoot in manual mode or automatic. I choose manual. Here's what happens for me....

I meter off the grass and set a manual exposure that so happens to centre the meter needle. That's the end of metering for me. White dogs will appear white. Black dogs will appear black. Grey dogs will appear grey. A small dog, surrounded by grass, will be exposed correctly. A dog that fills the frame will be exposed correctly. I am left free to concentrate on the posing, focusing and timing of the shot. I have no worries about exposure while the light remains unchanged. If it does change then I re-meter off the grass and adjust.

Now let's look at the approach with autoexposure. Quite simply you will have to re-meter and readjust your exposure every time the tonal content of your scene changes. Stick a large black dog in front of the camera and your autoexposure mode will think you're underexposing and fix that for you. Stick a white dog in front of the camera and the camera will try and turn it grey. You'll have to compensate for that, guessing how much compensation to dial in and perhaps have to run off a test shot to check exposure before proceeding. Then you get a small dog - less dog, more grass. Now how much will your exposure be affected? It all seems like a monstrous faff to me.

Of late a lot of my shooting has been of my dog on the run. He is black. At the start of the run he'll be pretty small in the frame and the composition will mostly be grass. By the end of his run, maybe five seconds later he is pretty much filling the frame. How would autoexposure deal with that? Well, the more the dog filled the frame the more "black" the camera would see and the brighter it would try to make the exposure. How nuts is that? The exposure should be identical throughout the sequence. Shooting manual will give me that constant exposure. Leaving things on auto would just be screwy. Here's an example at the end of his run, shot with manual exposure...

20090306_103953_1580_LR.jpg


So that's dogs. But the same thing applies whatever you are shooting. Black bird, grey bird, white bird - in the same lighting they all want the same exposure to keep white birds white and black birds black. Ditto racing cars, horses, people in clothes, people out of clothes, BIF etc. etc..

In short....

If the light is constant but the scene/subject changes then shoot manual.
If the light is changing but the scene/subject is constant then shoot auto.
If the light is changing and so is the scene/subject then one way or another you will need to keep making adjustments.
If nothing is changing then shoot however you like. Once you're set you're set.

I don't know if that is any clearer or just a rehash of what I wrote earlier. I did not re-read the thread. Hopefully it makes at least a little sense :)

I don't know whether anything here will help illustrate the point about incident vs reflected light and the fact that your exposure should be the same, regardless of your subject, if the incident light is the same....

http://www.sekonic.com/classroom/classroom_2.asp
 
I see. I think we shoot very differing styles, and approach subject exposure from two opposite ends; Your method ensures evenly exposed shots, accuracy and precision. My recipe gives me the 'eyes at whatever price', at the expense of the background. I want the sky to blow out, I want the water to appear blackened; I like the high contrast my shots get. You're right, my style involves heavy use of the +/-EV dial. But, as a new lesson, I'm going to shoot next time using your metered scene exposure examples, and see how I like the results.

Edit - nice shot of the Dog, and I'd agree no matter how fast the metering, you're likely to end up with slow shutter speeds or high high ISO's to deal with that subject.

I'm quite looking forward to shooting your way - it'll be a complete departure from my usual methods, and that can only be a good thing. I'll let you know how I get on!
 
Ah, well, creative exposure is a whole different ballgame from "correct" exposure, and if you're mixing in flash to create or reduce contrast, or shooting with a subject and scene that are lit differently, then that's really a separate topic.

Remember that this thread is about bird photography, not glamour and fashion. I was rather assuming people were interested in being able to achieve a good exposure of a wild bird in its natural environment. Of course, there is room for some creativity in that field too, but the fundamentals of metering don't change, whatever you are shooting. If you want to underexpose or overexpose your background then that's easy enough to do. Manual exposure certainly doesn't make it any harder.

I'm sure my technique would "give me the eyes", as you put it, if that's what I wanted, which 99.9% of the time I do. There is relatively little point in an image of a living creature that doesn't "have the eyes", with a few exceptions, of course :).

Also remember that I only shoot in raw. I generally expose to capture as much image data as I can - i.e. "Expose To The Right". I'll sort out the look of the thing back at my PC. But if I haven't got the data to begin with, because it's blown out or lost in the shadow noise, then there's not much I will be able to do to salvage it.
 
danbroad said:
I see. I think we shoot very differing styles, and approach subject exposure from two opposite ends; Your method ensures evenly exposed shots, accuracy and precision. My recipe gives me the 'eyes at whatever price', at the expense of the background. I want the sky to blow out, I want the water to appear blackened; I like the high contrast my shots get. You're right, my style involves heavy use of the +/-EV dial. But, as a new lesson, I'm going to shoot next time using your metered scene exposure examples, and see how I like the results.

Edit - nice shot of the Dog, and I'd agree no matter how fast the metering, you're likely to end up with slow shutter speeds or high high ISO's to deal with that subject.

I'm quite looking forward to shooting your way - it'll be a complete departure from my usual methods, and that can only be a good thing. I'll let you know how I get on!
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Yes, try it ;) I think the point is that if you want 'the eyes' and you want 'blown skies' and 'blackened water' too, then tdodd's manual method will give it to you, consistently. If you use any auto mode, you will need EC every time the eyes are on a black dog or a white dog, or when the framing changes to include more or less sky/water.

If you want to deviate from the camera's suggested settings, then tdodd's method allows you to do that, indeed it's probably the best way. The point is, once you've establsihed the exposure you want, for whatever kind of effect, once you're locked on manual it is never going to change. It will always give you exactly the result you want, regardless of subject and framing (provided the basic lighting conditions don't change).

It's a very good method and very well explained and illustrated by Tim. I use something similar whenever I'm shooting a lot of frames of the same basic subject. There's really only one time when I don't use it, and that's when it's both cloudy and windy - that's when exposure can go up and down like a yoyo in seconds! Auto is often the best way to keep track in those conditions, but it's never easy!
 
Tim, I'd like to say thank you again, for the time you've put in to write all this up. I can't say I've quite got my brain around it all fully yet, but it makes sense.
 
What a really informative thread this has turned out to be. Loads to take in and digest. I'll certainly be trying out the methods described. Thanks to tdodd and others for sharing their expertise. Typical of the advice found in these forums....:clap::clap::thumbs::thankyou:
 
Very informative Tim - thank you for for these posts.
 
tdodd said:
.. Incidentally, you use your palm because it does not tan and thus remains a fairly constant reference all year round.
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And unlike a grey card, it's pretty difficult to leave home without it :D!

Great posts here tdodd, thanks. I too will be giving this a whirl this week.
 
Very interesting and thanks Tim for the indepth explanations
Can't wait for the weekend to try this out
 
Can only add to the thanks expressed to Tim - a very informative read through this thread.
 
As I promised myself, I did indeed try this technique out yesterday :).

The results were quite pleasing, once I'd set up the camera and manually adjusted the white balance (as well as fixing the ISO value, which was playing havoc with my shutter speeds when set to "Auto up to ISO1600" mode).

What I did notice was that there was a lot more consistency between all of the shots (as you would expect, I suppose :|). Things went horribly wrong when I tried to take some shots of a fungus-covered tree, which had a lot of bare sky behind it - the shots being so over-exposed that I just binned them. Still, I had broken the Golden Rules ;), by moving to an area with different lighting (i.e. no tree cover) without resetting the exposure :bang:.

These are the shots that I kept from the day, in case anyone's curious (link...). They won't win any prizes, but I really can't blame that on the manually set exposure :lol:.
 
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