Exposure Compensation Poll (10D)

[cowman345]

For all you 10D users. Do you tend to normally shoot with some amount of over or underexposure compensation or none at all, or manual mostly?

-dave-

p.s. For me, I've been shooting 1/3 stop under regularly and find so many of my shots need some small amount of push in exposure before processing. I'm considering going back to no compensation.

[RichardtheSane]

Depends on the situation for me.
I use the histogram and if I need to compensate then I will, but I normally keep it at 0 for most shots - however in bright sunlight (I'm in the UK, that is a rare occurance!) I go 1/3 under. :)

[defordphoto]

I'm with Richard. Rarely do I use any comp. Even bright sun usually requires nothing unless it's an unusually reflective object. The camera does quite well on its own.

[Belmondo]

Ditto.
Just as an experiment, I did one day's shoot at -1, and ended up spending a lot more time doing the post-processing to bring the shots back to where they would have been if I'd just left it alone. (I'd read somewhere that this was a 'cool' thing to do.)

Situations like snow, sand, etc., it's probably a good idea, though.

Tom

[scottbergerphoto]

After 3 days and over 300 pictures, of doing lanscapes on sunny days with my 10D and 16-35 f/2.8, I found that I usually needed 1 stop under exposure(to the in camera meter) in Manual or Av, to keep the histogram off of 255. Otherwise I leave EC at 0 and base EC on the histogram.
Scott

[J.A.F. Doorhof]

For buildings and sky I ussualy underexpose, because the sky is very sensitive for over exposure.
My new 420EX flash helps a bit in this if I'm close to the building.

For normal use I leave it on 0.
But I alway's check the histogram and act accordingly to that.

Greetings,
Frank

[CyberDyneSystems]

Depending on the lighting...

But yes,. in daylight I shoot RAW and 2/3 stop under exposed as the default. This is partly due to the 10Ds lack of a true spot meter.. thus my subjects which tend to be birds that don't fill the screen and tend to be located in front of objects that are often darker than the birds...

I do find that in certain lighting situations the 10D is prone to overexpose.. at the part of the photo I am concerned with.

Using the PS 7.01 RAW plug in.. I find it is a VERY simple task to bost the exposure if needed.

[KennyG]

cowman345 wrote:
For all you 10D users. Do you tend to normally shoot with some amount of over or underexposure compensation or none at all, or manual mostly?

None at all. I find the 10D does a decent job on its own.

[jim monroe]

I did some experimenting this past summer using exposure bracketing and over and under exposed by a 1/2 of stop, along with no compensation. I've found that the underexposed often are the best of the three. This seems somewhat dependent on the lens I am using.

[Derek Smith]

It depends on the subject.

Generally I shoot with zero compensation, but if the subject is very light/white such as white cloth, paper or plastic the meter tends to try to make it grey so I add a stop but watch the histogram to make sure that nothing gets overexposed.

If the subject is uniformly dark (and is supposed to be, I was photographing peat and garden compost once), then I had to stop down nearly two stops to prevent the meter from trying to make the naturally dark brown into a neutral grey. Of course, when I did that the histogram was all bunched up on the left, but that was where it should have been for that particular image.

For all 'normal' images I leave the comp on zero and get a good histogram without any 'blown out' areas.

[iwatkins]

For Landscape/Sunset/Skyscape work I used to tend to have 2/3 comp in most of the time. I found many shots would have blown highlights for landscape work so had underexposure built in. Could always recover the shadows back in Photoshop afterwards.

More recently I've given up with the 10D meter for landscape/sunset/skyscape shots. I just use a hand held spot meter and run the camera in M mode and dial it all in by hand.

Saying that, I let the camera do the metering for everything else (without any exp comp) and it tends to get it bang on.

Cheers

Ian

[mwinog2777]

Depends on my lens. With Canon 50mm f1.8 I overpexose by 1/3. With Tamron 28-200 3.8-5.6 I under by 1/3.

[chris.bailey]

Slightly different scenario but I do find with studio flash I have to go down a 1/2 or full stop than my flash meter tells me. In a lot of other situations I tend to bracket by half a stop (took me a long while to get over the fact I was not wasting film by doing this) and its over the half stop under shot that has the most usable range in Photoshop.

[Jim_T]

I shoot P mode mostly.. With no compensation.

If I'm really interesed in DOF, I switch to Av and if I want to either stop or blur motion, I use Tv.

For night shooting, I often go to M. I get the ballpark settings by first putting the camera in P and seeing what it would have done. Then I go back to M and adjust as neccesary.

I rarely use exposure compensation. The only exception is shooting scenes with lots of snow. If you don't add +1 or +2, the snow comes out gray...

If I'm shooting a small dark object against a bright sky, or a darker scene with a lot of bright sky in it.. I'll add a bit to make sure the object isn't too dark.

I've also used the negative exposure compensation when I've wanted to get a silhouette effect.. Like tree branches against the sky..

[PhotoAZ]

Not to buck the trend to underexpose here is link that might shed a bit more light on digital.

http://luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/expose-right.shtml (Corrected web address)

[PhotoAZ]

Just in case someone missed the update

[CyberDyneSystems]

mwinog2777 wrote:
Depends on my lens. With Canon 50mm f1.8 I overpexose by 1/3. With Tamron 28-200 3.8-5.6 I under by 1/3.



I have to agree that the lens palys a part.

With most of my lenses some underexposure on bright daylight shots.. but my telephoto prime never seems to overexpose so it isn't needed.