Made it to SF AND I've got my L - does life get any better?

[rockabillyrebel]

I've made it from the rainy UK to sunny San Francisco AND my order came through today from B&H - I'm now the proud owner of a 17-40L :D

I took it straight out for a walk around the beautiful Golden Gate Park & I'm not sure who got the most looks, my lovely wife or that red stripe! Anyway it didn't take long to fill up my 512mb card & so I'm back home now viewing the results on my brothers 21" flat screen monitor!! The shots look great but on quite a few shots the exposure (I hope that's the right term?) is either too dark or the whites are way over exposed. I guess I'm going to have to take lots & lots of pics to learn how to get the best out of the lens?

This is a shot of a gull I snatched as we ate our lunch, as you can see the detail is just not there & it looks to me as if the gull's been painted by numbers? This happened on most shots I took of gulls. Any tips to correct this would be a great help.

http://img51.photobucket.com/albums/v157/hillionpics/gull.jpg

I also took this shot of a friendly squirrel which I thought would make a change from the usual duck shot!

http://img51.photobucket.com/albums/v157/hillionpics/squ.jpg

[/img]

[Scottes]

Rockabilly, Congrats! Feels sweet, huh?

The squirrel looks perfect, but the gull is overblown a bit, but this is a bit tough to get unless you use Partial Metering (the "( )" symbol) and get the subject in the center focus spot. Yeah, not easy for a flying gull. But there are several thing you can do.

Bracket the shot - This will take 3 pictures - 1 at your setting, 1 under-exposed, and 1 overexposed. You can set the compensation to swing each way, up to +/- 2 stops. Not good for this photo because it would have flown by in the 3/4 seconds it would have taken to take all 3 pictures.

Use all 7 focus points and Evaluative Metering (the "(O)" symbol). They don't tell you that the exposure will be weighted a bit to the chosen focus point. That is, the camera would have broken down the scene into 35 boxes and figured the exposure for each and then averaged everything, giving the focus area a bit more importance. I don't think it will change the exposure a lot, but a bit. It still wouldn't have been perfect on this shot because the gull is very white while the background is a little dark. But the gull would have been truer than this, but not by much. In fact, you may have actually done this.

Set exposure compensation - You can tell the camera to under- or over-expose the shot by up to 2 stops. This takes experience & practice to guess correctly.

Shoot in RAW and fix it later, when you process the image. By far the easiest option, but it takes more work and could still be wrong.

Set exposure compensation AND shoot in RAW. By far the best for producing a usable image, but takes experience and practice. You could be off a bit in your EC but the RAW lets you fix it. But if you're off too much and blow out the highlights the detail is gone and you can't fix them.

All in all, this is not an easy shot. Any shot with a large variance in foreground and background will be difficult until you get some experience or practice a bit.


For practice get a white and a black object. Set the white up against a light background and take a picture - OK, a few pictures. Check your histogram after each one. Set the camera to Evaluative metering and play with exposure compensation. Take 4 or 5 shots until it looks right in the viewfinder. Now set the black one up and do it again.

Now do it again against a dark background.

Spend an hour doing this and you will be a LOT better at getting the shot next time.

[CyberDyneSystems]

Excellent shots! Congrats.

Yes the Gull is definatley over exposed. I think Partial metering is the best solution.. yoiu may even want to try a little exposure compensation.. as with the 10D on partial I still get some overexposure on occasion with the gulls (A spot meter would help here)

[G3]

Cool! I'm glad you guys made it OK. Be sure to give me a shout if you make it to Atlanta. The only things I have going right now are some product photography this weekend, a few portrait sessions over the next week or two and a wedding May 15th and one June 12th. My weekends should be free other than that.

Unfortunately, on your gull picture, it looks like the lightest pixels are completely blown out. Shame, it's a very well composed and captured image other than that...even got a turtle in the background. The squirrel picture looks great.

Congrats on the new lens...looks like you'll put it to good use. Have fun!

[mjordan]

Although SF can be foggy, it's not the same as the fog you get in the UK, so don't forget to take out the +fog compensation you have dialed into your camera or you will over expose a lot. :lol:


Congratulations on the new lens. As the others said, your camera probably metered on the dark green behind the gull and upped your exposure by about 2 fstops. In situations like this, you might have to meter and then set the exposure manually, which will work fine as long as you stay in the same spot and the light stays the same.

Mike

[Adam Hicks]

Or pick up a $5 18% gray card and set your exposure to it. Cheap and dirty but it's saved me a few times when there was extreme variation in brightness / contrast.

[robertwgross]

I see you got a shot of the standard squirrel that lives at Golden Gate Park. Yes, that same squirrel shows up in a lot of shots that we get there. The little guy poses for you and then asks for a model's fee afterward. Get him to sign a model's release.

While at the park, I hope you made it to the Conservatory of Flowers. I was there a few months ago, and the flower photography opportunities were staggering.

You'll be OK in SF, as long as you stay out of the Castro District.

---Bob Gross---

[Whaler]

Go over either of the bridges GGB to Sausalito or in the other direction Bay bridge to Berkeley for some interesting shots.

[Bruce Hamilton]

This is a shot of a gull I snatched as we ate our lunch...
Looks like he's getting ready to snatch your lunch... :)
Does this look a little better?
http://photos.imageevent.com/brucehamilton/nature/birds/websize/gull.jpg