Dark, Dark, Dark...

[New Shooter]

I've just come back from a days' shooting - much of it inside in poor light and my pictures are Dark, dark dark. I have been using the 300D, Canon 28-135 IS, all auto settings (here we go you say?!)...

Unless its a sunny day at the Coast in June with kites flying and the sun behind my back I struggle to get bright light pictures. Is this just a natural hazard using the 300D on auto, or do I always have to manually adjust when in gloom? Yours dimly.

JD

[Jesper]

Did you let the camera also automatically use the built-in flash? How far away were your subjects? The flash isn't powerful enough to light up a big room.

Some tips for successfully making photos in low light. To start with, use the Creative Zone modes (P, Tv, Av, M) instead of fully automatic mode. Set the ISO setting higher (to at least ISO 400, but if it's really dark you'll want to go even higher (at the expense of more noise in your images).

Use fast lenses, i.e. lenses with a large max. aperture. You'll want a lens that goes at least to f/2.8 for really low light. The Canon EF 50 f/1.8 II is a very cheap ($70), sharp and fast lens.

Use an external flash unit, such as a Canon EX series flash.

[jmh]

I would recommend never using auto...unless you have to shoot fast. ALWAYS go by your histogram. If your histogram is not matching what your camera is actually outputting, you have a problem.

[cmM]

Jesper & jmh gave you some great advice.

Get away from the green box :wink:

[Cobra351]

Have you checked to make sure the exposure isn't cranked down? I sometimes knock it down to -2 then forget and the next shots are quite dark. Worth a look anyway.

[robertwgross]

I would recommend never using auto...

Actually, there is at least one very good case for using the green box. Frame up your scene and read the settings that the green box mode would use. THEN, shift over into some more intelligent mode and begin at those original settings as you think about where you want to go with the actual exposure.

---Bob Gross---

[atlord]

I would recommend never using auto...unless you have to shoot fast. ALWAYS go by your histogram. If your histogram is not matching what your camera is actually outputting, you have a problem.

I'm new to DSLR and have just bought a Canon EOS 400D. Very disapointed with my first attemps as they are all very dark using AUTO. Can you please tell me what I need to look at in the Histogram.

Regards

Tony Lord

[Ephemeral]

a) post a picture

b) are you sure you know how to use your camera? (Auto mode doesn't count byt the way)

[DrPablo]

I'm new to DSLR and have just bought a Canon EOS 400D. Very disapointed with my first attemps as they are all very dark using AUTO. Can you please tell me what I need to look at in the Histogram.

Before worrying about the histogram, which will look very different in different circumstances, you need to think about what you're metering off of. If you have a bright sky and a dim ground, if you meter off the sky your sky will look good and your ground will look very dark. Conversely if you meter off the ground your ground will look good but the sky will be blown out.

The meter will set the settings so that whatever you meter off of will be rendered the same brightness as 18% gray. So you need to look at your scene, decide which region is closest to neutral gray, and meter off of that. Better yet use a gray card. Caucasian skin is about a full stop lighter than neutral gray. Bright sand and snow is about 2 stops brighter.

This is all stuff that Ansel Adams writes very clearly about in The Negative, getting on top of metering.

As far as the histogram goes, it's not going to make a ton of sense to you until you have a sense of how you want your image to look. This (http://www.pbase.com/drpablo74/image/60942397) and this (http://www.pbase.com/drpablo74/image/60698072) image will have very different histograms -- feel free to download them and look with the magic wand in Photoshop. The histogram is image-specific.

[atlord]

Thanks for that but surely I should be able to achieve a descent photo using AUTO or LANDSCAPE. I have tried a suggested test and photographed ca grey card the histogram was almost 1 stop to the left which suggests - I am told - that the camera's metering is under exposing. My wife uses a Fugi compact Z2 and comparing our 2 photos of the same scene hers is far superior

Tony

[stupot]

best thing to do is post up a couple of shots here with exif date (dont save for web in photoshop).

whilst its fine to start off in auto mode i'd really recommend you learn how a camera works and once you know how you can use it to its highest potential you will start seeing the results in print. until then you will be disappointed because with a more advanced camera, there are inevitably more things that are likely to go wrong i'd recommend you spend a while reading threads on here, use the search function. start of by learning about aperture, shutter speed, iso and how they all affect your exposure.

[DrPablo]

surely I should be able to achieve a descent photo using AUTO or LANDSCAPE. I have tried a suggested test and photographed ca grey card the histogram was almost 1 stop to the left which suggests - I am told - that the camera's metering is under exposing. My wife uses a Fugi compact Z2 and comparing our 2 photos of the same scene hers is far superior

A gray card should not fall in the center of your histogram. The gray card is 18% gray. A 12% gray card would fall in the middle of the histogram. Remember that the histogram is linear, but 'stops' of light are exponential, so you're really looking at a logarhithmic scale when you look at the histogram, i.e. a linear transformation of exponential data. If you increase exposure by one stop, you're doubling the amount of light; if you decrease by one stop you're halving the amount of light. This makes it impossible to superimpose stops in a linear fashion onto a histogram.

Still, Landscape mode has nothing to do with exposure except that it will favor smaller apertures (in exchange for longer exposure times).

[Julio]

So, the gray card should fall in a little to the left?

[Julio]

Just shot these--RAW converted to .jpg from XTi w/18-55 kit lens set on partial metering:

+/-0 EC, histogram is slightly to the left:

http://www.frontiernet.net/~jyeste/IMG_0118.JPG


+1 EC, histogram is centered:

http://www.frontiernet.net/~jyeste/IMG_0117.JPG

According to the "shoot to the right" theory, though, 2 would yield better results.

[DrPablo]

And that top example with no EC is exactly what a gray card looks like IRL.

According to the "shoot to the right" theory, though, 2 would yield better results.

Not with this example. It's only really for shadow information that the shoot to the right would make a difference.

[Julio]

You know, I still find my shots look too dark without the +1 EC, in general. If I shot at the metered reading (no EC), wouldn't I be introducing noise when I lighten them up to my liking in DPP and Photoshop? Thanks.

Here is my first real shoot with the XTi--Bond Falls:

www.photosbyjulio.com (http://www.photosbyjulio.com)

I had the EC set at +2/3 and I still had to lighten most, if not all, the shots.

P.S., What is "IRL"?

[DrPablo]

You know, I still find my shots look too dark without the +1 EC, in general. If I shot at the metered reading (no EC), wouldn't I be introducing noise when I lighten them up to my liking in DPP and Photoshop? Thanks.

Here is my first real shoot with the XTi--Bond Falls:


I had the EC set at +2/3 and I still had to lighten most, if not all, the shots.

P.S., What is "IRL"?

IRL = in real life

For shadow and dark midtones you will indeed introduce noise if you lighten them in post-processing, but except for the deepest shadows it usually takes quite a bit of lightening before you get there.

Again, you need to think about what you're metering off of if your metering gives you an underexposed image.

It would help if you take a copy of The Negative by Ansel Adams out of the library and read about the Zone system. A very pared down Zone system goes as follows:

The real world can be divided into 'stops', which are doublings of light. Generally for negative film you can expect to record detail in 8-9 stops, which are numbered Zone 0 - Zone 10 (where Zone 0 is completely absent of exposure, and Zone 10 is 'blown').

A gray card, when given normal exposure, by definition falls on Zone 5.

This doesn't mean that you always want it on Zone 5 -- it just means that in the absence of exposure compensation of some sort, it will fall on Zone 5.

But say you have something that looks more or less like a Zone 5 tonality, but you want it rendered more lightly in the photo. Well, you can simply meter off that subject (which will suggest an exposure that will place it on Zone 5), then add a stop of exposure. This will place that subject on Zone 6 instead.

The point is, you know that your meter will try to make a gray card out of anything you point it at. So if you point it at something a stop brighter than a gray card, you'll need to add in that exposure manually.


So here's why you had to lighten your pictures of the waterfall -- a good portion of your subject is the falls itself, which you would never want to fall on zone 5, i.e. the same as 18% gray. It should fall on zone 7 to zone 8, namely 2 to 3 stops brighter than neutral gray. Your camera's meter has no idea what your subject should look like -- it's just assuming that it's a gray card. But you know better, so you need to either 1) meter off the falls and add exposure, or 2) meter off a gray card that's in the same lighting as the falls.

[stupot]

...
Here is my first real shoot with the XTi--Bond Falls:

www.photosbyjulio.com (http://www.photosbyjulio.com)

I had the EC set at +2/3 and I still had to lighten most, if not all, the shots.

P.S., What is "IRL"?


not a good subject to test on:) the camera metered for the water, by adjusting EC you've blown most of it out, but the background is exposed correctly. this is a case where you should expose for the highlights (water) and attemp to bring back detail in the shadows (surrounding trees etc) by taking multiple exposures or fiddling about in the shadow/highlight tool... or going back at a different time of day, ie sunset, when there is still some evening sun on the trees but the water is in shade. and this could present all sorts of white balance problems!

[davidfig]

You've run into canon stupid mode. Set it to P and not auto. In P mode is will make a better decision on when to turn on flash.

[Julio]

I don't use Auto mode. Also, I've been a photographer for MANY years, since all manual 35mm cameras--I have a little understanding of how it works. My problem is that I need to get to know the XTi as it is behaving differently than any other camera I've owned: 35mm Nikons and Canons, digital: Olympus, Fuji, and now Canon.

I have ordered Understanding Exposure (revised) and will do as DrPablo suggested and check out a copy of The Negative, Ansel Adams. Thanks.

[storeman]

I'm far from being an expert but I agree with stupot.

In the falls images, by far the majority of the image is the water which is the brightest part. This will have fooled the camera to underexpose. Your +EC has brought it back a bit but blown out the highlights.

If you shot in raw, you could have made two conversions, one adjusted for the hilights and the other exposed for the shadows and blended them in PS

[Julio]

I did shoot in RAW. I'll give it a try later...

In most of the shots, though, there is still detail in the water.

[Julio]

OH! And I calibrate my monitor on a regular basis.

[TMR Design]

You would think that if you just put the camera in Auto it would do the trick but that just isn't the case unless, as was suggested, the skies are blue and it is daylight with tons of light and no glare from water. When I got my first P&S (Canon A620) I used Auto, then moved to Program, and then when I finally decided to learn about the other creative modes that is when my picture taking changed and I started to take better photographs with more consistent results.
The same is true of a DSLR in that when its a beautiful blue sky and there is tons of great light you can take very nice pictures in Auto or Program, but switching to Av, Tv or M makes the camera shine.

There is a learning curve, no one is denying that, but you have to 1. Learn your camera, and 2. Understand basic principles of photography.

[liza]

Stay out of the idiot modes and learn the connection between ISO, shutter, and aperture. Those are the basic tenets of photography. It's all about light!

A good book to read in Peterson's "Understanding Exposure." You'll gain some clarity on the subject after reading it.

[Julio]

Have you guys read my replies?? :confused: :confused: :confused:

I know photography (I guess I just need to learn the XTi's idiosyncracies--which I'm doing), I don't shoot auto, I do shoot RAW, I ordered the book before I even started on this thread, I calibrate my monitor regularly with Pantone's Huey...

[ijohnson]

For me, the 28-135 was always a notoriously dark lens. I had to set EC at least up one stop.

The 10D as well, which is almost exactly like the 300d was a regular under-exposer.

That's all I got.

[tzalman]

Julio -
Those Bond Falls photos have a very wide contrast range, greater than the range of the camera. This means one end or the other is going to be clipped. If you have experience with film, digital is like slide film for which the motto was "expose for the highlights", the opposite of negative. If one extreme has to be sacrificed it should be the shadows because they are to some extent recoverable but a burnt out highlight is gone forever. Even if shadow recovery involves some increase of noise it is possible to mask the shadows and apply noise reduction only there. "Expose to the right" applies to narrow contrast range subjects. In your falls pictures if you had metered off a grey card the water would already have been clipped so how could the exposure have been moved further right? Learn the idiosyncracies of your camera's histogram by comparing it to the bigger and more accurate histogram in your RAW converter. Discover where the histogram's highlight values fall just before clipping occurs. Bear in mind that the histogram is weighted to represent primarily the green channel and that it is influenced by the Jpg parameters you have set and therefore may not truly reflect RAW exposure. These are the first steps in learning to know and enjoy your camera.

[RobKirkwood]

Julio -
Those Bond Falls photos have a very wide contrast range, greater than the range of the camera. This means one end or the other is going to be clipped. If you have experience with film, digital is like slide film for which the motto was "expose for the highlights", the opposite of negative.Exactly right - this is where your problem lies Julio.

As DrPablo mentioned, film negative can handle around 8-9 stops, but Canon DSLRs can only record about 5 stops (which is very similar to transparency). So something has to give ....fortunately RAW should give you around +/- 3 stops of exposure correction, and enable you to modify the image so you've got detail in both the shadows and the highlights.

With film negative you could shoot without bothering too much about accurate metering and still get a great result, because the latitude of the film itself, and the compensation introduced at the printing stage would mask the fact that exposure was not where it should have been.

With digital (and transparency before it), you have to be more accurate with exposure, and that means (as has already been mentioned) considering what you want your metering to take into account.

It's exactly this issue that throws off many experienced film-shooting wedding photographers who switch to digital ...in the past their labs have saved their work and they never realised!

Your camera is working fine, and working normally - it's just expecting more of you! :)

Rob

[Julio]

Thanks, Elie & Rob!!

[Julio]

OOPS!! I just realized I TOTALLY hijacked this thread. My SINCEREST apologies to the OP!!! :o :o :o :o :o

[Julio]

And NOW, I just realized some of those posts that I was asking if they had read my responses were probably directed at the OP. MAN! I messed up. I'm REALLY sorry, folks.