Yuck!! Can someone please tell me what went wrong?

I recently shot a wedding and many of my photos turned out overexposed. I was using the following:

• 5D MKI
  
• 24-70L
  
• 580EXII with "A better bounce card" made of white foam and always firing vertically (never directly at my subject).

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My guess on this one would be that your meter grabbed a whole bunch of black suits and tried to compensate up toward 18% Grey.

This needed about 2/3 -EC to make the blacks, blacker.

I didn't think about the black tuxes fooling my meter. Therefore, I guess the camera grabbed a slower shutter speed than what it should...hence over exposing the photo a bit...but doesn't it look like my flash was extremely overpowering? Maybe it was a combination of both? Fooled meter + too much flash?
Any advice moving forward?

One other thing I see: Given that the EXIF says 5 o'clock in the afternoon (when I'm guessing it's still very light out...) why is your ISO so high for outdoors?

First thing that came to my mind as well. At least for this image.

Av mode the canon is in fill flash mode.

Meetering has decided the scene needs to be brighter due to black suits taking up 2/3rds of the frame

Then its thrown some fill flash on top.

Oh Yeah... Av Mode = Bad in the Canon Flash world.

FlyingPhotog wrote in post #10753065
One other thing I see: Given that the EXIF says 5 o'clock in the afternoon (when I'm guessing it's still very light out...) why is your ISO so high for outdoors?

Because I was running indoors and outdoors, every few minutes. So, I chose a medium ISO level.

snyper77 wrote in post #10753361
Because I was running indoors and outdoors, every few minutes. So, I chose a medium ISO level.

SO I guess on average...you're properly exposed..:p

It actually isn't that bad, the only place you've lost detail is the shirts. Play with the curves a little.

As for Av+flash being bad, I disagree, you've just got to use it for the right purpose.

Having not thought of the black suits and white dresses playing with exposure I'm assuming you were just shooting extra or for fun, right? Just a good learning experience then.

Try bracketing your shots next time?

Personally, I wouldn't have had the lens stopped down that much. And I would not have used evaluative metering on such a 'contrasty' image. I would have spot metered off their faces.

.

FlyingPhotog wrote in post #10753357
Oh Yeah... Av Mode = Bad in the Canon Flash world.

This was my first thought. The camera is exposing the blacks as 18% gray (overexpose!) and then adding fill flash (double overexpose!).

Manual mode and then using a little fill would have produced much better results, or Av with exposure compensation and no flash.

Very quick edit, hope you dont mind.

http://i27.photobucket​.com …bdickinson/blow​n_out2.jpg

Shoot in manual. From the EXIF your shutter speed is way too slow, your aperture is too wide open and your ISO is way too high especially when using a flash in the daylight. It probably would have been fine with those settings without using the flash.

Take Care,
Cheers, Patrick

Ah all he realy needed was -2/3rds to 1 ev exp comp to deal with the black suits would have been fine.