Over Exposure=good?

Do you think iam shooting far enough to the right?

RAW

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

Byte size: ZERO | Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

Byte size: ZERO | Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

I'm surprised it recovered that well. Accurate exposures are better than overexposure.

Agree with Tim.
The car itself looks great; but leafs are somewhat burn out.

Thanks for the replies.

People say to shoot to the right with canon cameras...

TomCross13 wrote in post #12300979
Do you think iam shooting far enough to the right?

That depends on your RAW histogram, not the image or the JPEG histogram.
This histogram should be positioned to the right but without clipping in any of the 3 colour channels.

Too much!!! You are blowing the highlights.

You want to expose to the right but not clip the highlights on the histogram which you are doing with these.

All the clipped highlights are turning red in LR3. These shots were taken +1 stop. I'll do some experimenting. Thanks.

Use the histogram on your camera. That'll be your best aid.

On LR3 tutoring, you can hold down the 'Alt' key in PC, and moving alone the 'Recovery' till all photo turn into black. Then you should get all your highlights back.

Actually I think you're shooting too far to the right i.e. you're overexposing. If you look at where the car is parked in the first picture... I assume its a concrete or gravel of some sort...its all blown out and in the recovery there is no detail. That shows the channels were severely clipped.

Also judging by the hard shadows you weren't shooting at an ideal time of the day which doesn't help matters. The range of the scene exceeds what your camera's sensor can handle. Since your camera doesn't show a Raw histogram learning to expose to the right correctly comes with experience. Ideally you want to right side of the camera's histogram to come as close as possible to the edge without exceeding it. If you see a spike on the right end of any of the channels you've overexposed.

EDIT: I took a look at the EXIF and the first thing that jumped out at me is that you were shooting at ISO 200. On a bright sunny day ideally you want to be shooting at the lowest "normal" ISO which is 100.

HOSTED PHOTO
please log in to view hosted photos in full size.

As others have said: Overexposed. (First to the point of being unrecoverable)

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorial​s/expose-right.shtml

The photo subject is a tricky one. You have, for all intents and purposes, a black object - the car - juxtaposed with a light (gray, in this case) background - the curbing and parking lot. How does one accurately set this shot up? Bracket to the left and right sides?

You could bracket the shots and then blend the exposure in post or go the HDR route.

But strictly from a photography perspective where I only intend to make one exposure I would set my camera to ISO 100, Manual Exposure mode, and either center-weighted or partial metering. Then I'd apply the Sunny 16 Rule which states that on a sunny day "the correct exposure for any subject is f/16 at the shutter speed nearest to the reciprocal of the film speed (ISO).

Judging by the hard edge of the shadow I'd set my camera f/16 and 1/125 shutter speed (1/100 is not a "traditional" stop so the closest shutter speed is 1/125). Then knowing that f/16 is more DOF than I need I'd adjust my exposure to f/4 @ 1/2000 or f/5.6 @ 1/1000 (those exposures are the same as f16 @ 1/125).

The trick is in understanding how the camera's meter works. Since it averages each scene to 18% grey (some say 14%) its already exposing the blacks/shadows to the right. Ideally you'd then add some negative exposure compensation to shorten the shutter speed (less light hitting sensor = darker shadows). From my experience most people find it counter-intuitive to increase shutter speed when shooting dark objects.

Racer997 wrote in post #12301890
The photo subject is a tricky one. You have, for all intents and purposes, a black object - the car - juxtaposed with a light (gray, in this case) background - the curbing and parking lot. How does one accurately set this shot up? Bracket to the left and right sides?

TomCross13 wrote in post #12301092
Thanks for the replies.
People say to shoot to the right with canon cameras...

#2: You've blown the highlights in the hood, which might not be a bad thing IF you first decided which ones you need to keep & which ones you can let go. I use this as a starting point almost all the time: Need an exposure crutch?

OTOH, the exposure of the pole growing out of the top looks pretty good!

You should post a link to download one of the raw files. Otherwise, the judgement of what is overexposed or blown is somewhat subjective and based on your processing, not necessarily the data itself.

In general, the very bright highlight areas are turning gray as a result of trying to recover areas that have no recoverable data - the asphalt, the back of the tractor trailer in the background, etc. This would indicate that those areas are gone in the raw file.

You picked a challenging time of day to shoot anything, let alone a black shiny car. If you must shoot at this time of day, try to find a better location that doesn't have a lot of white or bright objects around to blow out the details in the vehicle via their reflections. You could also find some open shade and locate the vehicle there for some toned-down lighting and manageable dynamic range. You could also use flash/ reflectors and expose the background with shutter speed and the vehicle with aperture/flash power, as well as manage the reflections to emphasize the contours of the vehicle body, etc. As mentioned by others, you could also try some exposure blending or HDR approaches as well.

To judge the exposure via the histogram, consider the UniWB approach to making the histogram on the back of your camera more indicative of the raw channel data.

Kirk