Exposure Changes

Hey all,

If i knew what to call this issue i am sure that it is easily explained but its the first time i've come across it myself.

Monday I assisted a friend with shooting a wedding. Throughout the day, I took hundreds of shots, primarily in Shutter Priority (i normally shoot in Manual and have never seen this issue before, but i wanted to make sure my shots were perfect so i didnt want to miss shots by playing with settings) When shooting throughout the day, the photos looked perfectly exposed on my camera. I had my exposure compensation set to 1/3 and 2/3s OVER exposed. Now when i uploaded all of the pictures into lightroom 3, they appear to be properly exposed at first. When each image finishes "loading" it darkens up to the point of being 1-2.5 full stops UNDER exposed... when i adjust the settings to compensate in post, i'm receiving a ton of noise and even some banding (shots were taken between 200-500 ISO)

I was shooting with a gripped 5d Mark II and primarily a 24-105 f4L

has anyone come across this issue and know of any adjustments i could make in fixing this, or at least providing me with the knowledge to prevent this from happening again.

thanks in advance to anyone and I'm sorry again if this was something easily searched

after looking at the histograms on my camera they seem a little on the darker side... i guess i should have checked this during the shoot.. i was just going by the LCD screen and they looked great

yeah the Histograms never lie...

Is LR applying any settings during import? I know that version 2, by default, would apply settings to all RAW images when they were imported and converted to DNG files. You might want to check those settings and turn them off.

If the histogram curve is to the left then you've definitely found your culprit. The LCD preview can only give you a hint but the histogram should always be in your display.


And, when shooting in a semi-auto mode such as Tv or Av you still can't afford to be careless. If the camera's meter gets thrown off by subject matter that is too light or too dark you need to be aware of the situation and be prepared to use Exposure Compensation, just like how when shooting Manual you have to be prepared to adjust your shutter speed, aperture, or ISO.

TGrundvig wrote in post #12715933
Is LR applying any settings during import?

Yes. LR, indeed any raw processor, must apply some settings to convert the raw data to a visible image.

The key question is - does LR apply some inappropriate settings. Unfortunately, it doesn't sound like this is the case.

The LCD is for checking if Aunt Ethel blinked when the flash fired or if you cut off the top of Uncle Fred's head. That's all.

yeah, lesson learned i suppose...

If you have been getting good exposures with one method, why would you change methods in a critical situation? IMO, that concept of using Tv when you want perfect exposures is just wrong, especially when you're used to shooting in M?

And, you don't "play with settings", either. You pick the one that will work best. Try this to speed up your M settings & don't look back: Need an exposure crutch?

Yeah, AV tends to have issues with weddings, since everyone's generally either wearing white (i.e. the bride) or really dark colors. I've only shot one wedding, but even though it was outdoors, and there was some variable lighting, manual was definitely the way to go. I just took some exposure readings in the full daylight as well as in the shade prior to the ceremony, and it was actually a lot easier to change the shutter speed in manual depending on where my subjects were than trying to guess on the fly what a good EC would be for a picture of mostly the bride in white, but also a little bit of the groom in black.

As for the photos, if in editing, you see you have a lot of empty area on the right side of the histogram, you can also add some exposure by pulling the right side slider in the Levels over to the right most area of your histogram slope (that's probably not the correct terminology, but hopefully that makes sense). I may just be imagining things, but that doesn't seem to add as much noise to the photo as increasing the exposure. Of course, you may very well still need to increase the exposure, as you can only do so much with the levels before you start clipping the highlights.

Kit Cloudkicker wrote in post #12715759
Now when i uploaded all of the pictures into lightroom 3, they appear to be properly exposed at first. When each image finishes "loading" it darkens up to the point of being 1-2.5 full stops UNDER exposed...

Sounds like the built in preview (based on the in camera parameters) is okay.

Few possibilities:

1. You have AutoLightingOptimiser set on in camera.
   
2. Your parameters are quite a bit off from the defaults
   
3. Your LR default is not okay (hint: Default is everything zero, except "brightness" is 50, contrast 25.)