Help with picture

Can someone tell me where I went wrong on this picture? I have a bunch like this and they are grainey. My settings are attached. Can someone please give me assistance on this? Thanks.
PS This is Antelope Canyon

Hey Lone-Eagle,
One thing I see is "Cloudy" for the temperature setting, though that wouldn't have affected as much as the ISO. I would also be in "M" (Manual) mode.

Considering where you were, perhaps an ISO of 100 or 200 with a longer exposure time such as 0.3s, 1/4s, 1/5s or 1/6s (on a tripod of course) at F4. There is the other end of the spectrum, where you could try ISO 800 or 1600 with appropriate aperture & shutter speed.

In situations like this, where you are in a really incredible space...I try to shoot at a variety of ISO, aperture & shutter speeds, so that I get at least 1 or 2 good shots out of the whole schebang!

An option to avoid this in the future (something a buddy of mine uses) is:
Hoodloop 3.0

This will allow you to see the detail a little better than just using the naked eye.

Ultimately, playing with the ISO, aperture & shutter speeds will give you more knowledge for the future, so keep shooting and learning!

1/200 at f/5.6 doesn't sound like enough light for a dark slot canyon. I suspect the camera's autoexposure was greatly biased by the bright slit of sky in the frame, resulting in underexposure of the rocks.

Double check that your RAW utility doesn't have something set funny. Assuming there isn't, I doubt it there is much you can do to rescue the images.

In high contrast situations like this you'll need to override the camera's meter and manually determine/assign the specific exposure for the subject(s) in the scene. Suggest you find a good book and read up on exposure and metering. Adam's old book, 'The Negative,' is available in many libraries and is an excellent source of information.

If you like, send one of the RAW files to ggeonerdd@yahoo.com I'll give it a look.

It looks like digital noise, but I wouldn't expect that much noise from an XSi unless you were shooting at ISO 3200 or higher. It should have no problem with ISO 400.
Did you shoot JPG + RAW, or just RAW? I would be curious to see if this showed up in the JPG as well.
Was it really dark originally, and you cranked the exposure way up to try to recover? 1/200 seems pretty quick, even at ISO400, F5.6. Also the brighter orange areas, and the sky seem better.
Try reproducing the effect using the same settings in a dark room or after dusk to see if you get the same result.

Geonerd wrote in post #13235226
In high contrast situations like this you'll need to override the camera's meter and manually determine/assign the specific exposure for the subject(s) in the scene. Suggest you find a good book and read up on exposure and metering. Adam's old book, 'The Negative,' is available in many libraries and is an excellent source of information.

Another good tip for Antelope Canyon is never shoot with the sky or the sun in the frame. It definitely messes with your metering. The bright sky vs the dark inside is more exposure stops than most cameras can handle. HDR may work to fix it if you shoot bracketed exposures.

Yea, the image is greatly underexposed. Dunnow what happened, but either the camera or operator got out of whack. The camera's built-in meter should generally do a better job than this. Shame it had to happen on vacation.

Until you lean more about metering and how to make the camera do what you want, it would be a good idea to 'chimp' the histogram immediately after shooting any unusual scenes - places where the camera may get confused. (Look at all three channels / curves, if the camera shows them, to avoid one channel - usually red - being blown out. The default single-channel histogram usually represents the green channel, or an average of all three. If this doesn't make sense, don't sweat if for now.)

The first image is what your .CR2 looks like without any 'tweaking.'
The second image is about all I could 'dig' out of it before the noise started to get too terrible. Even then, you can see banding and grunge. It's almost impossible to get accurate colors out of the underexposed areas but if you limit shadow recovery and play with the curves you might get a fair B/W image out of the deal.

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Geonerd wrote in post #13235905
Yea, the image is greatly underexposed. Dunnow what happened, but either the camera or operator got out of whack. The camera's built-in meter should generally do a better job than this. Shame it had to happen on vacation.

Until you lean more about metering and how to make the camera do what you want, it would be a good idea to 'chimp' the histogram immediately after shooting any unusual scenes - places where the camera may get confused. (Look at all three channels / curves, if the camera shows them, to avoid one channel - usually red - being blown out. The default single-channel histogram usually represents the green channel, or an average of all three. If this doesn't make sense, don't sweat if for now.)

The first image is what your .CR2 looks like without any 'tweaking.'
The second image is about all I could 'dig' out of it before the noise started to get too terrible. Even then, you can see banding and grunge. It's almost impossible to get accurate colors out of the underexposed areas but if you limit shadow recovery and play with the curves you might get a fair B/W image out of the deal.

Thanks Dale