Slightly overexposed

I am still learning my way around the 30D, and finally gettng the hang of it (compared to P&S). I have noticed however that virtually every shot I take using the "proper" exposure, whether in Av, P, M, T or fully auto comes out a little overexposed. When I've tried bracketing shots, almost invariable, 1/3 or 2/3 under gives me a better shot. I realize that I can set this for each shot when I take it. But is there a way to program the camera to close shutter or increase speed that 1/3 automatically?
If it's in the manual, I missed it.

Also - what's with that silly 2-way on switch??? Is there really much purpose in that? I find that when I put my eye to the viewfinder my schnoz often turns the switch to the intermediate position, so then I go to turn that knob & nothing happens!

Thanks

What metering (Evaluative, CWA, Partial, Spot) are you using? What are your typical subjects? It's possible that you habitually shoot darker scenes that the camera opens up the exposure for. Are you basing the "overexposure" verdict on the camera's LCD? What does the histogram look like? The camera's LCD isn't a very good guide to exposure. It's better for checking for gross focussing/shutter speed/compositional errors. The histogram is a much better aid to validating exposure. It shouldn't be bunched up all at one end, but should (normally) extend across the whole width of the graph.

Post some examples.

Like Jon said, be sure to mind your metering. If you are using the spot meter... be aware that it's not a very small circle even though it is smaller than the partial metering circle of the 20D. You could still end up with some dark areas in the circle which would make your metering try and average it out. Best bet when metering... get close enough so the circle is filled with what you are metering for. For example... if you are trying to meter off of a person's face... get close enough to the person so that the circle is filled entirely with their skin. That will normally give you the best results. If getting closer to your subject is not possible... you can always take a subsitute reading from your hand as long as the lighting is the same. Sunlight will generally reflect light off of your skin the same as it will the subject's skin. Just hold out your hand far enough for the lens to focus on it... be careful to not let any shadow cast on it or it will change the reading... use the AE lock button to lock the exposure in then focus on your subject and take the shot.

Now... about the histogram. Jon did say, "NORMALLY" and he is right. But there is more to it. Sometimes if you try to judge exposure by the histogram, it can fool you. Let me explain. If you have a scene where the background or lots of the foreground areas are dark... your histogram CAN and WILL be mostly to the left of the graph. This doesn't necessarily mean that you have underexposed the shot. It only means that you have a lot of image data in the shadows. Look at this example... What you'll see looking at the histogram for the "whole image" is that most of the image data is in the shadows. This COULD be interpreted in a way that says I've underexposed this image. However, that would be wrong. In this image, I did take a subsitute reading from my own hand. By using the lasso tool and just circling the arm of my daughter(where I've got her arm circled here), the histogram shows that I've exposed the skin pretty well. The histogram has the nice even levels across the luminosity scale with no clipping in either highlights or shadows. Had I made adjustments to get my histogram to look like this in the camera... I would have blown out the skin tones for sure. I hope that this helps.

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

I had a similar question a while back - someone recommended the book 'Understanding Exposure'. I bought it and would estimate that I know 300% more than I used to.

Buy it - you won't regret it.

OOPS! That book is sitting on my coffee table, waiting for me to read it. It was bought for me by an Artist friend (along with a similar one on Composition), but before I had a dSLR, so it wasn't so "urgent" to read it. As we'll be exhibiting at the Rittenhouse Art Fair this week (Anyone in Philly, come by - let me know, I'll give you the booth info), I'll have time to read. So I guess I know what I am going to be reading.

As for the comments here - where I have noticed this issue is mainly on very light surfaces (yellow or white flowers), where I am not focused in a closeup mode. And I was using evaluative metering. I guess I'll try spot metering - seems that could be the problem. I took over 200 shots at the Botanical Garden yesterday, so still getting through them, and haven't really prep'd anything to upload yet.

THANKS

You don't need the AE lock. There's where the advantage to shooting manual is at. Meter your hand in the same light and just adjust appropriately.

But then, ultimately, it all goes back to, understanding exposure.

grego wrote:
You don't need the AE lock. There's where the advantage to shooting manual is at. Meter your hand in the same light and just adjust appropriately.

But then, ultimately, it all goes back to, understanding exposure.

lol... good point. I normally do shoot manual. And I actually used a hand held meter for the sample shot... I was trying to keep it as simple as possible for the OP. But you are right 100%

Options are always good, and yours is a good one too. For me, I just got frustrated as sometimes my AE, i'd accidently knock off or i'd press a button that would kick it out of its lock.

I didn't get to spend that much time with film, but in my days with the AE-1 i learned something useful. Manual exposure!! Wooo!!

Funny mine is quite the oposite, it underexposes by 1 stop.

I had the same problem the first day I shot with the 30D (search the topic: 30D overexposing?!). But 700 shots later, the problem didn't come back. Compare to my old 300D, I find that the 30D will shoot with more exposure. But when I look at the histograms, I don't see any problem. Doing mostly outdoor shooting (forests, birds), the green and red channels are much more solicited than the blue one. I noticed that the 30D will often choose an exposure where the green/red channels look overexposed (but not saturated) because values for the blue channel are low in those conditions. Thus to make space for the blue, the camera chooses an exposure where green/red will appear higher in the histogram. If your subject is composed mostly of green/red, it will look overexposed. Now that I understand this, I can cope with it. Either by using post-processing or by setting an exposure compensation of -1/3 to -2/3 when I detect the problem in the field.

Best thing would be to give us some examples of what you think is wrong exposure.

Here are 2 sets. In the one attached to this post, the Underexpsoed by One Third is first. (Yes, I realize the Normal exposure isn't properly focused)

Since I am limited to 2 images, next post will have a different set with a differnce of a full unit.

Seems to me that in both cases, the underexposed looks better - especially the next set, where the proper exposure really looks washed out to my eye.

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

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

And the other set, underexposed first

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

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

To round up my day's shooting, I got a kick out of this picture:

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

You didn't read a thing I wrote before did you?

The first image here is NOT underexposed. Are you going by the histogram? The flower looks to be properly exposed and that is what your camera metered for. The background is dark which is what causes you to think this image is underexposed. Especially looking at the histogram. The problem here is that you are expecting a much higher dynamic range than is possible with one shot. You can either expose for the background in which case, the rose would be overexposed, or you can expose for the rose which would make your background too dark. OR, you can bracket your shot and blend them to make an HDR photo. The easy way though is to take what you've got and give the shadow areas a lift. Like this:

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

Nice changes - thanks.
But what I meant by "underexposed" was that I set the camera to underexpose what the camera was telling me was the "correct" exposure. So the pics I Called underexposed I thought were properly exposed. It was the CAMERA that wanted me to believe they were underexposed. As has been discussed, I think that for a scene like these, (All taken before this post) spot metering would be better than evaluative. So that will be my next set of trials. (ahhh - the advantages of digital over film - can just keep on shooting & trying so many different things)
And I really wasn't basing this on the histograms - more on just how it looked out of the camera.