5D underexposing badly in bright sunlight

The circle around the dot is evaluative. Partial is just the circle, the dot is spot. I use partial and shoot manual, so any underexposure is my fault. Just remember the meter is trying to make everything 18% grey, like Airfrog said. With skin tones, I am probably overexposing by 1-1.5 stops from neutral, and with white dresses, probably about the same, from 18% grey.

before i post these images, how do u view what metering mode u use on lightroom during library mode or you cant? i have the usual shutter speed/aperture, iso etc but doesnt tell u metering mode. Anyways, from my understanding, if there are lots of darks in your pic, wouldnt your camera automatically try to make it a bit lighter so to speak? and again, loads of whites, it will make your camera take pics a bit darker? hence the whole 18% grey?

Right pics unprocessed, exported out straight from LR... first two are 5D and 24-70mm

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My advice for the formals is to get a hand held meter and use it. Otherwise spot/partial meter a face and watch the histogram. Problem with full sunlight is there's LOTS of light, you could be at ISO100 F16 1/250th. Too much contrast too. I always put the sun behind people and light them with flash (580EX on camera at full power on manual and a battery pack), so they don't squint. * to preflash to prevent blinkers.

Oh and the 5D has a sync speed of 1/200th I think, keep your shutter below that even if you have to go to F32 otherwise the flash power will be hugely reduced in HSS mode. Without HSS it'd blow out the background.

The first two images look like you were exposing for the whites, therefore the darker colors WILL be under exposed. I recommend not shooting subjects while they are facing the sun, it produces unsightly shadows as well as making exposure problems more likely to occur. I don't think there is anything wrong with the camera because if it underexposes outside it would mostlikely do the same inside as well.

tim wrote in post #3940146
My advice for the formals is to get a hand held meter and use it. Otherwise spot/partial meter a face and watch the histogram. Problem with full sunlight is there's LOTS of light, you could be at ISO100 F16 1/250th. Too much contrast too. I always put the sun behind people and light them with flash (580EX on camera at full power on manual and a battery pack), so they don't squint. * to preflash to prevent blinkers.

does the camera cause havoc with sunlight directly on people? Just dont get why the 20D doesnt have the same effect as the 5D. I just thought if there were a lot of blacks, camera will make it a bit more lighter hence more grey?

goforphoto wrote in post #3940296
The first two images look like you were exposing for the whites, therefore the darker colors WILL be under exposed. I recommend not shooting subjects while they are facing the sun, it produces unsightly shadows as well as making exposure problems more likely to occur. I don't think there is anything wrong with the camera because if it underexposes outside it would mostlikely do the same inside as well.

i thought evaluative metering does just that, the overall average? if anything i thought it would of made the blacker pics brighter? only way i fixed this was a bit more powerful fill flash

If anything, shooting against the sun causes even more issues... like during the first dance, if there are a lot of flashing lights from the DJ box and im shooting against it, my 5D will find it extremely hard trying to focus... that or its a lens issue

Looking at the first two pics, I'd say your exposure is as good as can be managed. There's just too much contrast in the subjects.

On the first pic, my eyedropper says the groom's shirt is just short of pure white (RGB values of 252, 250, 251) while his jacket is almost black (3, 3, 3 on the right sleeve).

Second pic, the bride's gown (skirt) is pure white (255, 255, 255) while on her right the man's jacket is pure black (0, 0, 0).

The exposure is perfect, in other words. The contrast is too high and (if you're shooting RAW) must be adjusted in PP. In jpeg shooting it might be useful to set contrast to -2).

Obviously fill flash would be a great help here.

-js

Looks like the 5D is exposing better than the 20D in those images. The whites are exposed so they are bright white, and the contrast between whites and blacks in the 5D images are so great that exposing for the highlights leaves you with very dark blacks. The camera doesn't have the dynamic range to overcome that (even the Fuji S5 would struggle with that much contrast).

#3 w/the 20D is overexposed ... the camera exposed more for the shadows, and blew the highlights. #5 is very, very overexposed for apparently the same reason. #4 isn't as bad because the range between highlights and shadows is not as great as 1,2,3 and 5.

In my experience, evaluative metering is the camera trying to make everything 18% grey, and also trying to prioritize retaining the highlights.

The kind of metering you used is in the EXIF data of the images.

tim wrote in post #3940146
My advice for the formals is to get a hand held meter and use it. Otherwise spot/partial meter a face and watch the histogram. Problem with full sunlight is there's LOTS of light, you could be at ISO100 F16 1/250th. Too much contrast too. I always put the sun behind people and light them with flash (580EX on camera at full power on manual and a battery pack), so they don't squint. * to preflash to prevent blinkers.

Thank you! I was just about to suggest a handheld meter too!

I'd recommend to get an incidence meter and learning how to use it (it's easy) then set the camera to manual, select both aperture and shutter speed per the meter. With a little practice, you can nail the exposure nearly every time.

Between the dark tuxes and white dresses, a wedding is hard for any reflective meter. Add to that an outdoor setting, and sunny areas mixed with shaded backgrounds. The meter doesn't stand a chance! That's why I suggest an incidence meter. It measures light falling onto a subject, rather than what's being reflected from it. There are incidence meters that also measure flash and strobe, if you ever want to work with studio lighting. (Personally I use two Minoltas - a Flashmeter V and a Flashmeter IIIF - these are now being sold under the Kenko brand name, I think. I also have a non-flash-capable Sekonic 398 Studio Deluxe... 25 years old, still works great and uses no batteries. All three are incidence meters.)

Once set this way, the exposure won't need to be changed until the lighting conditions change. (I.e., you move inside or into the shade, or perhaps if a cloud comes over or the sun moves lower in the sky or behind a tree.) Looking at your examples, I suspect the same setting could have been used on all of them. Your camera was probably all over the place trying to set the exposure by it's internal, relfective meter.

Once you have established a base exposure, you can still adjust for depth of field, if you wish. For each increment the aperture is opened, simply increase the shutter speed by one increment. Conversely if looking for deeper DOF, for each increment you stop the aperture down smaller, slow the shutter one increment. This is faster and easier than calculating it in your head or re-metering. If the cameras and lenses are in good tune (shutter speeds are accurate, aperture is accurate) and set to the same ISO you should be able to use the same meter reading to set both cameras. In fact, if your one camera is giving you a correct exposure - and you know it - you can just transfer the settings to the other camera, or use it to double check the other camera.

I also agree, a flash would help a lot in the examples shown. Personally I prefer to use one mounted on an L-bracket a bit further away from the lens axis, to reduce the chance of redeye and throw any shadows the flash produces down and behind the subjects. The above suggestion about using full flash is one good method.

You can also add fill flash to candids with good effect. Now to do this when using the camera in manual mode, you'll need to dial back the 550/580/420/430 to force it to act as a fill flash. Otherwise, the flash tries to fire fully, whenever the camera is in manual mode. For fill, set the flash to -1 to -1.5 stops. As bright as the sun is in the examples, I'd probably try -1 first. You will still be getting TTL metering of the flash, just dialed back a bit. The camera's actual exposure per the handheld meter is set to the ambient light, so the fill flash will just help open up the deep shadows. (Note: when the camera is set in Tv or Av modes and the flash is set to ETTL, the flash reverts to fill mode, which is about -1.33 if I recall correctly, unless you override it).

Also check your histograms regularly. They can give you a good clue if your exposures are getting out of whack (maybe because you didn't notice hte lighting was gradually changing). Watch that the "data" isn't piling up strongly on the left (underexposure) or on the right (overexposure).

Finally, if not already doing so you might want shoot RAW. You would then have some more post-processing control over the images, more than when shooting JPEGs. For example, you could pretty easily reduce contrast in these images to help them a bit. Post-processing is my least favorite thing with digital photography, however using Adobe Camera Raw (CS2/Bridge at present) I find I can batch process RAW images about 3 times faster than JPEGs. I'm sure other softwares might give a similar advantage.

He has, and uses, a light-meter.

As I said last night, and now by looking at the shots what's happening is that the sunlight itself is messing with the exposure. With the metering mode you use, center weighted, it will cause any extremes of black or white to mess the exposure up, as is this case. The 20D shots look to be overexposed, and the only one of the above that look okay is #3. Chimp more! Use the histogram, as you say its slanting to the left, so that tells you that you need to use positive EC.

And as Tim has said, stop using FP (HSS) flash, the flash is vastly reduced and wont give you a consistent pulse of light so you cant judge what the picture will turn out like - like we always argue about: I need to know exactly what the camera will do, whereas you say you dont need to understand to use something.

tim wrote in post #3940146
My advice for the formals is to get a hand held meter and use it. Otherwise spot/partial meter a face and watch the histogram. Problem with full sunlight is there's LOTS of light, you could be at ISO100 F16 1/250th. Too much contrast too. I always put the sun behind people and light them with flash (580EX on camera at full power on manual and a battery pack), so they don't squint. * to preflash to prevent blinkers.

+1, and I recommend this:
https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=335569 and this:
http://photonotes.org/​articles/eos-flash/ as well.

What a great thread full of practical advice. I am going to shoot my first wedding soon and I'm real glad to have read all of this!

After I switched to spot metering all of my photos improved. I too had the troubles you mention with evaluative metering.

After viewing your photos, I understand what your saying. I would have gotten much closer to the subjects in the group shots to better attain better exposure. I too have a sekonic light meter that I predominantly use to check my camera meter!