Exposure/histogram question

versedmb wrote in post #4122225
I knew the shot was not exposed correctly, I was just trying to figure out how to get it right in camera the first time.

I now know that I would have had to accept more blown highlights in the background in order to expose her face properly.

I really couldn't have used fill flash as my the max flash sync is 1/250 Sec on the 40D. The shot was taken at 1/5000 Sec; thus in order to achieve a SS of 1/250 Sec I would have had to use a much smaller aperature, eliminating the background blur that I was after.

What flash are you using? I personally have always been afraid of flash photography. I just recently started using one for a lot of things and am getting much better results. I always wondered about the 1/250 sync and found that the 580EX and some others have high speed sync, which how I understand it the flash is longer and last while the mirror is up and shutter open so that you can use it at pretty much any shutter speed. You have to have a flash that offers that though. I'm sure there is a better explination of how it works, but this is my lamemans version.

versedmb wrote in post #4122225
I knew the shot was not exposed correctly, I was just trying to figure out how to get it right in camera the first time.

I now know that I would have had to accept more blown highlights in the background in order to expose her face properly.

I really couldn't have used fill flash as my the max flash sync is 1/250 Sec on the 40D. The shot was taken at 1/5000 Sec; thus in order to achieve a SS of 1/250 Sec I would have had to use a much smaller aperature, eliminating the background blur that I was after.

I think that this would have been a good candidate for fill flash, but you probably would need to go to manual exposure and negative flash compensation to avoid blowing out the highlight in the face. You could stay with the 1/250 shutter speed or even slower because you want to get some of the background -- your aperture setting will dictate the blurriness of the background. You are, indeed, attempting a tricky shot because of the dark clothing procucing a high contrast.

At some point you will have to pick a point of reasonable compromise then adjust in PP, but I think fill flash with flash compensation to the negative and a bit slower shtutter speed to pick up the background would give you a better starting point -- and shoot in RAW to give you lattitude in adjustment.

These situations are good to help us to experiment and to learn!

Hope this helps a bit,

Tony

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Several Canon cameras, too many lenses and stuff to list
Tony Long Photos on PBase

I'd suggest doing some reading on exposure. Good sources are authors Bryan Peterson and John Shaw.

Chimping on the LCD will mess you up every time. Generally, on my cameras, if it is properly exposed it will look overexposed on the LCD. If it looks properly exposed it is really underexposed as you discovered.

How familiar are you with the operation of your light meter and what it is doing?

J

Good suggestions here, thanks. I have the 430ex; I didn't realize that I could use it above 1/250 sec.

I'm fairly good at exposing landscapes and nature shots, but portraits are a whole new world for me. I've been meaning to pick up a copy of "Understanding Exposure" for some time now; maybe now is the time!

Good choice. Another great book to check out is John Shaw's Nature Photographer's Field Guide. The section on exposure is worth the price of the book alone.

J.