Sunshine and exposure?

Wasn't sure how to title this thread. I was at my daughters "powderpuff" football game yesterday. I shot form the stands with 40D and 28-135. Yes I concede this is far from the right lens for this job but it's what I have at the moment. Anyway, pretty much all the pictures taken had an issue with the sunlight on the players. The sun seemed to blowout the exposed skin; look at the back the runners arm and legs. Attached is an example with exif. The only pp was WB correction and conversion from raw to jpeg in DPP. Most of the other pictures are worse. What should I have done differently? Is the evaluative metering the culprit? Any helpful advise/tips/techniques is much appreciated. Thanks!

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Judging by the shadows, the sun was low in the sky and behind the players. This always guarantees that the shadowed features will be underexposed unless you overexpose the sunlit parts, as you did here. My suggestion would be to wait for the second half, when your daughter's team is running into the sun. The sun being low in the sky is good -- no raccoon eyes.

Hi Joe, thanks! My daughters team was was the gray shirts. I chose this shot as an example. When her team had the ball, parts of the faces were overexposed. Would better positioning such as the sun at my back have helped?

Yep. And shoot in Raw mode. It gives you more leeway in post processing

I'll tell ya, POTN is a great resource! I just did a little reading here on the forums and from what I've learned (or think I learned) it seems I made quite a few mistakes. I did shoot RAW, it's all I shoot. I also shoot in manual mode most if not all the time.

Ok from what I gather I think these are some mistakes I made:

1. ISO 400. It should be 100 or 200.

2. Av was f5.6. Maybe should be f8?

3. Tv was 1/1000. Maybe pushed it a bit higher?

When I look in the view finder and look at the exposure level indicator, I used to try and keep the needle centered but recently started trying to keep the needle at around +1. Is this a personal preference or should I go back to keeping the needle centered or maybe even look at the -1?

Andy,
I do not think you understand this correctly. There is nothing wrong with shooting at iso400. If you do move down to iso100-200 your shutter speed will decrease by a factor or 2 or four. THat may be OK in this situation as you certainly do not need 1/1000th for powder puff.

As for the AV. going to F8 will also decrease your shutter speed and this is totally the wrong direction for sports. In order to isolate the subject from the background/foreground you want as allow an f/stop as low as your glass will go. F/8 from f/5.6 will add more depth of field and be the wrong direction.

when you are shooting sports like this consider using Av mode with the aperture set to its lowest number, and choose your iso (100 or 200 or 400 or 800) in order to achieve a shutter speed fast enough to avoid motion blurr. Use center focus point

Also as far as POTN - post this same question in the sports section and you will get lots more feedback

good luck and keep posting

Steve

Thanks Steve, good info! I reposted in the sports section.