Newbie Question - Bright background

I was recently taking pictures of my child's tee ball team and ran into a lighting problem. I'd heard that if it is sunny, to try and find shade to take pictures, so I did. The problem is that the background is bright and my subject, though in the shade, turned out to be quite dark. Are there settings on the camera that would compensate for this, aside from increasing the exposure?

Use a flash

Yeah use a flash fill, I didn't realize this until I 2 years of having a DSLR

As mentioned, fill flash is your friend. Either that or make sure that the background is also muted.

I'll remember that. I have an external flash I can use.
I didn't know if using a different metering mode, such as spot metering, would have made a difference. Thanks for your help.

A perfect situation for fill-flash. You also could have spot metered on the child but then the background would have been blown out. There's just too much dynamic range in a shot like that for the camera to be able to properly expose everything.

It is not the camera that needs to compenate...if is the photographer.

Seriously the camera does not know what is the important subject. Only you can make the decision to crank up the exposure to get good more light on the face and also likely blow out the background.

Either add more light via a flash or change the exposure settings.

So next time, fire off a quick test shot and look athe LCS panel. See that the face is underexposed and crank up at least one stop of light and try a second shot. Look at the LCS panel to see if the face is better. Then add a little more or less light to fine tune the shot. This can be done in a few seconds...I know the child will not want to stand there long.

Later you can tweak the shot in LR, PS, or PSE.

Thanks for the input. All of the the kids are 4 and, like you said, they didn't want to stand there long. I should have taken the time to pull out my flash and get it attached to my camera.

I also tried a different location where they had a dugout behind them, thinking that might help. But as you can see, they're still pretty dark. Should I have used a flash here, too?

yes.....fill flash....

Thanks. I was hoping to get away without having to use a flash since we were outside during the day, but I was wrong.

eaglefan wrote in post #10406710
Thanks. I was hoping to get away without having to use a flash since we were outside during the day, but I was wrong.

Its not about the amount of light always, but the direction. Shooting outside in the middle of the day results in eye socket shadows and too much contrast between highlights and shadow areas. Fill flash allows the light up under the hat and eyebrow shadow lines.

Even in your second example you still have enough of the bright sky in the picture to throw your metering off. Spot metering on the child would have helped.

eaglefan wrote in post #10406526
I was recently taking pictures of my child's tee ball team and ran into a lighting problem. I'd heard that if it is sunny, to try and find shade to take pictures, so I did. The problem is that the background is bright and my subject, though in the shade, turned out to be quite dark. Are there settings on the camera that would compensate for this, aside from increasing the exposure?

Fill flash when taken or mask and and some light.

armando

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If you have a flash use it! I use mine outside more often than not. The flash was the biggest boost to my photos much more than a grands worth of lens. It really makes your photos pop. Our little flash units on the camera are the tip of the iceberg. Look at some of the amazing studio shots. Mostly down to excellent lighting rather than the camera or lens.... the photographer behind it all plays a good part too!