Canon XT Metering Overexposes?

Anyone else finding / believing that for situations with high light contrast, their XT on automatic and full scene / multi-pattern metering tends toward overexposing, resulting in some blown highlights?

Quite possibly but learning to use the options you have on the camera will indeed make one a better photographer.

True. And next gig I'm going to set for a half stop compensation or use auto-bracketing.

Still, I would like to know if others are finding this to be true with the XT in scenes with a wide range of light and dark [concert shooting in my case] OR is just me or my m camera.

In the early days of the 20D it was not uncommon to hear complaints of The focusing / metering being off.

XT

There is already firmware out there for XT (1.03?), and I think one of them addresses exposure issue (I don't remember if it was overexposure in particular).

Brian

Where, I thought 1.02 was the latest? I just went to the USA site and 1.02 is the latest, did you mean 1.02?

From Canon USA....

Firmware specification changes
This firmware update incorporates the following improvements:

1. Fixes the phenomenon of extreme underexposure when using some lenses.
   
2. Fixes the phenomenon of auto power off function failure when auto power off is set more than 2 minutes.
   
3. Fixes the phenomenon of incorrect white balance when using an external flash.
   

I get the same thing with mine. I haven't worried about it too much, because I don't use any of the "Auto" modes. I have the same problem in the creative modes as well, but I just dial in -1 or -2 EV in bright conditions, or shoot full manual and underexpose a bit.

Yes same here, alway on -1/3 - full stop under in bright conditions even when on average metering.

you just get used to it.

roB B

I can't think of a camera that would do anything different. The camera is going to try to pick something that gets most of the scene right, and often that means blowing some highlights.

---Bob Gross---

Bob, as always, is right here.

I have found that if you have a scene with a lot of dynamic range, get ready for something to get blown out. If you do center-weighted and then exposure lock on a bright area, recompose and focus, you can correct a bit and get better exposure on the highlight, but the big problem is that if you check your histogram, it will be towards the left and you'll lose a lot of detail (in the mids and shadows particularly in ISO 800 and above...big noise) that you can't recover. As the highlight is not usually the focus of the photograph, that means your subject suffers. I would say the subject is more important than a few blown highlights, but that's me...and I might not know what I am talking about!

Doing a bit of work in photoshop on highlights from me is better than boosting shadows and getting a niosey image. but i still under expose a bit so as not to loose too much high detail.

RoB B

Quoting Bruce Fraser -
"The linear-gamma nature of digital captures makes it preferable to err on the side of slight overexposure rather than underexposure, because underexposing to hold the highlights will make your shadows noiser than they need be. In these situations, Camera Raw's highlight recovery provides a very useful safety net."

- and that's the rest of the story!

A friend of mine who bought xT recently has same issue (Kiss digital N in Japan). Images with wide dynamic range tend to have blown highlights. As already said above you can use EC & then tweak images in editors later.
I dont have the link now but this is a very common issue & I have seen threads on this on dpreview also.

Cheers

Happy to hear from everyone that it is not a camera problem. I am finding that the blown highlights are on Key parts of the scene, ie. faces with the sun or spotlights shining on Them, and that I am not able to recover all the details (skin) and color back in post process.

I guess I will just have to compensate or bracket.

That is where the experienced photographer has an advantage. The hot spots can be guessed when viewed through the viewfinder, and they can be guessed better when viewed on the histogram in the camera. Then the decision is whether to recompose to avoid the hot spots, or whether to try to fix it later. In general, I strive to avoid them as much as possible in the camera. I will try to fix them later if all else fails. There are too many times when really bad hot spots can't be avoided, and then they can't be fixed.

---Bob Gross---

Just dial in -1 or so compensation in until the histogram is not clipping.

If you are shooting RAW you can cope with some clipping shown on the LCD and compensate in curves etc to tast in RAW conversion (on 20D but it is probably the same).