Hi , my canon 5dmkiv photos seem to have too much brightness in them , so looking at eg the sky and ocean the sky is not blue it’s really white, I have checked the awb set to auto, the exposure is neutral. I was shooting a wedding the weekend before with flash and wondering if I have changed a setting, the same settings and lens (24-70) on the 1dx are correct.
Light meters are rather simple, they average a scene and expose for middle grey, while this works great for some scenes others you need to approach differently. There are 4 different weights for metering modes you can play with, https://sg.canon/en/support/8203034500 Or you can dial in compensation accordingly, and if you really wanna have fun bracket and do HDR. To answer your concern you shot a sky and ocean? To expose the ocean with towards the middle tones you ended up with a sky that is too many stops away from the ocean so the sky is washed out to white because the camera only has so many stops of light. You could have exposed for the sky, but the water would be darker. (A good read would be learning about the Zone System) There are many ways to handle this, adjust exposure manually if the issue is minimal, otherwise shoot bracketed and merge images, or bracket many images and HDR process , me I'm more in the old school camp so I'd probably use a grad filter. I haven't seen any example images, but based on what your describing I think I have a good idea where your struggling with the light.
Thank you for this , I’ll do some more testing and upload an image to show if I still have issues. As mentioned my 1dx with the same lens it works fine so I will look at the reading you mentioned.
Welcome to the forum Richie, one thing you could try if all else fails is go to your exposure compensation and put it to -1/3 to -2/3 of a stop of light, this will darken your image. You did not say what you were putting your setting on. if it is in Auto put it in P mode, this will allow you to use the exposure compensation. If you are shooting on a very bright day at the beach, use a faster shutter speed, If in manual or shutter priority. As Johnsey stated your camera's light meter will try to read everything at 18 percent middle grey , This is zone 5, you need to put your image in zone 7 so it does not come out grey looking. That will be two stops of light more than what your camera's meter tells you.
This is an example i took this morning. Please let me know if this is the zone settings. I did a photo in liveview and in P mode was looking cloud see that it changed an image to bright before clicking the shutter. So I need to understand these zones and how to change them I guess, help much appreciated
when i was beginning 3 years ago the thing that allowed me to nail my exposures was having the histogram in the evf when i was shooting, not sure if your body cn do that but the histogram is a great tool for exposure
A few photos when I check the histogram they are showing brightness as I would expect in these images. I suspect I have a setting on exposure or the light meter zones not correct. I tested this afternoon and can see the photos in live view are showing the brightness before I click the shutter. If I point it at an object it's dark then suddenly it changes the brightness level to very bright. I need to find these Zone settings I suspect
The camera exposed for the for and middle ground here, if you would expose for the sky the houses would be dark, the sky is too bright in relation to the middle tones of the image. Its a good use case for a grad filter, or you could also bring in a darker sky from a bracketed image but bright blue is the only thing that would look natural here. You could probably exposed a hair darker and then dialed in highlights and shadows to taste
Heck a circular polarizer probably would have been sufficient here, the angle of the sun really works against the sky in the situation.
Thanks Johnsey, I tested this morning with the histogram and similar shooting expose on the ocean the clubhouse is dark and expose for the club house the sky is bright. Might need to get me some filters. Thanks all for the replies, this is one area I’m still learning about despite taking thousands of images when I see this I always get concerned I’ve changed something or something is faulty if I plug in on my 1dx and it looks fine
A great test case would be to look at two shots taken side by side with each camera, you can look at each setting in the metadata between the two, clearly one of them is doing something the other is not. MY assumption is exposure is different based on metering mode. But its hard to say, are you shooting raw with both? The camera processes JPGs a bit so it is not a fair comparison.
quick question, do you have your display screen set too dark? the camera making the scene brighter before the click is i using added light to allow for auto focusing, it should then drop back down to what it was if set to exposure simulation
