Canon 30D - Photos too dark??

ladgie353

5uspect wrote:

Well....

From the site:
But, we all know (or at least should by now) that the worst sin in digital imaging is to blow out the highlights — just as it was when shooting slide film. Once they're blown (past the right-hand edge of the histogram) it's bye-bye data.


FYI, the only way to blow out the highlights is to overexpose.

DaireQuinlan

ladgie353 wrote:

From the site:
But, we all know (or at least should by now) that the worst sin in digital imaging is to blow out the highlights — just as it was when shooting slide film. Once they're blown (past the right-hand edge of the histogram) it's bye-bye data.
FYI, the only way to blow out the highlights is to overexpose.

Thats true, but (just having read that particular page now) he makes some fairly interesting points. I've the utmost respect for that guy (michael reichman), I've trawled through that site before, hopping from article to article. He knows his stuff, and is more than willing to share. His point is not to actually over-expose the image (which by definition would mean clipped highlights) but to override your camera's METERING of the scene if neccessary to shift the histogram to the right without clipping anything.

As regards the OP however, If he's just getting to grips with his new camera then he's probably shooting JPG and doing very little editing afterward. I'd advise just to trust the in-camera metering. Learn the various differant metering types, spot/CW/matrix (or whatever canon call it, evaluative ?), how to apply them in given situations and when you're better off using different types for different situations. No-one's denying that its a bit of a learning curve !

5uspect

ladgie353 wrote:

From the site:
But, we all know (or at least should by now) that the worst sin in digital imaging is to blow out the highlights — just as it was when shooting slide film. Once they're blown (past the right-hand edge of the histogram) it's bye-bye data.


FYI, the only way to blow out the highlights is to overexpose.

You didn't read all of it so.

Thomas Knoll wrote:

Only one or two of the channels being clipped is sometimes a problem. With raw capture it is not as bad as with JPEG capture, since with raw what you care about is clipping in the native camera color space, rather than in the working RGB space (since conversion to working space happens after the raw converter's tone adjustments). Lots of colors clip in sRGB or even Adobe RGB that don't clip in camera native space.

and

Ian Lyons wrote:

Even if the current crop of conversion apps can't handle the blown highlights future apps will. However, NOTHING will ever get you back the lost shadow detail.

The point is that dark tones = no or low signal on the sensor. When the camera converts what it records (what's stored in a RAW file) to an sRGB or Adobe RGB colourspace it often clips details that aren't actually clipped in the camera's colourspace. You're right that once its blown its blown, but you only see this after its been converted at which point information has been lost. It is quite possible that the image isn't blown as badly (or at all). We can see the first implementation of this in the latest version of Canon's Camera Raw which has a recovery setting. Works quite nicely too.

challengemaster

janmc wrote:

I'm another one who has just bought a DSLR (D80) for the first time so I'm echoing the OP - it takes a while to learn a new camera. Taking the first few shots on auto isn't a crime :rolleyes:

well in fairness.. as soon as i got my 400D it took me 15 mins to figure out what everything did, have it on manual and set up for the light conditions...

conzy

challengemaster wrote:

well in fairness.. as soon as i got my 400D it took me 15 mins to figure out what everything did, have it on manual and set up for the light conditions...

But you're very special at mastering challenges challengemaster....

challengemaster

Calina

Most advice I got is that it is easier to correct a slightly underexposed photograph than slightly overexposed. I think that you have a better chance of recovering an overexposed shot if you are shooting in RAW. Arguments on the subject then should distinguish what file format is under discussion.

I have, somewhere on my hard drive, a photograph of a kite taken in the dark, sole light source the moon. I couldn't even bounce a flash off it.

You could not see the kite at all, but you could - just about recover it. You didn't wind up with much of a photograph, this bit is true, however, the detail was there, buried in the night sky. I think you could even see the logo on the kite when you brought it up. On the other hand, there was a thread discussion on this board 6 months ago on how to handle blown highlights shooting an overly sunlit beach and kitesurfer. When you exposed correctly for the kitesurfer, everything else was completely blown. IIRC, the final opinion was that the blown highlights could not be recovered.

PaulW, I occasionally underexpose by one stop to recover afterwards if I need the shutter speed. there is not always one right way of doing things. So yes, you do know one.

I shoot fully manually all the time; I came from a fully manual background in film.

I shot the 350D on automatic for the first few weeks that I acquired it because I realised very quickly that the lightmeter worked differently to the one on my film camera and I didn't want to destroy all my holiday photographs while I got used to the language it spoke. It took about three months before I was comfortable with the camera to shoot it fully manually. Mostly I got there by looking at what the camera was doing in automatic and working out how to adjust it to my own tastes. Sometimes it is no bad thing to see how your camera sees things. It may be that the 20D/30D are not good in automatic mode but you can still learn much from trying it out. I think the OP might well agree at this stage.

5uspect

I think the lesson is to shoot in RAW.:p
Obviously blown out highlights cannot be recovered in extreme cases but you'd be surprised what you can recover.

Regarding using auto settings, I wouldn't consider that a bad thing at all. I would just try to avoid letting it become a crutch. As a learning tool its great.

nilhg

challengemaster wrote:

well in fairness.. as soon as i got my 400D it took me 15 mins to figure out what everything did, have it on manual and set up for the light conditions...

Those canons are to easy, you should have bought the Oly.:p

Show us some pictures,

challengemaster

nilhg wrote:

Those canons are to easy, you should have bought the Oly.:p

Show us some pictures,

heh.. oh alright! wasnt sure if my noobish photographic attempts warrented a thread/posting.. but if you insist!

ZENER

I use a Gossen Lunasix F when I want accurate exposures. Very accurate incident light meter which is much more accurate than most built-in reflected or incident light meters IMO.

In my earlier days I used OM-1 and OM-4 camera bodies from Olympus with those beautiful Zuiko lenses, the slide shots were fantastic. Pity they lost their way when digital came along otherwise I'd still be with them. Nowadays I use a Nikon D70s.

ZEN