Technical Help Needed

krazyklown

Hi guys,
I just need a little bit of help with my photography skills! Briefly put i am rarely satisfied with my skies! They are always completely white. I mostly do sports shots and probably feel that i am rushing in order not to miss a moments action. I have a Canon 400D lens and a 28-135 (3.5 - 5.6) IS lens (the one that was in argos).
Anyways i here is an example of a photo i took this evening. I dont remember what settings i was on, i think i would have been around f3.5 or thereabouts.
So if anybody can point me in the right direction, i would be much obliged! Thanks!

Hugh_C

looks a tad over exposed. Are you confident about your metering?

DonkeyStyle \o/

From the exif data:

f5.6 - 1/160th - iso 400 - 28mm
metering mode : average
program: manual
exp comp: 0

krazyklown

Hugh_C wrote: »

looks a tad over exposed. Are you confident about your metering?

To be honest, i wouldnt be happy with the metering, i was at a game last week and i had alot of problems because one half of the pitch had trees and the other half had nothing in the horizon. Trying to keep the exposure correct when play flowed from one end to the other was a nightmare. For what its worth its on center weighted average metering.

challengemaster

Does look slightly overexposed, and looks like there's a bit of camera shake too. It's not quite totally sharp.

Circular Polariser?

oh, and tip for shooting GAA matches. Pick one end of the pitch, stay there

MartMax

u could bring down the ISO a bit more... say to 100 or 200?

if u won't mind, i'd recommend you to read a book by Bryan Peterson called Understanding Exposure. as a beginner, I found it's a great help to understand how things work.

krazyklown

challengemaster wrote: »

Circular Polariser?

Yah i think i have to invest in a couple of filters, i read somewhere that i should have uv one to protect against sunlight.

u could bring down the ISO a bit more... say to 100 or 200?

if u won't mind, i'd recommend you to read a book by Bryan Peterson called Understanding Exposure. as a beginner, I found it's a great help to understand how things work.

It was kinda darkish so i had to bump up the iso a bit. Appreciate the recommendation, have seen it being reccomended before so i will pick up a copy, thanks for that!

Paulw

krazyklown wrote: »

Yah i think i have to invest in a couple of filters, i read somewhere that i should have uv one to protect against sunlight.

You don't need a UV filter. All digital cameras have built in UV protection for the sensor. So, you can disregard that piece of advice. But, a UV filter is good to protect the end glass of your lens.

krazyklown wrote: »

It was kinda darkish so i had to bump up the iso a bit. Appreciate the recommendation, have seen it being reccomended before so i will pick up a copy, thanks for that!

A polarising filter can be good for those shots at the end, but I wouldn't use one during a game. Sometimes you just have to live with the exposure, or maybe make adjustments in PP afterwards.

Never easy.

conkeroo

In a situation like that, you should meter for the skin tones. Use spot metering and make sure the face is +1 on your meter. That will get you correct exposure for the face. In a shot like this that would be most important but you could try changing the exposure in the raw file, try bring the sky back a bit and then layer the original and the underexposed in photoshop and then blend the two. Or use fill flash. At that distance, set your flash exposure to -2 and meter the sky at +1.

Ricky91t

If you need this photo for something a bit of time in ps and it'll be fine just did a 2 min job there just to show it isnt too bad just over exposed

krazyklown

ricky91t wrote: »

If you need this photo for something a bit of time in ps and it'll be fine just did a 2 min job there just to show it isnt too bad just over exposed

Cool, thanks for mentioning that, but in this case the photo itself is not bothering me, its already been mailed off to the paper and if they use it they can adjust it! What bothers me is improving my technique! Trying to get the shot right as much as possible before any processing is done!

Thanks for all the replies, i really appreciate all the advice!

conkeroo

Yeah, with a little work, its not so bad. Bit of curves and masking but unfortunately the sky is just pure blown.



Your best bet is to use fill flash.

Borderfox

The background is in focus not the player, that would be my major worry about this. I wouldnt worry too much about blowing out the sky on this type of shot, just make sure you arent facing into the sun.

mikeanywhere

Borderfox wrote: »

The background is in focus not the player, that would be my major worry about this. I wouldnt worry too much about blowing out the sky on this type of shot, just make sure you arent facing into the sun.

Exactly as the man says. You can always recover detail from highlights anyway (not badly over exposed granted)