Having trouble with my SLR over-exposing

Stavro Mueller

Hi all. Long time lurker, first time poster here.

I've got a Canon 450D and while I'm generally happy enough with the camera, I find some of my photos look washed out and over-exposed. Any advice would be most welcome

smelltheglove

Exposure doesnt look too bad so I would assume it is your saturation and contrast settings in camera. A canon user should be able to tell you where they are but you will find in the menu that you can customise these settings.

magicbastarder

yep, exposure looks fine - i suspect those photos are a good representation of what it looked like on the day.

Zillah

Your exposure is fine, maybe even a little under exposed (except for the sky in the last one but that is to be expected). It was probably just a very grey day, so it is accurately representing what is at the scene.

Don't forget, most photos you seen online will have been through post processing, you could easily bump the contrast and saturation a little bit.

I don't know about Canon, but Nikons have "Picture Controls" which are basically image style presets. There is one called Neutral that means it does nothing at all to the image and they'll usually come out very grey and dull, I presume Canon have something similar.

Edit, very basic post processing:

Stavro Mueller

I've taken to underexposing them because I've been having trouble with them being blown out.

smelltheglove

What mode are you shooting in?

Stavro Mueller

I tend to shoot mainly in Aperture Priority or Shutter Priority if something's moving faster. Camera's currently on Evaluative Metering.

smelltheglove

Right so, have you checked that your exposure compensation is not set too high? Try take some pics in manual at the same settings the camera choose for auto or apereture and you may see a difference.

Stavro Mueller

I'll try that tomorrow, thanks. I'm sure it's down to some sort of setting in the camera or that I'm doing something wrong.

smelltheglove

It is most likely the exposure compensation. If you youtube your camera type you will find loads of tutorials to show you how to use it and which settings do what. Its handy having a look at a few when getting a new camera just to remind you what is what etc.

CabanSail

smelltheglove wrote: »

Right so, have you checked that your exposure compensation is not set too high? Try take some pics in manual at the same settings the camera choose for auto or apereture and you may see a difference.

Hang on. If you shoot at the same settings in manual you will get the same result. The exposure compensation doesn't magic up some light, it merely varies the light meter in the camera.

There should be a method to reset the camera back to defaults. I would do that to make sure you've not put in an unwanted setting.

Your shots look to be correctly exposed to me but just flat. Are you shooting in Jpeg or RAW?

Tin Foil Hat

Have a look at your histogram and your 'blinkies'. These will tell you if you are actually overexposing. Have you got a wall on the right hand side of the histogram? If so, you have probably overexposed
Digital photos need post-processing.
This is a photo straight from my camera:-


This is the same photo, developed in Lightroom

Your pictures might just need a little touch up.
Always shoot in RAW and you will have oodles of leeway to develop your pics afterwards.

kelly1

In the attached file, I increased the black level, increased saturation and added some slight vignetting.

5uspect

cymbaline wrote: »

I've taken to underexposing them because I've been having trouble with them being blown out.

Well this picture is a classic example of why you can often get over exposure in parts of an image with different metering modes.

The majority of the image is taken up by the background and with evaluative metering it properly exposed looking at the histogram. The flowers only make up a small percent of the overall image. If you were to use spot metering and meter off the flowers they would be fine and the grass would probably be dark.

Also straight from the camera a lot of images will look flat and dull. You will need to do some processing to make them pop as has been shown in previous posts where contrast has been added.
Other times you need to manipulate the histogram to brighten up dark areas (shadows) and darken brighten areas (highlights) which is the opposite of contrast. It all depends on the context and personal taste to a good degree but often you will find yourself boosting the contrast.

Are you shooting in RAW? In a good editor it'll give you a lot more tonal data to manipulate compared to JPEG.

Also Canon has a fancy evaluative metering where the zones are weighted on proximity to the focus point when averaging to calculate the exposure. But this can still screw things up.

DaireQuinlan

Tin Foil Hat wrote: »

Have a look at your histogram and your 'blinkies'. These will tell you if you are actually overexposing. Have you got a wall on the right hand side of the histogram? If so, you have probably overexposed
Digital photos need post-processing.
This is a photo straight from my camera:-

This is the same photo, developed in Lightroom
Your pictures might just need a little touch up.
Always shoot in RAW and you will have oodles of leeway to develop your pics afterwards.

Actually, I think your original shot is vastly superior to the (over)processed version. Ah the subjectivity of it all.