Overexposed photos with 35 f/1.8 DX on D3100

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gustafson

Senior Member
Overexposed photos with 35 f/1.8 DX on D3300

Ok, this is somewhat embarassing, but I was trying to show off my 35mm f/1.8 DX prime to a Nikon newbie, and I ended up looking like an idiot. We were indoors during the day in low to moderate lighting, but the majority of my photos came out horrendously overexposed. My camera was set to Aperture Priority, but wide open I was getting shutter speeds of a few seconds for an ISO of 800. I had to bump ISO up to 3200 or higher to get reasonable shutter speeds (1/50 or less). Anyone else experience this behavior and know offhand what setting could have caused this? Thanks in advance!
 
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Horoscope Fish

Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
gustafson said:
Ok, this is somewhat embarassing, but I was trying to show off my 35mm f/1.8 DX prime to a Nikon newbie, and I ended up looking like an idiot. We were indoors during the day in low to moderate lighting, but the majority of my photos came out horrendously overexposed. My camera was set to Aperture Priority, but wide open, I was getting shutter speeds of a few seconds for an ISO of 800. I had to bump shutter speed up to 3200 or higher to get reasonable shutter speeds (1/50 or less). Anyone else experience this behavior and know offhand what setting could have caused this? Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...
Did you check to make sure you hadn't enabled Exposure Compensation?
.....
exposure-compensation1.jpg
 
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gustafson

Senior Member
Sorry for the delay, attached is an example photo. Thank you for looking into it. I'm dying to know what the problem might have been, because I'd been getting great photos with the 35 f/1.8 until this batch.

DSC_1481.jpg
 
Scott Murray

Scott Murray

Senior Member
Did you have it on spot or matrix metering? looks like spot to me. So it would have picked out the dark area, also shooting in manual would have given you more control over the shutter speed and exposure allowing you to get the correct exposure.
 
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gustafson

Senior Member
Scott Murray said:
Did you have it on spot or matrix metering? looks like spot to me. So it would have picked out the dark area, also shooting in manual would have given you more control over the shutter speed and exposure allowing you to get the correct exposure.
Click to expand...

Good catch! I'll have to dig into the EXIF to confirm that, but it's quite possible as I had it set to spot some time ago for moon shots.


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aroy

Senior Member
In my case the 35mm DX does overexpose the reds a lot. In your case it seems that you set it to spot metering and the focus point was dark.

Anyway that can easily be rectified in post as with my D3300 I can recover upto 2 EV overexposed shots from RAW.
 
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