50mm Prime Lens Washed Out

I took my D7000 and 50mm f/1.8 lens out for a hike in the Shenandoah National Park over the weekend and most of the pics that I took are washed out and seem over-exposed to me. I had to fix most of them in post. I mostly shot in aperture mode and let the camera calculate the shutter speed for a correct exposure. I was generally not using flash. Most pictures were shot with a large aperture.

Here are some example images and their EXIF data...I consider 6897 to be a good picture, but the rest seem to be overexposed and dull to me. Any ideas what I did wrong?


Thanks for the help in advance.

Just for fun, here is my favorite picture from the day:

They look about right for light/shade mix. I'd use spot metering and an AF point closest to your subject than the whole scene. Besides that, re-set white balance for what's actually around rather than using auto.

Else shoot in M and in RAW to post process everything regardless.

+1 for white balance; check that auto setting, why does it say auto2? indicates there are 2 options of auto to choose from....?

ryanp said:

+1 for white balance; check that auto setting, why does it say auto2? indicates there are 2 options of auto to choose from....?

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Yes, there are 2 Auto WB settings on the D7000, one may a little colder than the other.

Settings like this always give me similar results. I second the recommendation to change the metering mode to spot meter.

Being an old film, pre-matrix meter guy, I never used Matrix metering...

Just noticed that your Picture Control is set to "Neutral". If you're shooting jpeg then this has a huge effect on how your images come out. The Neutral setting has the lowest levels of contrast and saturation. In other words it's meant to be flat and, well, a little washed out.

I don't shoot in JPEG, but Lightroom does a great job of mirroring the camera profiles on RAW files. I went back into my library and found an unedited shot from my D7000, went into the Develop module in Lightroom and simply applied three different Camera Profiles without changing anything else.

Camera Neutral



Camera Standard



Camera Vivid





I suspect the Picture Control, along with the metering you get in those lighting conditions, is what you're seeing.

If you're not shooting RAW then pay careful attention to what that setting is, as well as the Active D-Lighting as it can have a huge impact on what you get.

So it sounds like what I need to know is to not count on auto white balance and pay attention to my metering mode.

Should my standard metering mode be spot rather than matrix? If not, how do I recognize which shots should use spot and which should use matrix.

Does the picture control affect raw? I am shooting raw, but just posted the jogs with standard conversion using viewnx. They look pretty much the same and I figured if I posted the exif data with them then it would be enough.

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Picture control does not effect the RAW image, but I'm pretty sure ViewNX will use the setting as the default presentation profile when it brings the RAW image up. Obviously you can tweak it from there to your heart's delight.

With DSLR's what I learned rather quickly is that you do need to pay attention to anything "auto", if only to understand how and when it will work against you. I shoot with Auto White Balance on virtually all the time (I prefer Auto1 as I believe it's the easier of the two to adjust away from when it's wrong). And I'm in matrix metering mode almost all the time as well. I will set specific WB when I am shooting multiple frames for HDR so that they are consistent, and when I'm shooting with mixed indoor lighting so that I can again get some level of consistency as well as the colors I want. I move out of matrix metering mode to spot metering when there are layers of darks and shadows and I want a specific targeted area within that to be metered correctly.

For the most part, except in the most extreme of cases you can fix this in a RAW image, but it's nice to be as close as possible from the start.

kluisi said:

So it sounds like what I need to know is to not count on auto white balance and pay attention to my metering mode.

Should my standard metering mode be spot rather than matrix? If not, how do I recognize which shots should use spot and which should use matrix.

Does the picture control affect raw? I am shooting raw, but just posted the jogs with standard conversion using viewnx. They look pretty much the same and I figured if I posted the exif data with them then it would be enough.

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Click to expand...

As far as metering is concerned, I've seen more people running in trouble in spot metering mode rather than matrix. Spot is more precise maybe, but sometimes you have to take more measurements in order to get good exposure. I usually stick to matrix and will manually compensate when my subjects are either light or dark.

Matrix metering is the way to go..Shoot manual for best results and balance the in- camera light meter..Learn how the triangle works to balancing your exposure...Forget about spot metering(this will only confuse you further)...Shooting in Raw is where its at..And invest in LR5...

ShootRaw said:

Matrix metering is the way to go..Shoot manual for best results and balance the in- camera light meter..Learn how the triangle works to balancing your exposure...Forget about spot metering(this will only confuse you further)...Shooting in Raw is where its at..And invest in LR5...

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Any tutorial or tips for balancing the in-camera light meter and what do you mean about the triangle? Sorry...I'm kind of a NEWB to all this. I've been shooting DSLR since my Digital Rebel XT (and a film Rebel 2000 before that), but I've only just recently gotten serious about getting better at taking pictures with it (kind of when I got the D7000, but when I got the 50mm prime is really when I started). When I get it right, I love the pictures it takes.

Here's a link that explains the "the triangle" as it relates to a digital camera...

Learning about Exposure - The Exposure Triangle - Digital Photography School

I'm going to say it's not a white balance issue, but rather simple over-exposure. Here are some really minor tweaks I applied using Adobe Camera Raw. You'll notice I dropped the exposure by a half-stop. I went back and forth between thinking a half-stop and two-thirds looking better but when I bumped the contrast the half-a-stop drop seemed to be the better option. Oh, and I did a quick and dirty sharpening as well.

Since you're shooting RAW, these sorts of adjustments are probably something you should get used to... Then too, if the over-exposure is consistent with this lens I would consider doing an in-camera adjustment to compensate for it. Maybe.


Fig. 1 ACR tweaks applied



Fig. 2 Final output (w/tweaks)

.....

FredKingston said:

Here's a link that explains the "the triangle" as it relates to a digital camera...

Learning about Exposure - The Exposure Triangle - Digital Photography School

Click to expand...

Ok...that makes sense. I understand that the 3 elements all affect each other and I set the ISO to a low value since there was plenty of light. I chose a large aperature to get a small DoF using aperature mode on my camera. I thought the camera would then choose the correct shutter speed for a correct exposure. I paid attention to the shutter speed only to verify that I could hand-hold and stop motion effectively.

Even with all of that, the camera overexposed. So how do I look at the scene and know when to use spot metering, or change the white balance from auto, or intentionally over- or under-expose my image. The goal being to get the best image out of the camera directly rather than having to fix the images in post. I don't see myself going full manual on the camera in most cases, but I would like to know how to help the camera in the semi-auto modes.

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Don't forget that with digital images, you always have the option of having a peek at your histogram. The histogram can tell you in an instant where you are as far as exposure and you can then make a manual correction with the exposure ‡button. And don't forget to put it back to zero before your next shooting. Don't even ask me how I know about this. After a little while you can get very good with the histogram where with only looking at the image on the screen, the ambiant light could throw you way off.

Horoscope Fish said:

I'm going to say it's not a white balance issue, but rather simple over-exposure..

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There are definitely WB issues. Colors are unnaturally cold, particularly in shots 1 & 3. Simple neutral grey eye-dropper shows that immediately.

You really should not look at having to "Fix" the shot in post but rather to get the most out of your shot in post. I think you can get a good photo directly out of the camera and you should always try to do that BUT you are never going to get the BEST photo you can without doing some post processing. It is just the nature of the beast.

kluisi said:

... I chose a large aperture to get a small DoF using aperture [priority] mode on my camera. I thought the camera would then choose the correct shutter speed for a correct exposure. I paid attention to the shutter speed only to verify that I could hand-hold and stop motion effectively.

Click to expand...

That is exactly how Aperture Priority mode is supposed to work.

BackdoorHippie said:

There are definitely WB issues. Colors are unnaturally cold, particularly in shots 1 & 3. Simple neutral grey eye-dropper shows that immediately.

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I see the colors are indeed too cool in those particular shots. I'm still thinking it could be a simple exposure issue because exposure does affect color and what we could be seeing here is an exposure issue manifesting symptoms that appear to be caused by white balance. Notice how the overly-cool shots *also* appear over-exposed.

.....

Here you go sir..

ShootRaw said:

Shooting in Raw is where its at..And invest in LR5...

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I am definitely shooting in raw mainly because at some future time I don't want to wish I did with no way to ever recover the information lost by shooting only in jpg. Is LR5 really worth the $150 when Nikon's ViewNX is free? Would I be better served putting that money into expanding my system (extra lenses, flash, nd grads, circular polarizer, etc.)?

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