Inconsistent exposures

Hey everyone! I'm fairly new to digital SLRs, and I've mostly been using mine for indoor portrait shoots of my daughter (now 16mos). I've been getting great results with my indoor shots, but when I took the camera on a family trip to Colonial Williamsburg, it seemed like my exposures were all over the place. I took several shots in a row of my mother with my daughter, and some of them came out great, while others were significantly over-exposed.

I have been using spot metering, since I often take pictures in the house and I was having trouble with my subjects being under-exposed when they were standing near a window. I haven't loaded these into lightroom yet, and I'm hoping that maybe some of them are salvageable, but for next time, what can I change to avoid this? Am I using the wrong settings? Framing my subjects poorly? Here are a few examples, un-cropped and un-edited.

Thanks!

Check to make sure you're not shooting in Bracket exposure mode.

I'm sorry to be really dense here, but where would I find that information? I've been doing too much of the same thing lately and I'm forgetting where all of my settings are!

If not a bracketing setting, the post metering would have this effect. In every shot the center is good or not far off on exposure. Even the last shot, the jacket looks pretty good. Matrix metering would have set shorter exposures in the sunlit scenes and maybe a slightly longer exposure in #2.

Center-weighted might have been a good choice for the first two.

I also sometimes use exposure compensation to lessen the exposure in bright sun.

I would suggest going outside at mid-day and play with the metering modes and exposure compensation to get the feel for how they behave. Use the LCD to review every shot or every few shots.

#3 and the last one might be too exposed to recover, but post should work on the others.

bluebird said:

I'm sorry to be really dense here, but where would I find that information? I've been doing too much of the same thing lately and I'm forgetting where all of my settings are!

Click to expand...

On my D610, Auto Bracketing is e6 in the Custom Menu.

bluebird said:

Hey everyone! I'm fairly new to digital SLRs, and I've mostly been using mine for indoor portrait shoots of my daughter (now 16mos). I've been getting great results with my indoor shots, but when I took the camera on a family trip to Colonial Williamsburg, it seemed like my exposures were all over the place. I took several shots in a row of my mother with my daughter, and some of them came out great, while others were significantly over-exposed.

I have been using spot metering, since I often take pictures in the house and I was having trouble with my subjects being under-exposed when they were standing near a window. I haven't loaded these into lightroom yet, and I'm hoping that maybe some of them are salvageable, but for next time, what can I change to avoid this? Am I using the wrong settings? Framing my subjects poorly? Here are a few examples, un-cropped and un-edited.

Thanks!

Click to expand...

this is disastrous if youre shooting in anything but manual exposure mode. so the outcome shows this. It happens to me once in a while because I have to change the metering mode from spot to metering back and forth because when I shoot wedding at night, I shoot straight TTL (dance floor, ceremony, basically all night long) there is no ambient and hence TTL-BL is not needed. nso the flash will not work in regular TTL mode unless I move the metering to spot. and then I forget the spot metering is on when I shoot when ambient light is plenty and the metering goes crazy on every little bit and exposure changes often. I usually am shooting in A when this happens. so, bottom line, if youre shooting A S or P, put it to center or matrix. you can shoot in spot, if you know how to measure for exposure properly, but scenes that change often are very problematic because the spot area will be on something dark and move the frame a bit and it will be on something light and your exposure will vary widely.

in an example, I was shooting on a bus driving to a location and we had enough ambient light coming inside. was shooting in A in spot. I shoot CL 2 frames in a row. click click . one came out sharp then the other went into dragging the shutter to 1/15. it drove me crazy why it was behaving badly. I then remembered why. so try it and let us know. cheers.

bluebird said:

I'm sorry to be really dense here, but where would I find that information? I've been doing too much of the same thing lately and I'm forgetting where all of my settings are!

Click to expand...

There are menu items and then you have a bracket button (BKT on the front below the flash button), that works with the front command dial.

Best would be to refer to the manual to check settings and display icons to confirm. You can download a copy if needed from Cameras from Nikon | DSLR and Digital Cameras, Lenses, & More

you can clearly see it in the first three pics. the first and third have pretty much the same composition and measured from the center point from the back (dark green shrubs) and the middle one you offset it and the metering measured different in that.

hark said:

On my D610, Auto Bracketing is e6 in the Custom Menu.

Click to expand...

Right now that says AE&Flash. The other options are AE only, Flash only, WB bracketing and ADL bracketing. What should it be set to?

rocketman122 said:

so, bottom line, if youre shooting A S or P, put it to center or matrix. you can shoot in spot, if you know how to measure for exposure properly, but scenes that change often are very problematic because the spot area will be on something dark and move the frame a bit and it will be on something light and your exposure will vary widely.

Click to expand...

Amen, strongly seconded. Spot metering of ambient is anything but point&shoot (certainly is NOT for novices with no clue about Spot metering).
Spot metering is very special, and it does NOT make anything be exposed correctly. It simply makes the spot be a middle tone (correct or not), and ignores all else except the spot. Then you have to choose your spot, and then compensate exposure for it. This makes Spot usually be worst choice, because it is an advanced technique which requires some understanding.

In general, any routine point&shoot metering should be Center Weighted or Matrix. These modes are more for point&shoot.

See examples: Details about Metering Principles

Indoor flash may be something different. Flash does not use Spot Metering, but it does switch TTL BL to be TTL mode, which can be useful in dim ambient conditions.

Also regarding inconsistencies, do make sure you have not forgotten you are in bracketing mode.

Eyelight said:

There are menu items and then you have a bracket button (BKT on the front below the flash button), that works with the front command dial.

Best would be to refer to the manual to check settings and display icons to confirm. You can download a copy if needed from Cameras from Nikon | DSLR and Digital Cameras, Lenses, & More

Click to expand...

I found the bracketing button, and the screen shows OF and then a number. The command dial lets me change that number. It was set to 1.0. Is that bad?

I had no idea how little I knew about this camera until I started having this issue! I definitely need to spend some time with the manual to figure out how to set the metering back to matrix. I put it to spot because I was taking portraits against a black velvet backdrop and they looked terrible...

WayneF said:

Amen, strongly seconded. Spot metering of ambient is anything but point&shoot (certainly is NOT for novices with no clue about Spot metering).
Spot metering is very special, and it does NOT make anything be exposed correctly. It simply makes the spot be a middle tone (correct or not), and ignores all else except the spot. Then you have to choose your spot, and then compensate exposure for it. This makes Spot usually be worst choice, because it is an advanced technique which requires some understanding.

In general, any routine point&shoot metering should be Center Weighted or Matrix. These modes are more for point&shoot.

See examples: Details about Metering Principles

Indoor flash may be something different. Flash does not use Spot Metering, but it does switch TTL BL to be TTL mode, which can be useful in dim ambient conditions.

Also regarding inconsistencies, do make sure you have not forgotten you are in bracketing mode.

Click to expand...

That article was extremely helpful, thank you! Spot metering served me very well with my portraits against a black background, and now I see why it's killing me in other environments. Since I am often dealing with windows, it looks like center-weighted is probably my best bed for most of what I do, switching to matrix if I'm shooting with my subject off-center. Now I just need to read the manual to figure out where the settings are to change it

With regard to bracketing, I know I'm being totally dense, but is there a good article that will explain what bracketing is actually doing to my picture, like the article you just linked about metering?

Thank you so much for all of the quick and detailed replies!!

I found the manual, read what it has to say on bracketing, and I think I get it. Bracketing is off, and I changed the metering to center-weighted. Now that I have been reminded about where the controls are to change it, I'll have to play with it a little bit and see what gets me the best results. Thanks again to everyone for the help for a lost newbie

bluebird said:

With regard to bracketing, I know I'm being totally dense, but is there a good article that will explain what bracketing is actually doing to my picture, like the article you just linked about metering?

Click to expand...

I am unaware of other articles, but I think this will be a decent try.

Back in the film days, we could not immediately see our exposure on a LCD on the camera. We only saw what we got hours or days or weeks later after the film was developed. So for critical work, while at the scene, it was not uncommon back then for photographers to use the exposure they thought would be correct, and to also take more tries with a little more exposure, and with a little less exposure. Like maybe three with more, and three with less, maybe in 1/2 stop increments, hoping at least one of these seven would be pretty good.

My own notion is that we have the LCD on the back of the digital camera now, so we can simply just look at what we got (we can zoom in on it, and scroll around on it, and we can see it really well). Which should be more than enough to see, while we are there at the scene, and can adjust and try again if necessary.

But digital cameras have a way of offering every imaginable feature, and they will do this bracketing too. You set the bracketing menu for more than one exposure, and it will do the more exposures at the exposure steps you indicate, and the number that you indicate.

I'm not sure if newer cameras have automatic exposure exceptions now, but most shutters will simply expose one frame, but each new picture differently, according to these rules. That means you keep snapping the shutter, and the exposure keeps varying. If you forget you have set this option, all new pictures still keep varying the exposure. The computer cannot recognize the scene, to know if the same or greatly different.

So make sure Bracketing is set to ONLY ONE FRAME. That turns it off. It will not affect a second one.

Thanks! I definitely remember the film days and getting my prints back, seeing that every single shot was under-exposed or over-exposed. Shifting clouds and fast-moving subjects made me so miserable with a manual film camera and a hand-held light meter... I am so thankful for modern technology!

Definitely use centre weighted or matrix for outside shots until you get more practice.

Bracketing fundamentally means taking more than one shot with each at different exposures some slightly overexposed some slightly under and then choosing the best one, from the set. Could be a set of 3 or 5 or 7 or more each exposed slightly different.
Your camera can do this automatically but as already said don't forget to keep count of the shots and also don't forget to switch it off!

You could even merge them in Post Processing to get everything right, both highlights and dark areas which is called HDR ( High Dynamic Range). But HDR does not work well if your subject is moving.

Thanks for all the help! You guys are amazing!

Changing your metering mode is very easy. There is a dedicated metering button on the top right of the camera, just behind the red "record" button and just to the left of the red "format" text. With camera on, just hold down that button and roll the back wheel to scroll through the three metering modes: spot, center-weighted, and matrix.

I absolutely agree that your problems happened because you were in Spot mode. Bracketing has nothing to do with it.

Spot metering is exactly what it says. It will meter perfectly at the central spot. That is why your indoor photos are perfect the flash gives uniform light, at least in the centre.

Depending where the centre is rest of the scene will be over or under exposed in natural light. Best to use Matrix metering when there is a lot of variation of light - as outside on a sunny day with a lot of shadows. In most situations you can get away with Centre Weighed metering, as long as your subject is in the centre.

aroy said:

Spot metering is exactly what it says. It will meter perfectly at the central spot.

Click to expand...

Well, Spot metering is hardly "perfect". It only meters so that this spot should come out middle intensity tone. This has nothing to do with any "accurate" intensity that the spot ought to be. Whether the spot is actually black or white or gray, it will come out middle gray.

So we have to choose the correct spot, or else know how to compensate it. That is a huge difference, and something to know.

But yes, Spot metering does totally ignore everything else in the picture, and yes, Spot is absolutely the worst choice for novice point&shoot metering of ambient light. Spot metering is an advanced technique, and lots of knowledgeable thinking is required.


One exception - of a different kind... Flash indoors with most TTL BL flash units (like SB-700, SB-400, camera internal flash, Yongnuo TTL flashes, etc)... Any of those TTL flashes without an overt TTL BL / TTL menu themselves will be TTL BL (Nikon is a TTL BL system).

Spot metering changes their metering from TTL BL to be TTL, which is more appropriate for indoor flash. Flash never does spot metering, it has its own larger center area it always uses. But indoors (assuming the desired low ISO), the ambient light is normally low level, insignificant, we are using flash instead. Then when insignificant, there is basically no meaningful metering of the ambient light indoors, Spot or otherwise. So typically, with indoor flash, Spot metering only changes the flash out of TTL BL mode, to TTL mode, which usually usually gives a better flash level indoors.

Outdoors for fill flash in sunlight, the default TTL BL mode is about "perfect".