Some EOS 350D questions

[Jonny69]

No exposure compensation from what I could tell but I have changed it from spot metering to a broader area because it wasn't picking the light I wanted. I'm going to run along and choose some pictures to put up...

[petemc]

350D doesn't have spot metering, so I doubt its that

[divine]

lol, was probably centre weighted then.

Put it on Matrix or whatever the Canon equivalent is and see if that makes things any better.

[Jonny69]

Here are a couple of examples. Interestingly they look different on a different monitor. Now they look overexposed more than anything so perhaps my TFT is partly to blame. Bah. Anyway, please tell me where I went wrong on these.

Way over exposed:



This wasn't that dark but the sunny side is completely washed out:



Again the sun has washed all the detail out of this. I know the sun is in a funny position here but the scene wasn't that shadowed in real life:



Possibly one of the worst this one, again the sun has killed it:



And more so in this one:



It's annoying because here they just look overexposed so I'm wondering if it's actually my crap monitor at home and it's just because I'm trying to shoot dark things in the middle of bright surroundings and the camera can't meter that sort of lighting easily.

[leowyatt]

My suggestion would the apeture is too low (that the right way round? ) as in it's letting too much light in which is why you're getting the over exposure? Could the white balance have anything to do with it? What was the white balance set to? Auto?

[divine]

I'd say it's almost dead cert you've got it on centre-weighted metering.

If you drew a circle in the middle of all those pictures, the exposure inside is pretty much spot on.

Change the metering mode to matrix or evaluative. I don't know what Canon call it, it's Matrix on Nikon.

Shame that you've managed to strip the EXIF from those.

If you posted a screenshot of the EXIF of one of those it would help a lot.

Can be found by going to the picture in Explorer > Right Click > Properties > Summary > Advanced

[Jonny69]

Originally Posted by divine`

I'd say it's almost dead cert you've got it on centre-weighted metering.

If you drew a circle in the middle of all those pictures, the exposure inside is pretty much spot on.

Change the metering mode to matrix or evaluative. I don't know what Canon call it, it's Matrix on Nikon.

Shame that you've managed to strip the EXIF from those.

If you posted a screenshot of the EXIF of one of those it would help a lot.

Can be found by going to the picture in Explorer > Right Click > Properties > Summary > Advanced

I think you might be right. Looks like I might have misinterpreted the symbol on the lcd which is annoying because it's only one button press away from probably getting a good shot. Some people on OcUK said that by shooting in RAW I might have been able to save the shots. How could that be so if it's overexposed it?

Looks like XP image resizer powertoy strips out the data.

[divine]

Because RAW shots hold a lot more data than JPG so you can adjust exposures and save details if you get it wrong.

You can do it with JPG too, but nowhere near as well, and you will never reclaim as much data.

for example:



With RAW, it would maybe have been possible to rescue the really overexposed part on the steps too.

If you look at the original images (please tell me you didn't resize all your originals? ) they'll still have EXIF data in them...

[Jonny69]

No I've still got all the originals

[petemc]

These still have EXIF info. Metering Mode: Partial.

This mode meters a larger area than spot metering (around 10-15% of the entire frame), and is generally used when very bright or very dark areas on the edges of the frame would otherwise influence the metering unduly. Like spot metering, some cameras can use variable points to take readings from, (in general autofocus points), or have a fixed point in the centre of the viewfinder.

Going from that, and the pictures it seems that you've pointed your camera at a scene with a high contrast. Your cameras gone "Oof thats a bit dark in there" and adjusted the settings so the really dark part is clear. If you had shot RAW you would have been able to rescue them to some extent. RAW images contain a lot more data than a JPG. A RAW contains information so that you can reprocess your shot 2 stops either way, +/-. So if the image was under-exposed by 2 stops you could fix that.