My two cent here. I recently failed with several rolls in my estimation of
how much negative compensation to apply. I was shooting some gorillas at
the San Diego Wild Animal Park and used -1 overall compensation and set the
fill flash (which I was sure would already be applying about a -1.5) to -
2/3 more. I bracketed the flash a little (550 EX), but the overall results
were too dark. I was shooting Provia 400F with the gorillas in the shade of
the trees on a bright day. I was using spot metering. I wanted the
gorillas dark, but what I got was almost no detail in their fur. I did get
catch lights in the eyes. Next time I'll bracket between -2/3 and no
compensation and compare that to straight evaluative metering. I don't
think evaluative metering was the culprit here since I was using spot
metering. Maybe it would have done a better job.
Cheers, JD
Keith Green wrote:
> Assumption:
> It is how Canon have set up their database for Evaluative metering.
> After all, if it's much brighter than Sunny 16, then it's bright.
Ok; I can see how, in theory, the meter might take into account a meter
reading
that gives an exposure that varies significantly from average for a given
ISO
setting. Perhaps this is what happens when we notice that in evaluative mode
less compensation is needed than we had thought. Nonetheless, it has been my
experience that snow (for example) still needs about +1 compensation even
when
light is fairly dim (just after sunset, for example); and recently I was
working
with some beginners who, without applying compensation to their Rebel 2000s
(EOS
300), were getting consistent underexposure at the beach and at a playground
with a sand "floor." BUT, my estimation of how much compensation is
necessary is
often imperfect, and when applying compensation I often bracket (manually),
especially when shooting slides. And there's no substitute for experience.
For
example, when my "students" applied compensation as I suggested, they tended
to
just blindly dial in +1--the value I had mentioned for snow scenes--and
hence
ran into overexposure at the beach; they haven't yet the experience
necessary to
be able to estimate in advance how much compensation they might need.
Interestingly, the one who was using a Nikon N65 tended to get better
exposures
in difficult light than did the Rebel users.
> Where I live, Worcester, which is vaguely left of centre in England we
never
> see much snow anyway, just plenty of rain, although at the moment we are
> experiencing a bit of a heat-wave.
> See, a typical Englishman talking about the weather :-)
Yes, well we do it here too--at least I do, since many of my correspondents
live
in quite different climates from mine (New Mexico, Oslo, Sydney). As it is,
I
live less than two hours from Worcester, Mass., and while last week New
England
had something of a heat wave also, it's currently a much more reasonable
23�C
this afternoon, and it looks like we're not likely to break 27�C anytime
soon.
:-) Lot's of blue sky and big puffy clouds . . . what am I doing inside??
Craig
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