Quote:
Originally Posted by dcstep
Shane, I dove deeper into your hummingbird shot's EXIF data. The under-exposure was caused by you being in Automatic mode. The bright background raised the shutter speed way higher than it needed to be.
If you're going to shoot birds-in-flight, you have to break out of the Automatic mode and go to Manual. The shutter speed required to get some color on the hummer is about half where your camera chose. If going to Manual seems too daunting, then you might try Av or Tv mode and then using the EV adjustment to deal with the changing background. For instance, if I was in Av mode for that shot, I would have spun the big wheel on the back of the camera to get to +1EV, realizing that the bright background was going to under-expose the main subject, if I didn't adjust.
|
I shoot almost always in Av or Tv but rarely flip to full manual. The only times I really go back to A+ is with quick shots that I really don't have time to prepare for in social environments (once or twice that's happened at car meets when I want to capture people instead of cars quickly and then back). Those there were shot in Av but were also all in the shade where I didn't have a method of lighting the hummers otherwise. Given a different time of day they may have come out much better, unfortunately that is at my grandparents house and we didn't stick around long enough for the sun to hit the backside of their home. I hope to move to full manual, it just seems so tricky especially when you're trying to narrow the focus on such a small subject. That's when the finer points have become so challenging. I do really appreciate your criticism here, I believe it's time to start working in full manual outside of still subjects and expand my understanding of the digital camera platform. Unfortunately I'm going to run out of time for already practiced subjects, but I'm sure other opportunities will come around.
In the mean time, here's a shot from a car meet we held in Austin. I think these came out pretty good, but let me know if you find other points of improvement! I'm very open to them, you're not going to hurt my feelings here
. Also thanks again
dcstep for taking the time to go through those photos, it means a lot to me as I aspire to your photos frequently.
Friend's E46 by
Shane