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1DMkIIN Picked Weird Exposures

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BBQBluesStringer

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I shot an outdoor event two weekends ago with a new MkIIN in P mode and the camera picked some weird exposures. I'm sure it's something I did stupid, but I'm not sure what it is I did. I was using the 24-70 f/2.8L and the 70-200 f/2.8L. It was a bright, crisp, sunny day and initially the camera was choosing f/8 with a reasonable exposure time. Towards the end of the shoot I got a lot of underexposed shots and upon looking at the header info, I find that the camera was choosing crud like f/18 with a 1/2400 shutter speed. What button could I have inadvertently pushed to do that? Is my camera brain-dead?
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BBQBluesStringer
 
It would do that if you set the ISO too high.
 
This is a bit different from your problem but last weekend I took some indoor pictures in P mode with the 24-70L, 10D and 550EX. The camera kept on picking f/2.8! Almost all the pictures are soft and/or OOF.

Never again, P mode is just too much of a gamble.

Barnett
 
BBQBluesStringer said:
Is my camera brain-dead?
Click to expand...
Your camera doesn't have a brain. Therefore, you are required to have the brain. If you expect your ubercam's reflected light meter to be accurate no matter what you point it at, the problem is obvious and it isn't the camera. Get some training and stop blaming the camera.
 
DD22 said:
Barnett said:
The camera kept on picking f/2.8! Almost all the pictures are soft
and/or OOF.
Click to expand...
Gosh, so much camera and lens and so little photographer to run it.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the very helpful post.

Somewhere in the late 80s I had a Minolta 7000i. It had a big "P" button on the top to instantly return the camera to P mode with all other settings set back to defaults. The reviewers at the time joked that the P stands for panic. When you are not ready to shoot and the action is about to happen you just hit the panic button and shoot.

I still think of P mode in the same way but after getting bad results from the Canon P mode I simply will not trust it again.

Barnett
 
DD22 said:
BBQBluesStringer said:
Is my camera brain-dead?
Click to expand...
Your camera doesn't have a brain. Therefore, you are required to
have the brain. If you expect your ubercam's reflected light meter
to be accurate no matter what you point it at, the problem is
obvious and it isn't the camera. Get some training and stop
blaming the camera.
Click to expand...
The camera does not have a brain but the engineers at Canon supposedly does. Based on the information from the various camera sensors and the algorithms developed by the Canon engineers the camera can in fact make a reasonably "intelligent" decision about what settings to use.

In cases where there is time to think a good photographer will always do better than P mode. But in some cases when there is no time to think, the speed of a computer, even with it's very limited algorithms will (at least theoretically) still outperform even the best photographer.

The fact that Canon included the P mode suggest that they believe that some people will find it useful. All I am saying is that it does not work very well and that there is definitely some room for improvement.

Barnett
 
Probably so. I had set it to 1600 the night before and forgot to set it to something reasonable the next day. My bad. BTW, thank you for posting a reasonable, informative reply as compared to the useless garbage others felt compelled to post.
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BBQBluesStringer
 
Barnett said:
That does not explain why the photos were underexposed though...
Click to expand...
I've found that if you bombard the sensor with more than maximum light where it is forced to use maximum shutter speed, the outcome can be just about anything but right, whether it is focus, exposure, or whatever. There is definitely a limit to what the camera can take.

Olga
 
Nope. You would think the algorithims would take high ISO into account when setting the exposure parameters. Ken is likely correct in his observation, but I don't understand why it is so.
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BBQBluesStringer
 
Spot metering, while it can be useful, is actually very tricky to use. It will take a very small area and expose for the at the 15% gray (or 18% can't remember if it uses 18% or 15%). If you are pointing it at something bright (such as something if full sun) it will pick a wicked high shutter speed and small aperture.

As it should.

Steven

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Check what mode the camera meter was set in. The ISO has been discussed already. Make sure no custom function like bracketting was set in error. When all else fails, try manual mode or AV. Check the exposure histrgram.

Did it happen with both lenses or was one more prone than the other? Good luck and disregard the "unkind comments" posted.

Happy Holidays
 
I am not criticizing at all, i am just asking. I wish they removed all of them modes except 'M'. You said it was a nice bright sunny day, set your ISO at 100 and just keep dialing in the correct shutter speed for exposure after you set the proper aperture for what ever kind of effect that you wish to achieve.
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-•°•- ¹Do - & ²Cmore -•°•-
 
Old school film photographers had the luxury of time to mess around with the dials, since it was generally accepted that people don't fire off 10 or more shots in a single burst. Besides, for PJ work most of them shot negs which were very forgiving unlike slides and digital.

When you're shooting sporting events or any kind of event that requires you to shuttle between an indoor location and an outdoor one, the required exposure will change wildly sometimes, that's why P will always have a place on the camera. At times like these one just doesn't have the time to look in the VF and adjust exposure while at the same time trying to concentrate on getting the best shots.
TonyKidd said:
I am not criticizing at all, i am just asking. I wish they removed
all of them modes except 'M'. You said it was a nice bright sunny
day, set your ISO at 100 and just keep dialing in the correct
shutter speed for exposure after you set the proper aperture for
what ever kind of effect that you wish to achieve.
--
-•°•- ¹Do - & ²Cmore -•°•-
Click to expand...
--
An image is only as good as everyone says it is
 
If it's really dark even if you have a speedlite mounted, the camera will obviously try and select the largest aperture available to enable you to shoot at hand-holdable speeds. What's wrong with that?

My prior experience with the 10D/20D cams tell me that for indoor work, for most cases P mode will select 1/60 @ f/4. In extremely low light conditions it will still maintain 1/60 but will then select an aperture larger than f/4 (if available). The only way I could force f/2.8 in P mode (in moderate lighting) was to add about 1-stop +ve exposure compensation.
Barnett said:
This is a bit different from your problem but last weekend I took
some indoor pictures in P mode with the 24-70L, 10D and 550EX. The
camera kept on picking f/2.8! Almost all the pictures are soft
and/or OOF.

Never again, P mode is just too much of a gamble.

Barnett
Click to expand...
--
An image is only as good as everyone says it is
 
gregY said:
If it's really dark even if you have a speedlite mounted, the
camera will obviously try and select the largest aperture available
to enable you to shoot at hand-holdable speeds. What's wrong with
that?
Click to expand...
I am sure we can debate for hours what settings the camera should have used. In this case it was too dark for ambient light to have any effect on the exposure so the camera might as well set the shutter to max sync speed (1/200 on 10D). It should also have been able to determine that the flash had enough power for f/8, either from the pre-flash or from the lens focus distance information. Perhaps this is what they do with ETTL-II...
gregY said:
My prior experience with the 10D/20D cams tell me that for indoor
work, for most cases P mode will select 1/60 @ f/4. In extremely
low light conditions it will still maintain 1/60 but will then
select an aperture larger than f/4 (if available). The only way I
could force f/2.8 in P mode (in moderate lighting) was to add about
1-stop +ve exposure compensation.
Click to expand...
Of the about 20 shots I took in P mode only one was at f/3.5. All the rest was at f/2.8.

Barnett
 
I'll walk with the women and children if I may and use P mode most of the time. If your aren't happy with the settings then use those dials to change them on the fly while still in P mode. You can even us AV or TV and let the camera pick the other setting which is still P mode to me. If I have time I use P mode to get an about setting and then can set up the speed or exposure the way I want but this is only on long drawn out shots. Otherwise....P> > > P> > > P..is for me and don't need an education or a name.

I doubt there are many who still us a meter and manually set up every shot. Just no time to do so.

Thanks
Carl
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