d300 metering wrong issues?

I'm having occasional problems with my d300 metering and am wondering if this has been a problem for anyone?

It happens every so often and then the camera seems to correct itself over time. I mostly shoot with the camera set on A and adjust f stop depending on brightness etc. Both these shots were set on A however they are blown out. On the young African Man, I focused on his face not shirt, which continued to blow this photo out.

Any feedback is welcome. Much thanks. Remi

Yeah my two D300's have totally wacky metering in any of the auto modes, i now shoot all the time in manual exposure mode.

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Nikon D300 x2
Nikon D200
Nikon 17-55mm f2.8
Nikon 28-105 f3.5 AFD
Nikon AFS 300mm f4 IF-ED
Sigma 70-200 f2.8 APO HSM EX
SB800 x 2

... were you using? In bright high contrast such as these, you will not be able to get proper exposure on both the highlights and the shadow areas. There simply is not enough DR in the sensor.

Try using the spot meter mode, and for the first shot, meter on the brick building. The sky will blow out but the building will be exposed properly. Conversely, you could meter on the sky, and have the building go to shadow.

On the image of the man, spot meter on his face, and you will get better results.
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Rosco
My Advise is always free. So take it at it's face value
http://www.pbase.com/roscot

Actually, I was going to guess that what he had done was spot meter on the man’s face and that is why everything was blown out.

My guess would be that matrix would have done a better job than spot on the man’s face.

Spot metering on a face is a good starting point for caucasians (because they are roughly close to 18% grey) but for darker skin tones, you need to compensate manually.

To the OP, I would say that, as I become more and more familiar with it, the D300 has shown that it gives repeated and consistent metering. Not to say it always gives me exactly what I want without having to make adjustment, but it is repeatable in its actions and therefore relatively easy to anticipate what changes need to occur.

-Suntan

remi wrote:
and then the camera seems to correct itself

remi said:

over time.

Click to expand...

The more you photograph, the more the camera will "seem to correct itself over time".
Good luck.

I've had this happen with all 3 DSLR's I've owned, D70, D200, D300. In my case they were always one shot phenomena. I generally blamed it on me except for the D200 which developed recurring erratic metering symptoms that required service at Nikon.

My theory is that, if it wasn't a mistake on my part, it may just be a computer failure in the camera. Since auto settings and data recording is a digital process, digital camera bodies, which are mostly just highly specialized computers controlling hardware, can have those inexplicable glitches in processing data that any computer can have. For Instance, image files are corrupted in the writing to card process, (rarely, but it happens) when nothing is wrong with either card or camera.

Regularly recurring incidents of this may derive from flaws in the electronics, but the isolated incidents I chalk of to my error or one time mini "crashes" in the camera.

My absolutely inexpert opinion, worth less than most of my free opinions.

Keith

billkoe said:

billkoe said:

over time.

Click to expand...

The more you photograph, the more the camera will "seem to correct
itself over time".
Good luck.

Click to expand...

Best response I've read in a long time on this forum!

Suntan is right. Acccording to "PhotoMe" the exif shows he did "Spot"meter and as the OP says, he focused on the guys face.

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Richard

I think if he had spot metered on the face, his face would be properly exposed, and the BG, which is in shadow would darken (except for the light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak).

It is possible the meter is off. I've not experienced this with my D300. Generally, I've found the metering to be very accurate and consistent.
--
Rosco
My Advise is always free. So take it at it's face value
http://www.pbase.com/roscot

--
Rosco
My Advise is always free. So take it at it's face value
http://www.pbase.com/roscot

Assuming the metering was on the man's face, the spot meter will assume it's 12%(some would say 18%) gray. If it is actually darker than the meter assumes, the photo will be blown out. This can be corrected by either manually exposing or building in an exposure compensation value. the other approach would be matrix metering, and perhaps adding a shadow adjustment in PS or NX.
Sarah

The first one is a reasonable exposure if you were spot-metering the building, maybe even what I'd expect from matrix. The second I don't understand unless you focused on the guy's face, then AF-locked and recomposed, so the exposure was from a spot reading of the dark end of the passage.

remi wrote:
... I mostly shoot with the camera set on A and adjust f stop

remi said:

depending on brightness etc. ...

Click to expand...

Keep in mind that in A mode, changing the f stop will not impact exposure, the camera will just change the shutter speed to compensate. The change exposure use the EV buttons + or - .

-Mark

Exactly. I did use spot and metered on his face. I shot the same image 4 times and it was blown out each time. I've had this happen before too but can't remember the image. It just blows images out, out of know where. Very strange as my D100 never did this...ever.

I guess if it continues to show up I'll have to send it in.

Thanks for the feedback.
Remi

Could it be randomly doing this whenever you spot meter on the face of a dark skinned person?

Seriously, figure out how your camera works, then you will find out that it works more reliably.

-Suntan