Can't figure out what happened....

I took some shots in a monastery yesterday and the last two shots were grossly under exposed and I don't know why. I was shooting with my a77M2 and the Sony 16-35Z in "A" mode set at f/3.2, ISO 800, center weighted metering, EV 0. The camera used a shutter speed of 1/2000! Checked the gear after this and everything seems to work fine. Here is one of the shots; anyone have a good idea of why??



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Busch
Take the scenic route! Life is too short to do otherwise.
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To bright background I think and the camera adjusted for that. In this case with so much difference in brightness you better used spot metering for the faces.

Greetings Leon.

in this situation it is better to do an spot meassure on a dark place.

That will make the picture more brighter, just like leon said try the next time a spot meassure on the face's of the people

It should not have gone this far IMO. Here is a shot about 2-3 seconds earlier with the same settings.

I agree center metering would be preferred but I didn't have time to do it.



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Busch
Take the scenic route! Life is too short to do otherwise.
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As I said in reply to Leon, I agree spot metering would have been better. BUT, the question is not what I should have done but why did the camera go totally overboard?

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Busch
Take the scenic route! Life is too short to do otherwise.
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In this picture only a small part of it has the bright windows in it so the average exposure is brighter.

The camera software just makes an exposure setting trying to avoid blown highlights. In the first pictures the windows are the larger part and in the second a small part.

greetings Leon.

Okay but here is a shot 1 second before and the shutter speed was 1/400 vs 1/2000. Seems even more windows in this shot.



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Busch
Take the scenic route! Life is too short to do otherwise.
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Is that a cropped image?

No crop: only re-sized to 1200 wide.

Well, I'm also guessing. I think the problem has to do with the high contrast's in this scene. The camera software just uses some algoritmes to make a exposure setting. In difficult scenes like this one a small change in position can have large changes in exposure. That's why spot metering is probably the best solution.

Greetings Leon.

My guess is that with one person in the centre of the frame (mostly her head) it weighted more for the background which is very bright sunlight reflected off the white wall.

When two people were in the centre on the other shot you can see it gave a little more weight to the centre.

In back-lit situations like that I like to use fill flash.

Divine intervention.

Tom, I also agree fill flash would have been good. BUT, flash is not allowed in church. As I have said, the question isn't what I should have done but why the camera went nuts. ;-)

Read all my replies to Leon and note the 3 different shots.

I think you have the answer!

Perhaps I wasn't a good boy yesterday.

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Busch
Take the scenic route! Life is too short to do otherwise.
My Photos

Gary, with the rest of the folks I expect the camera meter picked up on the bright areas and tried to balance the exposure. I shoot (and recommend) full manual in these conditions to prevent this stuff from happening.

I assume you have capability to recover as much as possible in Photoshop (use ACR to recover Shadows and pull back on High Lights). You can even use ACR on a jpg file to do this. Below is a bad example because of downloading from here. With the original files it might actually work pretty good for you.

If you need help with this and send me the original file I can give it a go (only takes a minute).

busch said:

I took some shots in a monastery yesterday and the last two shots were grossly under exposed and I don't know why. I was shooting with my a77M2 and the Sony 16-35Z in "A" mode set at f/3.2, ISO 800, center weighted metering, EV 0. The camera used a shutter speed of 1/2000! Checked the gear after this and everything seems to work fine. Here is one of the shots; anyone have a good idea of why??

Click to expand...

busch said:

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Busch
Take the scenic route! Life is too short to do otherwise.
My Photos

Click to expand...

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Here are a couple of questions.

Is this the whole image as shot? No crop?

What type of focus area were you using? Center point?

Did you focus & recompose?

With the bright window so close above & behind the woman's face, and the large difference in light between the two, that would be the first place I would look.

It is pretty hard to recreate this situation to test, but you could try some shots with a bright window in a room. It might show some metering peculiarities of the A77-2.

Have you ever tried the "face recognition" setting? It really puts extra emphasis on metering on the faces over everything else in the image. I found it works well in difficult lighting.

Regards,

I'm tending to agree with Leon here - I think you were probably right on the line that center-weight uses for its calculations - where the camera was trying to weigh whether the darker areas (people) or brighter areas (background) took up more of a percentage of the center of the frame, enough to be given the primary 'weight' in calculating exposure. In your first shot, the woman is almost on center, with much bright background above her head, and also to the right, enough that the bright portions probably took up more than 65% of the center metering area, and was given the primary weight in determining exposure. In your second sample with the two people together, there is now more darker shadow area filling the center metering area, enough that it probably shifted the weighting to 40-50% bright, and 50-60% dark...and that changed the weighting enough to bring the shutter speed down more. In the one shot where the person is much more exposed, and the background almost blown out, it looks like the center-weight saw the person filling the majority of that frame, PLUS the background wasn't as bright as in the previous shots because the window with direct outside light wasn't right in the center area, and therefore the background was less bright than before AND there was better centering of the person in shadow, so the camera put all its weight on the shadow exposure.

One advantage of the EVF is that you can see when the camera's metering is going to balls it up before you even press the shutter. It's rarely going to get this kind of scene right unless you spot meter and use your judgement.