I've read through your thread and you have some good advice...perhaps center metering would have indeed helped. However, I'll add my own take on the images.
Please help.
I went hiking this afternoon and took these pics. I took them in Aperture Priority with ISO set at 100 (it was very sunny day).
When I took them, they all looked good on the LCD. But when I came home and check them on the large display, I noticed that all of them were over exposed. It seems like it didn't matter where the sun was (I may be wrong.)
Sometimes on bright days the LCD will look darker than the actual image. The opposite can be true in a dark environment. You simply can't use the LCD to accurately determine correct exposure. Sometimes the histogram is a more accurate check.
What could I have done differently? Is there a way for me to realize this right away after taking the pictures?
Again, your histogram is often the better tool. Eventually you will learn what the LCD is showing you and how it compares to the actual exposure. You may learn that if an image looks a little underexposed it's probably about right. If you are careful, over time, you should even be able to put a number to how it looks..."I know this shot looks about 2/3 underexposed...it should be OK"
This first shot is a little bit overexposed, not much, just a little. I think what happened is the camera tried to properly expose all that dark hillside to a neutral gray....it raised the exposure because it thought all the dark browns and blacks were underexposed. When it raised the exposure on you, the subjects ended up slightly overexposed, especially the bright sweatshirt. You and I know that that hillside and all those trees are supposed to be dark. You needed to somehow override the camera and tell it that you wanted a darker image....exposure compensation or manual exposure would have given you control.
This second image is suffering from some pretty bad lens flare. Any time you have bright light entering the lens you risk lens flare. It's the lens flare that killed the contrast in this image. Shooting at a different angle and using your lens hood would have helped.
There is very little wrong with this third image. The faces are pretty much properly exposed. The specular highlights might be a little blown out but that is difficult to control in hard sunlight. I think having the faces properly exposed and the sky blown out is a good compromise.
If you are expecting to capture the blue sky as a rich blue it becomes much more difficult. You probably will want to use manual exposure and expose for the sky...right at your maximum sync speed of around 1/250th and whatever ISO and aperture combo gives you your blue sky. If you take that shot then the faces will be underexposed....you can bring up the face exposure using flash or even a reflector. You will want to read up on flash photography, specifically balancing ambient to understand all of this.
I don't think there is anything wrong with this last image either...I'd maybe just set exposure compensation down 2/3 or so for this type of scene.
I think the lesson here is that you can't trust your camera...the little thing is about as smart as a bag of doorknobs. Every shot you take you have to ask yourself if the scene is darker than average and at risk of the camera overexposing or is it brighter than average and at risk of the camera underexposing. And then you need to determine by how much. You have to take control and tell the camera what a good exposure is.
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eddyshoots
John
