Help wanted! How to take pictures in cloudy weather ??

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Ries
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Help wanted! How to take pictures in cloudy weather ??

Post by Ries »

Hi all,

I still fight with my camera settings quite often. Especially during cloudy weather. I just can't figure out how to take better pictures. They mostly come out like this:

Image

How I took it:
- camera: Canon 400D
- objective: Sigma 28-300mm (1:3.5 - 6.3)
- ISO: 200
- shutter: 1/400 sec
- F16 (automatically choosen as I put my camera on TV)
- focal length: 200 mm

Does anyone have a good tip for me how to setup my shuttertime, exposure, etc.?? Perhaps you can show not-Photoshopped photos below together with EXIF data?

Many thanks!!

Ries
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Flanker27
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Post by Flanker27 »

It looks like that pic was taken against the sunlight. Check the exif info of pics shown here (save image as... and then select properties in Windows by pushing the right mmousebutton on the pic on your PC)

That way you can learn a lot of the settings the photographer has used making the specific shot. I also use an EOS400D, but that doesn't really matter. For instance F16 is probably not the best Diaphragm setup for the cam. Also you can change the whitebalance on the camera to cloudy, this already is a big change. Check my pics of a foggy and cloudy Florennes for instance on http://flanker27.hyves.nl.

They were taken with 200-500 mm mostly. TV 1/200 F6.3 and ISO 200/400.

Maybe your spotmeasuring is also not right (lichtmeting I mean). There are 3 setting options in those on the EOS400D, try to change and check the display on the cam how the pic changes.
Michel
EOS200D, 18-135 IS, sigma 50-500
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Redskin301
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Post by Redskin301 »

Tip, try to work on AV mode when it is dark and shoose 5.6 or something like that ISO200
Regards Alex van Noye,

http://www.runway28.nl
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Wildpicture
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Post by Wildpicture »

What happened here in your pictuire has little to do with which mode or aperture you have used. It is the result of your light meter being fooled by the bright light. The helicopter is dark and the surrounding sky is very bright. because the surrounding sky takes up most of the image, the light meter in the camera thinks this is the most important part of the picture. Therefore the exposure settings are based on the sky and that is what looks okay, while the helicopter is silhouette.

What you need to do, is measure the helicopter instead of the sky. The effect will then be that the helicopter is exposed correctly while the sky will be too bright. Unfortunately often there is nothing you can do about that as the contrast between the dark helicopter and the bright sky is just too big. So you have to choose which of the two you want exposed correct. Normally that would be the helicopter.

So how do you measure and expose for the helicopter? There are several possibilities.
1. You can use spotmeting on the helicopter. The camera's light meter now only measures the helicopter and disregards the bright sky.
2. You can measure the entire image and compensate with approximately one F-stop. This means open up one F-stop more than the overal measurement. Look in the manual of your camera how you can easily do that. In can be done in any automatic mode Av, Tv, P etc.
3. You can set your camera manually and manually compensate for that one F-stop.
4. You can measure something else which is about the same color as the helicopter and then either set that exposure manually or press a "memory button" to store that exposure. Green grass is normally very close to the color level of most aircraft.

If you shoot against a clear blue sky with the sun from behind, no compensation is needed.

Personally I always work in Av mode where I set the aperture. Often that would be around F8 or some value that will give me enough depth-of-field (scherptediepte) to get the entire aircraft in focus. The camera will then set the appropriate shutterspeed. If the shutterspeed is too slow to get sharp pictures, you increase the ISO setting. To compensate for bright skies, I use about 1 F-stop compensation deoending on the darkness of the sky.
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Iwan Bogels
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Post by Iwan Bogels »

Hi Ries,

Wildpicture is absolutely right in his explanation. It's very important to train yourself in recognizing difficult light circumstances and taking appropriate measures to counter them.

Learn how to over-expose manually, or learn how your camera can do it for you. Personally I prefer to do it manually.

Another option to act as a small safety net, is to shoot in RAW (= CR2). This will allow you to compensate a little bit extra afterwards, but it will not be enough to compensate the complete result of your Cougar photo shown above.

Rest assured, every photographer has faced this problem at the start of his career, and we all still struggle not to make make similar mistakes even after many years of experience.

Good luck experimenting !

Cheers,
Iwan
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