Need advice on setting for Ev and WB

[flowerpot99]

Hi. Anyone using the E330? What do you always put for exposure compensation and white balance? I notice that when I shot at Auto WB and +/- 0EV the picture tends to come out underexpose and abit on the warm side. Any recommendations? Will the setting for the day and night be the same?

[viewwing]

erm, i'm using a E510... i'll share with u my experience on this 2 subjects...

first. Underexpose is better then overexpose... cause u can PS underexposed shots to make it better... with over exposure, you lose details and will never get them back... and for my day shots its usually set at 0.

for WB, i usually switch to liveview to have a feel of how each scene will look like... the 510 LV is alittle on the yellowish side i but it works.

For night, it gets a little tricky... but i have it set to auto as most of the time i use flash. Other than street shots... i usually +0.3 to +1.0 for the flash as i'm using a diffuser. -0.3 to -1.0 when i'm using a bounce card.

if this 2 items really bothers u... can always shoot in raw then edit later

[Mikefellh]

Originally Posted by flowerpot99 What do you always put for exposure compensation and white balance?

There's no such thing as "always"...if you stick with always you will get average to mediocre images. Personally I will look at what I'm going to photograph, and think what type of image I want to create.

With white balance I will use the one-touch white balance feature...if I'm really critical about colour I'll shoot a colour correcting card which I can use software later to correct (QPCard).

[microcosm]

I have a rule of thumb when I am shooting... if it is important, I will shoot RAW, because that gives me the flexibility to edit in future and tweak stuff.

In cases when I can only shoot JPGs (still you can tweak them in powerful software like Silkypix), I will usually use a white card and do a "One Touch" WB. That usually gives me a good colour and results.

In the worse case scenario... buy a E-3 with external WB sensor... LOL.

[aryanto]

I do not trust auto WB. It can be fooled easily. Use manual setting. If you do outdoor daytime it is basically sunny, cloudy, or shadow.
I used to have E330, and normally I set ev-0.3.

I agree with microcosm about RAW file.
But use judgement. If I am studying or experimenting, I shoot raw. If I am travelling (tour), I shoot JPEG.
There has been time where I choose wrong WB while shooting in JPEG and I manage to correct that quite well with Photoshop Element 4 (remove colour cast).

[flowerpot99]

Thanks all for the kind advice. I do get what you all meant as there is no hard and fast rules to the setting as it have to depends on the location and the surrounding. Maybe I sld be more specific. Was using a D40 perviously and it tend to overexpose by 0.3ev as such I normally set it to -0.3ev so that it will be closer to my desired exposure. However on the E330, at +/-0ev the picture has to be brighten up alot through software to acceptable level and this results in loss of details. I believe this happens when I tried to use bounce flash (think is not too far in bright daylight thought still under). And this should be a result of my inexperience on it. Maybe sld rephrase my question.

1. Does E330 tend to underexpose by a specific amount? If so whats the recommanded +/-ev for it to be at neutral?

2. When doing a bounce flash, does the camera takes note of the angle of bounce and rectify accordingly? Or do I always have to take a test shot and correct the flash output?

3. I do believe the WB on E330 is not as accurate as other system and needs rectification in tricky light. I do understand doing a one touch WB will get better result but this will takes time and sometimes we do not have time on hand. Any suggestion?

[aryanto]

How do you do one touch WB? Against what? You need a grey card to do that appropriately.

Anyway, here are my answer:
1. No. In my experience E330 tends to overexpose and thus -0.3 is my normal setting. It does underexpose on shadow, so use discretion, may be only -0.1 and if indoor, or deep shadow use normal (0 ev). Brightening is normally easier to do with PS or other image processor than removing overexposed parts. Unless you are shooting really high ISO like 800, then under-exposing is OK. With high ISO, underexposed area tend to have higher noise. This is done without using filter.

2. Yes. Especially when you use flash with TTL Auto. By the way, what flash are you using? Flash also have its own power setting (like how powerful you want the flash be). Bouncing is tricky. Where do you bounce? Naked bounce (as in no diffuser) or with diffuser? Build in flash or external flash (Olympus brand? Third party?) Also what is your camera setting? Is this first ownership or second hand? If it is second hand, you might inherit previous owner's setting, which may be not to your liking. A factory reset may be in order. Do you have filter? Is that polariser filter?

3. I rarely use one-touch. I shoot RAW and make correction using Olympus Master for white balance if ever.

Also, how do you meter? Spot? Spot Shadow (spot with SH) or Spot Highlight? (spot with HI)? Spot SH and HI can be tricky, as camera actually do some shadow/highlight processing on the picture, again, raw is best.

Another trick is to set your EV + and - (read the advance manual CD rom) and do bracketing.

[cjtune]

Originally Posted by flowerpot99 3. I do believe the WB on E330 is not as accurate as other system and needs rectification in tricky light. I do understand doing a one touch WB will get better result but this will takes time and sometimes we do not have time on hand. Any suggestion?

It's the same for even the E-510 in low-light.
You can do a one-touch WB well before any shoot. Heck I did it only one time early on in sunlight and with a clean 4R photo paper when I got my E-510 and kept it that way since, even when it meant slightly yellowish or slightly bluish photos later. But at least it's consistently yellowish or bluish for the entire shoot and it can be corrected even in JPEG via post-processing, as Aryanto has noted.

I'll switch to this one-touch WB for low-light situations just to avoid the auto-WB's sometimes wild swings. To reiterate, it's just to keep consistency in this sort of situation where the Auto-WB is unreliable. For the most part, the E-330 and 510's auto-WB is OK for me.

[cjtune]

Originally Posted by flowerpot99 1. Does E330 tend to underexpose by a specific amount? If so whats the recommanded +/-ev for it to be at neutral?

After awhile of using the Evaluative metering, you'll get a feel of how much your E-330's on-board logic tends to under or overexpose shots under specific conditions like beach sand, sun in view, bright street lamps, etc. and you'll know the specific + or - EV compensation to set. Eg. for street night scenes, but with a good amount of street and shop lighting, you can just dial in -1 EV right away and adjust to taste. For some reason, the E-510 and E-3's evaluative metering logic is now different and I can even shoot at just -0.6 to even 0 EV in that same sort of night street scene.

[flowerpot99]

Thanks again for sharing

Think I am getting somewhere.

For the exposure it seems that it is dependent on the situation and it seems that a -ev is more often used(as in aryanto and cjtune case). I do understand that underexpose is better than over as we can "save" it later. For my case, I think I am getting underexpose are due to difficult lighting.

Situation 1 : bright gloomy sky as backdrop (was in the ducktour). The face of the subjects are a tab under. I did tried to rectify it by using the in-built flash (did not have the FL36R then). Maybe using a spot metering will be better?

Situation 2 : Indoor with white walls and low lighting (just some spot light creating hot spots on the wall). Am using FL36R in this situation but as the wall was not horizontal nor regular the bounce was unpredictable. As such some of the subject were under again. (change metering? or direct flash?)

For the flash, what is the difference between a naked bounce and with diffuser? I do understand that a diffuser reduce the power output as such needs to increase manually. But why use a diffuser when bouncing? Oh the flash is new, I just brought it recently so setting is untouched. Am planing to get a flip it to achieve a better frontal lighting, is it recommended? It looks quite flexible to me.

I use evaluative metering all the time. Unless for deliberate shots like macro or when I have time to play ard.

[aryanto]

I think your problem on no.1 is not due to underexposure but due to backlighting (background brigher), thus confuses the metering. Spot can help, but I think soft flash (adjust to lowest power - read your manual darling, assuming your subject is not too far - 4 meters is far for popup flash, 1-2 m is fair distance) may be better. If still under exposed, adjust to stronger power.
Either that or use a light reflector, you can make your own using A3 paper (white) or something like that. larger subject require larger reflector, but on ducktour a bit hard.

The problem with no.2 is the hotspots on the wall due to spotlight. you have to compose properly to avoid problem with hotspot, like get people standing to cover the hot spots. At least some will be reduced. A diffuser is in order here not to reduce the power but soften the light. Diffuser cause the light from flash to be less direct (and as such less will hit the subject and thus the apperance of less powerful flash) and create better shades of shadow (more gradual). A naked flash (no diffuser) with the same power, cause light to hit the subject more directly and it is called harsh lighting. The contrast is very exagerrated and the shadow is very dark (less gradual). Wall bouncing is similar to usage of diffuser, as the overall lighting around the subject (so long you bounce correctly) is enhanced but without harsh light hitting the subject immediately.

Depends on taste, I like to use harsh light to create more drama. Shooting an angry person face with naked flash capture his anger more than soft lighting. I would imagine taking a picture of bodybuilders posing with ripped muscles will be good with naked flash too, as the contrast is high.
Most portrait of beautiful women smiling are taken with diffuser or flash bouncing.