Definition of over exposure, images seem very bright

[bokehluver]

Hi all,

Just joined the world of DSLRs with a Canon 450D

I haven got a chance to explore it outdoors and have been shooting in my house at night after work.

Tried with the kit lens and a 50mm f/1.8 lens. I notice all my shots came out very bright on the LCD scrn. the details are there. had to work on using exposure compensation but shots come out consistently bright. To me, it seems like its over exposed.

All shots are taken without flash. Did try a few settings but I will always have to compensate down the exposure to get a satisfactory brightness. Shots are experimented with Auto, P, Av and Tv, all yield similar "over exposed" shots.

For white balance, I tried AWB and Florescent light and both are equally bad.

Compared the shots with a canon ixus 40 compact, the compact seems to give the correct exposure.

Is this normal? Want to know if its the environment or the fault with the camera. Of coz, the user is an inexperience user.

thanks in adv.

 

[night86mare]

what mode were you shooting in?

at night and in dark conditions, the metering goes haywire sometimes. what metering mode are you using?

nothing to do with white balance at all. if you put u pthe pictures to show us what you mean, we can guide you better.

the official definition of overexposed has to do with two things - the details you WANT, and the histogram.

 

[coolin]

only on your camera LCD?
it could be because of many dark areas in your picture, your camera meter tries to get it to 18% grey. im not sure though :S
sorry if i couldn't be of more help.

 

[catchlights]

a photo can tell a thousand words..


just show a photo

 

[bokehluver]

Thks for the quick reply. I have yet to transfer it to my comp. only got the camera 2 days ago and haven done the installation and stuff to transfer photos. Gonna grab a card reader instead.

Will be registering a photobucket account and upload some pictures soon.

Yep, only on LCD because I have yet to transfer to comp. but shouldnt the LCD reflect as accurately as possible? Even the compact one is accurate.

 

[Blur Shadow]

It could be overexposure, or it could be your LCD brightness playing a trick on you. If you have difficulty uploading just as yet, simply refer to the histogram in your dSLR. Is the graph in the middle, or biased towards the right?

 

[dennisc]

Overexposed at night? Where you pointing at, the dark spot? :bsmilie: just show a pic

 

[bokehluver]

these were taken using my canon ixus compact camera (just to give a guage of lighting in my room

http://i406.photobucket.com/albums/pp143/bokehluver/IMG_2077.jpg
http://i406.photobucket.com/albums/pp143/bokehluver/IMG_2078.jpg

These were taken using Av mode f/2.2, 50mm lens. Didn't take note of the shutter speed. I have more photos or can take more with certain settings if you need. I just experimented alot and didn't take note of the settings.

http://i406.photobucket.com/albums/pp143/bokehluver/IMG_0293.jpg
http://i406.photobucket.com/albums/pp143/bokehluver/IMG_0305.jpg

the histogram is mostly in the dark zones for the kitty photo (probably due to her being black )
for the other photo its spread out nicely with lows in the 2 ends.
thanks.

 

[pro_FHM]

it also depends on your mode of metering, evaluative/ center/ partial.

your surrounding being dark, the camera tries to meter to make it look brighter, hence your cat turns lighter.

maybe can try manual mode if u are confident. trial & error.

 

[kurtlim]

did you deliberately bump up the ISO to 1600 in order to take these picture at night?

 

[flipfreak]

the slr pics were shot at a wider f/stop and a higher iso. of cos the pic will turn out brighter. i think the slr pic was shot at abt 5 and 1/3 stop over.

 

[RedDotPhoto]

Image from Ixus
1/8s
F2.9
ISO unknown

Image from 450D
1/8
F2.5
ISO1600

From what I see, the Ixus' ISO is not high, as little noise is present. ~ISO200 possibly? Hence the two images are easily 2-3stops apart.

Both images show metering as 'pattern', which I wonder if it was evaluative for the Ixus and maybe Spot/Center-average for the 450D?
Evaulative metering takes care of the whole image, the cat is very dark, hence the camera try to meter the entire scence into a '18% or neutral -gray', hence cat comes out still 'dark' and 'correct'.

If you spot-meter or center-average the cat, the camera will try to make that portion of the image 'neutral-gray', and hence turning the black cat into a 'gray' cat, and in the process exposing it.

I hope I've explained it correctly.

Jon from RDP