Need Advice Re: BIF Exposure/Settings for Low Light
Went out shooting the herons in flight yesterday afternoon. Sky was gray I metered +2 of the cloudy sky. For the shots I had with sky background, I was fine.
I tracked this heron from sky to landing. The sun had set so there was no sun shining per se on the boardwalk.
This shot ended up underexposed by at least 1 1/2 stops.
The Settings
Camera: Canon EOS 7D + 400 5.6L
Exposure: 0.001 sec (1/1600)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 400 mm
Exposure: 0.00
ISO Speed: 800
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
I clearly should have been shooting at 1/500 for this shot. After this series, I manually set the camera to 1/500 and added the flash and did ok within the diminishing light situation.
Again, my old rule +1 off blue, +2 off gray, does this only work in bright light situations? Again, my reading was 1/1600 at ISO 800 off the sky, when I should have been 1/500 for shooting in this landing situation.
Is there a different way to meter for flight when shooting in front of trees like this when not in direct sun? Is Av rather than manual a better option here?
Insight appreciated.
FYI, for this image, I added a few passes of noise ninja to eliminate the shadow noise as best as I could.
Love the spread wing and the trying to balance pose. Your image look a bit soft due to few passes of NR, underexpose image will have problem with noise than image expose to the right.
I'm not that great about exposure but here is what I think. Manual exposure works great with varying background, but you need the same light in these different background (like sun up in the sky). In this case you meter off the sky where you still have a bit of sun shining on it while the broad walk where this heron land didn't. So where you meter and where you shoot have a different light and image came out underexpose.
Av mode will work if you track a bird through similar tone background, but if you are going from light background to dark background then meter can be off too. This will also depend on how large your background is relative to your subject and what metering type you are using (spot, center weight, average).
Hi Michael. Your metering is probably working fine. Manual exposure for BIF works great for birds against varied BGs in constant light. It doesn't matter if they fly against a sky BG or a green BG. You've metered to properly expose the bird. But if the level of ambient light changes, you need to adjust your exposure accordingly. It sounds like the bird flew from an area with more ambient light to an area with less. It's a challenging exposure for just about every photographer.
Hi Michael - agree with Doug...if the light changes your exposure has to change - being able to see an react to that at the time is the challenge - one that I have not mastered most of the time either.
The NR does seeem to have hurt the image quality somewhat - smearing the details in the wings.
Hi Michael,
Nice capture, you did meter the proper way, but you need to keep your eye on the changing light conditions, and make changes on the fly...I like the open wing pose...:cool:
Need Advice Re: BIF Exposure/Settings for Low Light
