Wonky Donkey

[bad_roo]

Not quite sure what's going on here. I set my Canon EOS D30 up in full auto mode and shot a picture of a Fiesta ST. Checked it out on the preview screen and it looked rather dark (see below).



Then set the controls manually (did a bit of bracketing down step by step until I got the exposure rightish)



I checked the exposure compensation and that seemed set to overexpose by half a stop. Any idea why my shots could be coming out so bloody dark?



>> Edited by bad_roo on Monday 15th May 15:51

[_dobbo_]

If you have the camera set to center weighted metering, it could be that it's metering off the white car which is throwing it out?

Edit to add, the second one looks a little bit over-exposed to me, but that could be that I'm too used to under-exposed images!

>> Edited by _dobbo_ on Monday 15th May 15:56

[Shadytree]

eeeeer might be the fact your camera is foucusing on a white car ?

Try metering on the grass or sky ?

[Gemm]

Probably the white car confused the camera's reading. And the sky looks overcast (and it's reflected on the car and its windows), which often confuses the camera and it tries underexpose it.

>> Edited by Gemm on Monday 15th May 16:11

[J111]

You're using the partial metering mode:



This will try to render the car at 18% grey. Partial ('spot') metering of white subjects usually needs about a stop and a half of correction. This is reflected in your second shot (at 1/125th at f5.6, rather than 1/350th at f5.6) being just a touch overexposed.

>> Edited by J111 on Monday 15th May 16:16

[bad_roo]

Wow. How could you tell all of that?

[J111]

Magic

The pic's not that relevant, as I read "350D" for some reason, but the icons are roughly the same on the 30D iirc.

>> Edited by J111 on Monday 15th May 16:35

[bluespanner]

Shadytree said:

eeeeer might be the fact your camera is foucusing on a white car ? Try metering on the grass or sky ?

This is one of the first things i was taught.

[bad_roo]

You guys are awesome.

[marctwo]

J111 said:

You're using the partial metering mode:

The icon selected in this pic is for Evaluative metering. The metering icons on the 30D are like this:

Evaluative [(.)]

Partial [( )]

Spot [ . ]

Center-weighted [ ]

[J111]

You're quite right, my mistake
The 30D has full spot metering, in addition to partial, but the Exif indicates you were using the latter In this situation, with a large 'target' both induce the same problem.

>> Edited by J111 on Monday 15th May 17:30