Idzie

Seeking advice from more experienced photographers (especially of birds/bugs/nature!): one of the biggest things I'm struggling with is exposure, and specifically getting very overexposed bird shots on bright sunny days. My googling and reading of various articles have contained a lot of contradictory advice which leaves me where I am, which is not knowing what settings to change when I'm encountering this problem and feeling really frustrated. So I thought, there's lots of great photographers here, why not ask?? What's your advice? What settings do you use in bright sunny conditions of direct light? What am I doing wrong?

For context: I'm shooting on an old Canon rebel T3 DSLR with Canon's lowest end 75mm-300mm lens. EDIT (further context) I'm very new to using manual settings on a camera and have mainly been shooting in aperture priority mode while trying to get the hang of aperture/ISO/manual focus, but clearly I need to expand beyond this ASAP to get the shots I want.

Thanks so much for any advice or insights!

#photography #birdphotograhy #naturephotography #photographyadvice

Jul 28, 2024 at 1:43pmWeb
Show threadhandmade ghostJul 28, 2024
@idzie I am not an experienced photographer, but I'm a kind of lucky photographer? And one way I try to make my luck on sunny days is watching my angle--where is my shadow pointing in relationship to the bird? I think of my shadow as my compass to train on the bird. I ofc forget this all the time in my excitement about finding a bird at all lol. Within about 10-15° of the bird I do all right. I also fiddle with my ISO (lowering it) and have a little lens hood attachment.
Show threadIdzieJul 28, 2024

@handmade_ghost well, you're certainly a fat more experienced photographer than I am! :)

I've been trying to adjust the ISO based on light, but that doesn't seem to be enough a lot of the time when it's really bright. And I'm JUST starting to pay attention to where I'm standing in relation to the sun instead of just going "ooh a bird" so definitely get you haha

Show threadtyxJul 28, 2024

@idzie
Three advice:
1) change metering mode (central-weighed works the best for me)

2) apply EV correction (I routinely have -1/2 to -1)

3) go manual, once you get used to it it gets a spinal reflex and takes no extra time to adjust.

Some scenes are just impossible to capture to jpg, as they have huge dynamic range, adjust to have no OE on the bird's brightest parts, then painstakingly pull the dark parts in RAW editing with curves/masks. Sun spots/sky between the leaves will be burnt-out anyway, so only retouching for those.

Another thing is ISO - didn't check serious sources, but I have an impression, that dynamic range is smaller at higher ISO. Since you have low-end lens, you, probably shoot at higher ISO even in the bright sun.

PS:
EV bracketing with High-speed burst shooting mode will help you to get a grip on how much correction do you need without loosing shots.

Show threadIdzieJul 28, 2024
@tyx thank you!!
Show threadRoss GradyJul 28, 2024
@idzie I think the T3 has an auto bracketing mode where it will fire a 3-shot burst at different exposures: https://support.usa.canon.com/kb/index?id=ART111495&page=content

The downsides are: the shot with the optimal exposure may not be the best composition, and letting it bracket for you doesn’t necessarily help you learn.

The upsides are that if you review the EXIF data later, you can start to get a feel after the fact of which settings actually produced the result you like, and learn that way.
Canon Knowledge Base - How to use Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB) on the EOS REBEL T3.

Show threadRoss GradyJul 28, 2024
@idzie the other thing I tend to do when shooting small things is to always keep metering and focus set to a small spot, and then do the half-press trick to lock in metering and AF on exactly the spot I want, and hold at half-press and then reframe as needed for composition.
Show threadIdzieJul 30, 2024
@rossgrady oh thank you, that's a good tip
Show threadChris White finds this vexingJul 28, 2024
@idzie Are you shooting RAW or Jpeg? When shooting RAW you have more leeway to correct for exposure being off one way or another when editing.
Show threadLeto FregarJul 29, 2024
@idzie I am not familiar with the Canon system in detail (using Sony myself), but I would recommend experiments with these options:
- try spot measurement, and measure exposure on the bird itself (though usually on a sunny day I would expect underexposure with broad measurement, so no guarantees)
- use manual exposure correction
- especially with sitting birds, i.e. stable light conditions, you might want to switch in full manual mode, preselect ISO and aperture, and then adjust exposure time