IdzieJul 28, 2024

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

Show threadtyx

@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.

Jul 28, 2024 at 2:12pmWeb
Show threadIdzieJul 28, 2024
@tyx thank you!!