Exposure Compensation Help Needed

Few tips for the compensation that I use.

– when the plane is starting and still has some ground/wood/installations etc. in the background, I have my EC simply set to something reasonable, that I measure in advance. Most often just 0, but it’s good to make some test picture once every hour to verify that your settings follow what’s going on in the air
– once it gets airborne, I quickly turn the dial right, to add some exposure (so the bright sky doesn’t make the picture darker)
– when the plane is bright white, I turn it a bit left at the very beginning, so it doesn’t get overexposed in the first place
– when it’s dark – the opposite

Please note that all the above is valid for the central-weighted metering. If you use spot or central 9% metering (and you’re good at it :mrgreen:, which is the tricky part) it’s mostly not neccessary.

Of course it’s always better to try to do your best in the field and as few as possible in the post-processing 😉 However to know how to play the RAW game is sometimes handy. You can for example usually recover quite a lot of details from the blown up areas, that the camera shows as the “blinking white”.

Tony,

My answer to your question……use Camera RAW!

This way, any mis-haps with exposre can be corrected in post processing. Its like having the exposure compensation on your PC rather than the camera. If you are lucky enough to have Adobe Photoshop CS or CS2 then your camera is supported.

Many photographers will say there is no need to use camera RAW but I wouldn’t use anything else..EVER! I came back from a days shooting in Manchester last week and due to adverse lighting I was able to “re-expose” all my shots automatically, by only adjusting the first one by adding 2 extra stops of light. Photoshop then applied the adjustment to every image I processed.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t always an ideal situation and at all times its best to try and acheive the best image we can under the conditions that we are taking the shot.

If you have any questions please dont hesitate to drop me a line

Mark

Hi Septic,

I use a Nikon D50 and i bought a secondhand D70 as i got fed up of swapping lenses all the time.

I find they underexpose too but then when i try and compensate i tend to get the opposite which really frustrates me and causes a lot of work afterwards to sort it out.

I’m lucky enough to have an RAF Base on my doorstep so i guess i will have to experiment a lot with different conditions and try and find a balance that works rather than the hit and miss approach there is at the moment.

Tony

What camera are you using Tony,

I have two Nikon DSLR bodies and they both tend to under expose. I have learnt from bitter experience not to trust the LCD.

Septic.

Thanks Jur,

I’ll try that out at my local air base and see what i come up with

Regards

Tony

In automatic modes there are no fixed exposure compensation factors which can be applied successfully. Conditions can vary enormously. It is usually best to set the camera on manual and take a representative meter reading (e.g. to a subject at the horizon level, but with the same position of the sun as for ground to air shots). Most of the time you should end up with exposures like the equivalents of 1/250 at F16 in bright sun, 1/250 at F11 in partial cloudy conditions and 1/250 at F8 in overcast (all for ISO 200).

An alternative metering method, which I’ve used quite succesfully, is to take incident meter readings with a separate lightmeter, like a Weston Euromaster with invercone attachment. With incident light readings (taken in the opposite direction from the subject), you just measure the intensity of the light which is falling on the subject. The beauty of such readings is, that it cannot be mislead by the colours of the subject and the intensity of the light on the background.

The big advantage of your digital camera is, that you can take a few sample shots with manual settings, and check the histogram for a good coverage without too much underexposure and/or overexposed highlights.

Hope this helps.