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How to Set Exposure for a White and Black Bird? (1 Viewer)

Granville Leong

Well-known member
I have been doing bird photography for a little over a year and one of my biggest challenges is to find a way to accurately set an exposure for a black and white bird like this Black Phoebe. I use the AV mode, set the exposure to f6.3 (my lens is a Canon 100-400mm f5.6 and camera body is 7D) and ISO to 400. I also use spot metering.

It seems that when the darker color is properly exposed, the white feathers are over-exposed and if I focus on the white part, the darker feathers are under-exposed. Would like to get advice of how to tackle this problem.

By the way, I'm not familiar with using manual setting. If this is a situation that I need to use manual setting, can someone walk me through the mechanics?

Thanks in advance.

Granville
 

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Your example doesn't seem to far off in the whites, even if some are blown out.
Do you shoot in RAW or jpg? In a raw file a samle like this one may have sufficient dynamic range to recover most of the blown out whites.

Setting a general exposure compensation in AV (like +or- 2/3 f-stop) may be one way to go. Then one would have to make sure that the aim of the meter is always on a dark, respct. light spot, otherwise over- or underexposure just gets worse.

Manual settings would be my choice, and for the last 5 years I have been shooting exclusively in manual .
There is no one fits all instruction how to do it. Best way to learn is to go out with the camera set to M and to try and analyze different settings and strategies.

I have my metering system on spot or center balanced and in your sample I would be metering on one of the light to medium brown areas. Using this reading I set my time and f-stop to get the light meter in the display centered, then aim for the bird and shoot.

With anticipation where a bird will show this can be done in advance and periodically checked and adjusted if the light conditions change. Most time I leave the f-stop untouched and just work with shutter speed to meet the exposure, and if this gets to slow crank the ISO. Knowing how ISO, shutter speed and f-stop relate to each other gets the settings right without starting all over from scratch (doubling ISO cuts exposure time in half ....)

Ulli
With a bit of practice and experience this becomes 2nd anture, and one has already a pretty good idea where to set things before looking at the meter display
 
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Seaspirit,

Thanks for the detailed explanations. I shot in both jpeg and raw. I review the photos in jpeg and then edit the selected raw files.

I find that using the manual approach is very challenging because I like to shoot the small guys: warblers, chickadees and the likes. I have a hard enough time just trying to point my camera at them and practically leaves no time for checking and reshoot. In situations like this, how do you set the initial exposure?

Granville
 
Well,

There are a few things:
- I try to shoot with the sun more or less in my back
- I set up or move to keep the sun more or less in my back
- In most sitations the birds that one can get good shots of, are not hiding deep in the vegetation and are more or less exposed in the light
- Background doesn't matter for exposure, bird has to be correct
- Correct exposure for anticipated bird is preset by metering on something light gray or brown in the light with desired f-stop. This will get you close to the best setting. The rest is experience and pratice, keeping an eye on the exposure meter, and making small adjustments to time or f-stop. Like I said, there is no out of the box cooking recipe for manual settings. Once the principles of how f-stop, exp. time and ISO work to get the exposure correct are understood its practice and analyzing results.

Ulli
 
I agree with Ulli's last post. One more thing - when you shot in manual mode, the metering system options (spot, center balanced, pattern) are irrelevant.
 
No matter what method you use black and white birds are obviously the most tricky to expose correctly, I have always worked on the principle of metering for the whites (shooting as far to the right as possible without 'blowing' them) and then lifting the blacks in processing. Keeping a good eye on the in-camera 'blinkies' is always a good idea although if you shoot in RAW it is not always a true reflection of the shot.
 
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As said previoulsy B&W birds are a pain. If you are shooting in the wrong type of light, by wrong i mean harsh midday sun, its very difficult to get a good exposure on both white and black. Try shooting when the sun is low in sky or shoot them in bright but cloudy days, you can try using flash to bring up the shadows.

Have fun.
 
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