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Category: Problems with Images

Photography Question 

Paaul R. Selvakummar
 

why is the subject dark in the foreground??


 
  what went wrong?
what went wrong?
subject under-exposed??

Paaul R. Selvakummar

 
 
I had taken an outdoor snap of a subject standing in the shade with his back against a brightly lit exterior (it was around noon, and I had taken the snap in a boat), using the nikon N65 with the nikkor 28-80 G lens. Although the background scenery came out well, the subject was almost totally darkened out. I was shooting in the auto mode and didnt use a flash, and had focussed for the face of the subject.
The subject was only about a meter away from the camera. Would the use of flash helped to avoid this?? Could you pls tell me how else I can avoid this problem??
All help in this regard will be greatly appreciated. Thanx!


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June 15, 2002

 

doug Nelson
  That's extremely bright light in the background. It fooled the camera's metering system into basing the exposure on the background. You could have zoomed your lens into the shadow area, metered from that, and preserved your meter reading with the exposure lock feature (some of these work by holding the shutter button down part way), and recomposed your shot. Your Nikon is pretty sophisticated, and probably provides a way to take a meter reading and lock in that exposure. The built-in flash would have helped here, too.


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June 15, 2002

 

Paaul R. Selvakummar
  thanx a lot, Doug! Shall try it and see...


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June 15, 2002

 

John A. Lind
  Also . . .
Look at your negatives when you see something like this in a print. If it was properly exposed, the background should look rather dark, and you should be able to see details in your subject . . . eyes, hair, nose, etc. If you can, then it's not the camera, but the print machine and more correctly the print machine operator. A print is a photograph of the negative. Just as your camera metering may get "fooled" by a scene like this, a print machine running "auto exposure" can also get "fooled" when making the print. Whenever you're working with prints from negatives, don't always assume it's you or the camera. Look at the negatives before making any conclusions.

Just from looking at the image you posted, Doug has the odds in his favor that it was your camera metering. However, an examination of the negatives will tell for certain whether it was or not.

-- John


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June 15, 2002

 
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