Very Strange Lens/Camera natural light problem.... help

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stratocaster72

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Hi

I have a Canon 60D, currently using a 15-85 Lens mostly, as well as a 50mm, an 18-135 and a 70-300 Sigma.

My friend has an older Canon 400D and the kit lens 18-55mm.


Whilst doing a shoot together we decided to use the natural light coming in the nearby window rather than the flash lighting we had been using.

He took a few pix and they looked lovely, the models skin looked great and the lighting was perfect, so i copied his settings (1/20, 5.6 ISO 200 i think) and my pix looked awful, totally dark and orange.

I looked againwhite balance the same (set both to Auto just to see), settings the same.... try again, terrible, his looked great, mine looked really dark.

I had to put the ISO up to 1600 to get close to enough light as he was getting.......

So, we swapped lenses. This helped a little, my pix were brighter, but still not as soft and bright as his.....


So, i put in the 50mm, this did help at least but i was at f1.8 to get the same result as his kit lens at 5.6.

Im baffled. Oddly i noticed this before at a group shoot, my camera was at ISO 1600 or higher to get the same light as cheaper cameras on ISO 200..... I put it down to just a Canon thing at the time...


Help........what would cause this
 
I have noticed that outside i get decent light at low ISO, but inside using window light i always seme to have very dark shots...... i had put it down to "thats just the way it is" until i used this old 400D .......very strange
 
ChrisGilbert said:
It may well be that your camera's metering is faulty.

Did you try covering the viewfinder ? It could be light leaking in through the back and skewing the metering.
Click to expand...

There's no metering involved if you are manually setting shutter, aperture and ISO based on copying values from someone else.

Now, if the OP had a CPL or ND filter over their lens that might explain it. The difference between the suggested 200 ISO and the 1600 ISO required is 3 stops - ND8 - which might be used if one wished to shoot at very fast apertures with flash at sync speed against a background of bright daylight.

e.g. Sunny day outside at a sync of 1/200 would require ~f/11 at 100 ISO and f/16 at 200 ISO. If you wanted to shoot at f/4 instead of f/11 or f/5.6 instead of f/16 you'd need a 3 stop ND to control the daylight. Then fill flash would bring up the levels for the subject/interior.

Then if you change the lighting setup completely and copy manual settings from someone else when you still have an ND8 fitted and they don't.......

Mind you, that theory falls flat on its face if the lenses were swapped over and the results remained much the same.

Perhaps a sample photo, unedited and with EXIF intact (better yet - one from each camera) would help diagnosis, although it would certainly be handy to know whether a filter was fitted and what sort.
 
joxby said:
exposure compensation unintentionally dialled in ??
Click to expand...

Canons don't apply EC to manual exposure settings, and even in Nikon it's an offset to the meter reading, which as the settings are being copied into the camera and not metered into the camera wouldn't apply anyway.
 
There is a lot less light indoors for a good reason. ISO 200 f/5.6 will be hard even on a sunny day. 1/20 is really too slow to be any use for anything but landscapes on tripod. Well, your camera has a meter so I suggest using that instead of randomly copying some settings.
 
If the model's sitting still, you can shoot at 1/20 and slower quite happily if the camera is locked down.
 
1/20 at f/5.6 and 200 ISO would be a fair exposure for lighting levels 6.3 stops dimmer than bright sunshine. I think a bright room might possibly manage that.

Here's an unedited indoor shot, with no artificial light added, at an exposure value equivalent to the one mooted above....

20120315_003138_000.jpg
 
If you're substituting 1/40 for the 1/20 to balance out the difference in ISO, then you should be at f/5.6 also.
 
NO!

1/40 vs 1/20 is 1 stop less exposure
f/2.8 vs f/5.6 is 2 stops more exposure
100 ISO vs 200 ISO is 1 stop less.

It all nets out to be equivalent.

Anyway, let's not get hung up on minutiae. The point is - 1/20, f/5.6, 200 ISO (or 1/40, f/2.8, 100 ISO) is not an unrealistic possibility for indoor shooting and unless you were there how can you be in a position to say otherwise?
 
DemiLion said:
How are you viewing/comparing the photographs?
Click to expand...

So far, the only relevant response to the question..

Were you just chimping the lcd on the camera, or did you download the images to compare onto a computer to view?
 
Turn the brightness up on your LCD screen?
 
lawrie29 said:
Turn the brightness up on your LCD screen?
Click to expand...

Isn't it a bit risky to be making exposure decisions based on the brightness setting of your LCD screen? The camera makers have gifted us with metering systems, histograms and highlight alert warnings. Those are the right tools for making judgements on exposure. The preview image is better used for checking composition, timing and possibly focus, depending on the model in question. It can be a bit of a gamble to use it for checking exposure. I know. I've been there, done that and learned the lesson, sometimes more than once, but I don't need to learn it any more. :)

If we could see an unedited example with the suggested exposure settings it should be pretty obvious whether the exposure was indeed correct or 3 stops under. 3 stops under is not hard to spot....

20120315_091058_.JPG


I find it hard to believe that LCD brightness settings alone could be responsible for such a catastrophic dimming of the display.
 
Where you both set up the same in picture styles too, a lot of contrast difference would make a difference if you were shooting Jpegs if you were comparing them on the camera screens. If you were shooting raw and comparing them on the same computer screen then you got me beat.
 
Thanks all.

We were both shooting raw.

Thing is it wasn't just a little contrast difference, it was like night and day, literally.

No filters, no weird settings.

His camera got a lovely soft portrait of the model with bright sooth pink skin, mine was like it was in a coal cellar at midnight with an orange light on her face.

It was a massive difference.
Like I said, using his lens it was better but still not right.

So I have a few conclusions (that I really should test lol)....
I had the lens hood on, tulip style, maybe that was cutting out a lot of light.
His screen is just brighter.
The crappy Kit lens is better than I thought.
He wasn't actually in raw, just thought he was, and he had some picture style setting on.
My lens is dodgy (though it's perfect with flash/strobes... See that didn't make sense).
The 60d is just light hungry.

It's possibly some or none of the above :(
 
How were you comparing the images?

Remembering that even when shooting raw the lcd on the screen of the camera is displaying the image with the default/current jpg setting applied.

How did the histograms look for both images?

Unless you are comparing them on the same screen you aren't comparing them properly.
 
stratocaster72 said:
His screen is just brighter.
Click to expand...



Alastair said:
How were you comparing the images?

Remembering that even when shooting raw the lcd on the screen of the camera is displaying the image with the default/current jpg setting applied.

How did the histograms look for both images?

Unless you are comparing them on the same screen you aren't comparing them properly.
Click to expand...


I think that the problem is becoming clearer!
 
One key point here - white balance.

This makes the exposure look very different depending on how it is viewed. You absolutely cannot rely on two different cameras to make the correct decisions about white balance.

Also, if he wasn't in raw, and using picture styles, these can affect the brightness, saturation and sharpness of an image.

Lens hood, makes no difference to exposure at all.
 
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