Oops, some shots I screwed up

[MarkBarbieri]

Bad Spot

I took this shot at the Finding Nemo Musical with spot metering. The spot I metered off of is in the dark, so I overexposed the picture. Metering in these shows with bright subjects and dark backgrounds is tough. I think spot metering was a mistake because on any shot where a relatively normal part of the subject wasn't in the metering area, my exposure was off. Evaluative wouldn't work well either. Next time I'll try either center-weighted or partial (like spot only with a bigger spot).

Blurry

I blew this shot in two ways. First, I didn't get both the flags and the mountain in focus. I should have been more careful and used either a higher aperture or focused further back. I suspect that I focused on the flags (wasting the in focus area in from of the subject) rather than somewhere between them.

The second mistake was using a shutter speed of 1/100s. That wasn't fast enough to freeze the train nor was it slow enough to give it a really good motion blur. Instead, it just looks blurry.

Flash

I didn't expect much from this, but I wanted to see what a FotLK shot taken with direct flash would look like. Obviously, it didn't turn out very well. It illuminated the audience on the other side, making them a distraction. It also gave a very flat look to the subject. In the future, I might try dialing down the flash a couple of stops and use it to supplement the light, but I really don't like the look of it as a primary light source.

Backlit

The is a classic case of undexposing a subject because it is backlit. I used evaluative (matrix) metering, which considers the entire frame. The camera picked this exposure, which keeps it from blowing out the cloudy sky in the background. I should have switched to spot metering and metered off of the bird.

 

[AndrewWG]

So you DO make mistakes! I'd say that the quality of your keepers MORE than makes up for the few mistakes you probably make.

Just as a curiosity, do you have any guess as to what your ratio of keepers to "mistakes" is? I'm guessing that alot of what you would not call a keeper is what the average photographer on here would call a keeper, although in these mistake shots, I can see your points. I really need to figure out which metering modes are which on the 30D. I have a good idea, but I am always second guessing what they do. I'll be looking into that today (at work ).

Thanks for posting these. It gives me some points to look out for when I go in Nov.

 

[MICKEY88]

if your camera has AEL..for the first shot you could spot meter off of the part you want exposed properly, lock exposure, recompose and shoot..

 

[MICKEY88]

Bad Spot

I took this shot at the Finding Nemo Musical with spot metering. The spot I metered off of is in the dark, so I overexposed the picture. Metering in these shows with bright subjects and dark backgrounds is tough. I think spot metering was a mistake because on any shot where a relatively normal part of the subject wasn't in the metering area, my exposure was off. Evaluative wouldn't work well either. Next time I'll try either center-weighted or partial (like spot only with a bigger spot).

Blurry

I blew this shot in two ways. First, I didn't get both the flags and the mountain in focus. I should have been more careful and used either a higher aperture or focused further back. I suspect that I focused on the flags (wasting the in focus area in from of the subject) rather than somewhere between them.

The second mistake was using a shutter speed of 1/100s. That wasn't fast enough to freeze the train nor was it slow enough to give it a really good motion blur. Instead, it just looks blurry.

Flash

I didn't expect much from this, but I wanted to see what a FotLK shot taken with direct flash would look like. Obviously, it didn't turn out very well. It illuminated the audience on the other side, making them a distraction. It also gave a very flat look to the subject. In the future, I might try dialing down the flash a couple of stops and use it to supplement the light, but I really don't like the look of it as a primary light source.

Backlit

The is a classic case of undexposing a subject because it is backlit. I used evaluative (matrix) metering, which considers the entire frame. The camera picked this exposure, which keeps it from blowing out the cloudy sky in the background. I should have switched to spot metering and metered off of the bird.

for the bird, sometimes spot metering is tricky with such a small subject...

I usually just bump my exposure comp to a +1 or 2...

 

[poppyolivia]

Am I the only one that thinks your photos are great?

 

[wdwmom2]

So you DO make mistakes! I'd say that the quality of your keepers MORE than makes up for the few mistakes you probably make.

OK, so you make a few mistakes. They really are not all that bad.

 

[Groucho]

Very brave, good for you. It's always good to do a little "post-mortem" on the failed shots to see what went wrong.

In re-processing my January WDW trip photos, I just went through my Kilimanjaro Safaris shots - bleah! Nearly every one is lousy, thanks to leaving the camera in "P" mode, so my shutter speeds were far too slow. A month or so ago, we went to the "African Lion Safari" in Canada, which has similar conditions (except that you're shooting through windows), and got vastly improved shots.

Since I did much of my last WDW trip with the camera in spot-meter mode, I have a fair number of mis-exposed shots, too. This is a case where having a more advanced camera would be handy, to have direct external controls for metering mode, autofocus mode, etc. If all goes according to plan, that'll happen before my next trip in April...

 

[deletedpenguin]

Mark, for what it's worth, I like the Everest pic as is. It's not your typical shot, and it shows some speed of the train, as an after thought.