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VideoNewbie

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Feb 6, 2009
476
6
So i just recently picked up a canon t4i and i just tried to do a photoshoot the other day with a model.

I was reviewing my photos and a lot of them are over exposed....im a photo noob so what exactly should i be correcting or changing in the settings?
 

DirtySocks85

macrumors 65816
Mar 12, 2009
1,441
82
Wichita, KS
So i just recently picked up a canon t4i and i just tried to do a photoshoot the other day with a model.

I was reviewing my photos and a lot of them are over exposed....im a photo noob so what exactly should i be correcting or changing in the settings?

Hard to say without seeing examples or knowing how you're shooting. Are you shooting in Automatic Exposure Mode, Manual Exposure Mode, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, Program Mode, etc?

If you're shooting manual and you find that you're overexposing despite your light meter indicating otherwise you might try setting it to a different metering mode that better fits your shooting style.
 

rossmadden

macrumors member
Feb 3, 2011
95
0
Swansea, UK
Was it in bright sunlight? Even at a high aperture (f/22 if you're using the kit lens) it can still be too bright.

Otherwise like Dirtysocks said above, it can be down to a number of things.

If you're aperture is set high (inversely a low number, f/2.8, f/3.5) it'll let a lot of light in. If you want to keep this high so you the model is in focus but the background is out of focus, you could increase you shutter speed. the faster the shutter speed (the time it is open) the less light that can get in.

Also, make sure your iso isn't on auto if you're shooting in Manual, and set it to 100, the lowest setting.

Additionally, you can underexposing it using the the AV button above the Q button on the back of your t4i. Whilst holding this, move the wheel on the top of the camera left, you'll notice the meters going from 3---2---1---0---1---2---3 exposure bar at the bottom of your screen or in your eyepiece. Moving the small rectangle left on this bar will make the images darker, which you can see happen in real time if you shoot in live view. You can see this on my photo below.


Untitled by rosshmadden, on Flickr
 

ChrisA

macrumors G5
Jan 5, 2006
12,541
1,653
Redondo Beach, California
So i just recently picked up a canon t4i and i just tried to do a photoshoot the other day with a model.

I was reviewing my photos and a lot of them are over exposed....im a photo noob so what exactly should i be correcting or changing in the settings?


"Seem" over exposed?? What does the histogram say? The histogram is the final work on exposure.

In a digital file the definition of "over exposed" is that you have clipping in at least one color channel. Even if it looks to light to the eye if there is no clipping it is OK because you can always correct the tone of the photo in post processing

Look at your histograms either in camera or in post processing. The light should drop down before it gets all the way to the right.
 

InTheMist

macrumors member
Jun 22, 2013
65
3
Also, it take a bit of understanding of how a camera's meter works.

Mostly, cameras look at the entire scene as just a map of lights and darks. It will try to average everything out to a nice medium grey in its tiny computerized brain. So imagine that your subject is wearing a black T-shirt that takes up a large part of the frame, the meter may see this and think "brighten this scene up".
 

Phrasikleia

macrumors 601
Feb 24, 2008
4,082
403
Over there------->
Histograms in camera are rendered from the preview JPEG therefore not completely useful if you are shooting raw.

True, but you can change your JPEG settings to better reflect the raw data and can get the histograms to be quite reliable. Also, to be fair to Chris, he did say "or in post processing."

Nonetheless, it is a good point to emphasize (i.e. the caveat about histograms) because a lot of people don't realize how they work. As far as highlight clipping goes, most cameras will tell you that you are clipping well before you actually are, so if they don't show any clipping, the chances are pretty good that you haven't overexposed.
 

ocabj

macrumors 6502a
Jul 2, 2009
548
202
So i just recently picked up a canon t4i and i just tried to do a photoshoot the other day with a model.

I was reviewing my photos and a lot of them are over exposed....im a photo noob so what exactly should i be correcting or changing in the settings?

You either had:

1. Too high an ISO and/or too slow a shutter speed for the aperture you were using.

2. Too high an ISO and/or too large and aperture for the shutter speed you were using.

3. Too large an aperture and/or too slow a shutter speed for the ISO you were using.

If you were using flash, you were also probably using too powerful a flash in combination with one of the above three.
 

kevinfulton.ca

macrumors 6502
Aug 29, 2011
284
1
So i just recently picked up a canon t4i and i just tried to do a photoshoot the other day with a model.

I was reviewing my photos and a lot of them are over exposed....im a photo noob so what exactly should i be correcting or changing in the settings?

Chances are you've set your exposure so that you model is exposed correctly. I'm guessing the background is brighter then the model so this would cause it to over expose. There's are a few solutions to keep in my for future shoots.

1) Use an off camera flash for fill on the model to compensate for the bright background.

2) If you don't have a flash use a reflector for fill.

3) If you don't have either pick a different time of day where the light is more ideal.

Or you could compensate on set and fix it in post, but depending how drastically you compensate it could affect IQ.

Hope this helps!
 
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