How to make these better?

[kirby012]

These are some of my surfing shots. Ive cropped them and done some other things in Lightroom. But, i still fell like they could be better. Im shooting with a T3 and 70-200 f4 L. I see other surf shots and they really pop. am i losing that much quality by cropping? So tell me what you guys think. Thanks

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kirby012/

 

[mattyb240]

You have a great sharp lens and a capable camera, the problem is they are underexposed. If you have LR bump the exposure and vibrance a little.

 

[kirby012]

ok ill try that. Even if I'm shooting in Av at F4.0, and the camera is picking a high shutter speed for me, they can be underexposed? i guess the camera is not always right. Is shooting in Av even recommended, or maybe all manual?

 

[Chappers]

and straighten them

 

[emorydunn]

ok ill try that. Even if I'm shooting in Av at F4.0, and the camera is picking a high shutter speed for me, they can be underexposed? i guess the camera is not always right. Is shooting in Av even recommended, or maybe all manual?

It depends on what you're doing. I'll often shoot either Aperture Priority or Shutter Priority if I know I'm looking for a certain DoF or if I know I need to freeze action. But if I know that I'm going to be shooting the same thing in the same conditions then I'll go full manual.

I think that your surfing shots are a good example of this. You know that you're trying to freeze the motion, so you need a pretty high shutter speed. Because of that I would have shot Tv.
But since your shots are a bit underexposed (something you can check in camera with the histogram) you could go to full manual if you thought the camera was making silly choices (which it probably was, since it was trying to expose for the whole scene not just the surfer). You can also bump the ISO up to brighten things up while keeping the same shutter and aperture settings.

 

[jackerin]

ok ill try that. Even if I'm shooting in Av at F4.0, and the camera is picking a high shutter speed for me, they can be underexposed? i guess the camera is not always right.

Of course not. Metering is made to calculate the scene as 18% gray. If there is lots of white or bright colours in the scene, it will expose so it averages to 18% gray, so all colours will be underexposed. You can still get good pictures with the automatic modes, if you think yourself what kind of scene it is and use exposure compensation.