what am i doing wrong?

[andylawcc]

Nikon D60 with AI lens (105mm and 28mm).
I was shooting in broad daylight today for one of the first time (ususally I do indoor and/or lowlights), and it was very challenging with a manual lens (and manual mode) because I have to change setting so frequently. One shot would require 1/1000 shutter speed, cuz part of the pic is reflecting sunlight, and another shot would be in 1/100 because the subject is under a tree / shade. Either case, most of the shots are still too "white out", i increase the shutter speed but the color is still is not as "vivid." What am I doing wrong?

 

[jpeyton]

On a D60, you have to shoot in full manual.

The easiest way is to have image review turned on (it usually is by default), and have the histogram up by default. It sounds like you're overexposing your images (the histogram will have most of its area on the right-hand side of the graph, and it will usually have a line all the way against the right side = clipped highlight).

Here is a good write up on using histograms.

Remember to stop-down your lenses; most will have their best color/contrast at least 1-stop below the widest aperture. Set your ISO to 200 if you're shooting outdoors in daylight, and auto ISO should be off with manual lenses. Once your aperture has been set, shoot, check your histogram, and adjust the shutter speed as required to get a proper exposure.

It gets a lot easier/faster to do with practice.

 

[andylawcc]

Originally posted by: jpeyton
Here is a good write up on using histograms.

Remember to stop-down your lenses; most will have their best color/contrast at least 1-stop below the widest aperture. Set your ISO to 200 if you're shooting outdoors in daylight, and auto ISO should be off with manual lenses. Once your aperture has been set, shoot, check your histogram, and adjust the shutter speed as required to get a proper exposure.

It gets a lot easier/faster to do with practice.

THANKS. i was always to lazy to understand histogram, I guess I have to now.
anyway, I did set a Aperture to 5.6 or even 8, cuz I know with 2.8 i will be shooting at unnecessarily fast shutter speed. anyway, would ISO 100 be slightly more appropiate than 200?

 

[Madwand1]

Use a lens shade and watch out for direct light on the lens. Sunlight on the lens = lens flare = washed out images.

 

[jpeyton]

Originally posted by: andylawcc
THANKS. i was always to lazy to understand histogram, I guess I have to now.
anyway, I did set a Aperture to 5.6 or even 8, cuz I know with 2.8 i will be shooting at unnecessarily fast shutter speed. anyway, would ISO 100 be slightly more appropiate than 200?

Whatever the base ISO is would be best; I know the newer CMOS Nikons have a base of 200, but the D60 is CCD so it might be lower?

 

[tdawg]

Start with the Sunny 16 rule when outside in sunny weather (obviously), 1/focal length, f/16 to start, then adjust to taste. Should get you pretty close to a good exposure. As for the shade, since I'm guessing the meter doesn't work on the D60 with an AI lens attached, trial and error with the histogram on display is probably your best bet.

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: tdawg
Start with the Sunny 16 rule when outside in sunny weather (obviously), 1/focal length, f/16 to start, then adjust to taste.

Good point about using incident metering principles. But there's a small error in the above -- exposure has nothing to do with focal length per se. I'm sure you meant ISO.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunny_16

Here's a brief article including some information on incident light techniques. Note that any camera light meter can also be used as an incident light meter -- by either measuring off a grey card, or the palm of your hand as an approximation.

http://www.luminous-landscape....tutorials/meters.shtml

 

[jpeyton]

I forgot one more very important piece of advice: shoot RAW.

That way, as long as your histogram shows you didn't clip any shadows or highlights, your photo can be fine-tuned later.

If you want to err during exposure, err on the side of slight overexposure. This is called "exposing to the right", which means your histogram is shifted towards the right side. The reason slight overexposure is better than slight underexposure is because highlight/bright detail carries less noise than shadow detail, resulting in a cleaner image once you've corrected exposure in post-processing. It's critically important that you don't clip highlights, however.