Axel portrait

Hi,
This is a recent picture of Axel I took. He was off-lead so needed his muzzle on. I've done a little post editing with the shadows, etc, please tell me what you think!

Nice work BG. Two things I find slightly off-putting tho, the other dog and the blown sky :-/ might be worth trying to clone them out.

What other dog? We were alone. How do I stop blown sky in future? Would changing the ev setting to a - value help?
Thanks for taking the time to reply

If you meter on the main subject, which is what you have done here, BG, the sky will be blown - there is nothing you can do about it. Let me explain.

When you focus on your subject, the camera will meter the light around that subject, automatically. As the subject has darker tones than the sky the sky will be lighter ie. 'blown'. You could meter on the sky and lock the metering with the AE lock button on the camera, recompose for the composition and take the shot.

This will get the sky metered correctly but will leave the subject under-exposed, which can be rescued during post processing. Remember, under-exposed can be rescued, over-exposed or 'blown is lost forever.

That being said, I think the amount of sky shown in the picture is neither here or there, whether blown or not and for me, does not detract from the image.

If I had been taking the picture, I would have been tempted to focus (and spot meter) on the blaze on the dog's chest, locked the metering, recomposed for the composition and then taken the shot.

Other than that, it is a good image and one you should be proud of.

Thank you for that detailed explanation. I'll remember that, that underexposed can be corrected but over can't. What does the metering symbol look like on a camera? I don't know if I have AE lock...I have EV settings.
Is the metering one the spot with square brackets, or is that focus???
I'm still new, but trying hard to learn. Thanks, I'm glad you like the image overall

I have just looked at the manual for your camera BG and it appears that you don't have the feature for locking the exposure. Sorry, I should have looked before I answered. Your camera does, however, feature exposure compensation.

You can get the same results using exposure compensation. I suggest that you read up on the manual and go out and practice, not to take a particular photograph but just to see what settings produce what results - and which is the best for you.

Try setting the camera on a particular setting eg 'Landscape mode', see what the camera is set to and see if you can replicate the same settings to get the same quality picture in manual mode.

Whatever you do don't get disheartened - you have an excellent camera that will produce cracking images - it is just a question of practice.

And yes the spot with the brackets is the metering, called spot metering would you believe. Lol.

Thank you for doing that, glad to know it's not there rather than searching desperately! I've read a little on EV so I think to correct a similar image I would do a -ev...
I like your idea about doing the setting and then trying to replicate it, should help me find my way around the camera better
Spot metering - is that what it should be set to all the time? Sorry, I have no real understanding of metering yet. Your explanation helped, but now I can't understand why you have EV and metering if they do the same thing...
Thanks for your patience!

Ok. Lets try to explain.

EV (exposure priority) refers to the f-stop - that is the aperture (hole) which lets the light onto the camera's sensor when you take a photograph. The larger the aperture the more light, the smaller the aperture the less light.

In order to get a correctly exposed picture, the shutter speed (the speed of the shot) will be faster for a large aperture and slower for a smaller aperture to allow the correct amount of light to enter the camera.

So why do we need different apertures? Depth of field is the answer. That is what is in focus from foreground to back ground.

If you take a landscape for instance, you will need a small aperture setting something in the region of f-16, (the higher the number, the smaller the aperture). which means everything from the foreground to the background is sharp and in focus.

If you take a close up of a subject you will want the background blurred (out of focus) so that the attention of the viewer is not distracted. So the f-stop should be set to something like f-4.5 (a larger aperture).

The resulting photograph should have a pin sharp subject and a pleasingly blurred background.

In EV mode, you set the aperture and the camera will automatically set the shutter speed to get the correct exposure.

Similarly, if you set the camera to shutter priority, you set the shutter speed and the camera will take care of the aperture setting

Metering is where the camera reads the amount of light around the subject, which then goes into the calculation that the camera uses to set either the aperture setting or shutter speed, depending on what setting you are using.

Metering comes in several forms, depending on which camera you have.

Spot metering is exactly what it says, metering on the spot where the focus is. Matrix metering on the other hand meters the light, not only on the subject but the surrounding area as well.

As a rule of thumb, spot metering is usually good for close ups - matrix is good for landscapes.

More experienced photographers will deliberately use these settings to get an effect in a photograph such as high key (overexposed) and low key (underexposed) - often seen in portraiture.

Does that make sense?

Yes it does thank you. I'd not really heard about metering, so will look into that more now thanks, what you said made sense

I am slightly confused about the difference then between EV and Fstops...I have seperate functions on my camera, I have an EV button with a +/- symbol and can make it darker or lighter, and I have an aperture priority mode which seems to be different and more to do with the fstops and depth of field you mentioned...do they do the same job? Sorry if I'm being thick, just trying to wrap my head around it, thanks again for your patience.

E V and aperture priority are one and the same thing. They both deal with f stops.

Edited to say that the +/- feature is the exposure compensation and does indeed lighten (over-expose) and darken (under-expose) he image by 1/3 of an f-stop at a time.