Questions for Canon DSLR owners

I am a T2i/Aquatica/Tokina11/16 doing mostly wreck wide angle photos in ambient light. I use LightRoom for my post production work (ie. exposure changes, B&W converstion, etc).

I am fairly new at this (getting great advice on this site) and have a few questions for Canon owners.

Question #1

- I currently do not use the long exposure noise reduction function that is in the custom settings menu. Should I be enabling this feature? My exposures are typically 1/15 or so.

Question #2

- I currently use evaluative metering. Should I change this or does it matter? I use lightroom to do all my post production work.

Some examples of my first few dives are in my signature link.

Thanks

Andy

My answers as a long time (since the 10D) Canon Shooter:

1) I do not use Long Exposure Noise Reduction (LENR) mainly because immediately after you shoot the frame, the camera will then take a dark frame image that is of the same exposure time as your image to calculate the noise. Effectively doubling the time it takes to capture the image. I'd rather use the noise reduction feature in ACR. My long exposure images are with fireworks lasting from a low of 4 seconds to bulb mode hitting over 30 seconds. The noise removal tools in ACR have come a long way and thus LENR isn't in my shooting workflow.

2) My shooting tends to concentrate on simply avoiding the blinkies. You can pull a lot of shadow detail from the newer cameras in post. I just shoot and adjust the exposure to match the needed DOF and as long as the blinkies are kept to the strong highlights (ie. Sunballs) then that's the exposure setting I take. If you don't have extremes of exposure as in the case of sunballs then evaluative should give you a good baseline. Enable the histogram and make sure you're getting what you need exposure wise.

My 2 cents....

Stewart

Hi Andy,

I'm with Stewart on not using the Noise reduction in camera (7D). LR has a very good noise reduction tool. I do tend to use spot metering more often, I feel like it gives me more control of the image especially in CFWA situations where I want to meter the blue and then balance with the strobes. It's probably just a personal preference thing. What ever works for you.

Cheers,

Steve

I find evaluative to be pretty good for action, where exposure is secondary to the moment. it's pretty accurate in many circumstances.

When I'm being critical exposure-wise...

the argument for evaluative metering is that it takes into account the composition of the image for more scene-appropriate results. I have found over time that it can give slightly different exposures from frame to frame if the composition changes even slightly between captures, as the camera may 'evaluate' subsequent compositions differently.

I find evaluative can second-guess you if you are someone who 'evaluates' the composition themselves and uses subtle exposure compensation for each shot.

example being lining up a white subject taking up most of frame adding some '+' exposure compensation, only to find that the evaluative meter has already decided it's a white subject and added some '+' on your behalf.

This is less of a problem when using centre-weighted metering.

And as mentioned earlier, if your primary aim is to reduce noise, display your histogram, 'expose to the right' and correct to your liking in post.

I don't use the long noise reduction. I may be wrong but I don't think it is applied to the raw file anyway, only jpegs unless you use Canons software.

If your setting manual exposure I would be using a spot meter. For one of the program modes evaluative should work good but your going to want fine tune it with exposure compensation.

Thanks for all the feedback.

I will definitely be trying it out on my next dive.

Thanks

Andy

I tried the spot metering on my dive yesterday

It seems to overexpose the shot more than my previous shots that were taken with evaluative metering.

Does this make sense?

Is center weighted a compromise between spot and evaluative?

Thanks for all your suggestions.

Andy

Spot metering ain't for the feint-hearted To use it successfully you need to have an understanding of its implications.

Basically:

Point the spot of the meter at "something" mid-toned in the scene, use that exposure and that "something" will record mid-toned and everything darker in the scene will come out darker, everything lighter in the scene will come out lighter.

Point the spot of the meter at "something" dark-toned in the scene, use that exposure and that "something" will record mid-toned and everything lighter in the scene will come out lighter.

Point the spot of the meter at "something" light-toned in the scene, use that exposure and that "something" will record mid-toned and everything darker in the scene will come out darker.

From the description of what you shoot in our first post, and the problem you have had in the last, I am guessing you are pointing the spot meter at a dark-toned wreck, it recorded the wreck as a mid-tone, and so everything else has coming out too light.... over-exposing the picture.

With the above principles in mind, correct use of a spot meter involves only pointing it at things that are (or you want to record as) mid-tone. Otherwise it involves plenty of exposure compensation too.

Does that help?

Thanks Darren,

That explains it very well. I appreciate it.

When selecting a point to spot meter, does it lock the exposure and allow me to move my focus point to something else in the composition. Or do I need to "shoot" at that point and play with composition (ie. cropping) in Lightroom.

Thanks again

Andy

Spot metering ain't for the feint-hearted To use it successfully you need to have an understanding of its implications.

 

Basically:

 

Point the spot of the meter at "something" mid-toned in the scene, use that exposure and that "something" will record mid-toned and everything darker in the scene will come out darker, everything lighter in the scene will come out lighter.

 

Point the spot of the meter at "something" dark-toned in the scene, use that exposure and that "something" will record mid-toned and everything lighter in the scene will come out lighter.

 

Point the spot of the meter at "something" light-toned in the scene, use that exposure and that "something" will record mid-toned and everything darker in the scene will come out darker.

 

From the description of what you shoot in our first post, and the problem you have had in the last, I am guessing you are pointing the spot meter at a dark-toned wreck, it recorded the wreck as a mid-tone, and so everything else has coming out too light.... over-exposing the picture.

 

With the above principles in mind, correct use of a spot meter involves only pointing it at things that are (or you want to record as) mid-tone. Otherwise it involves plenty of exposure compensation too.

 

Does that help?

you will need to lock it somehow... either by holding the shutter release half-way down or by pressing the Exposure Lock (*) button on the back/right hand side of the camera.

Give this a read, It might help out a bit.

Vol. 1 ambient light

Thanks Todd and Darren....

I will give it a try.

Todd, thanks for the link to your article. I have read a couple already.

Thanks again.

Andy