topic Re: I look like an overexposed peach in EOS DSLR & Mirrorless Cameras

I look like an overexposed peach

Countrydirtkid — Tue, 20 Mar 2018 02:43:00 GMT

I put a lot of time into trying to make high quality youtube content. The problem is that I can't figure out my camera. Under normal outdoor light the video quality looks decent. As soon as the bright sun come out the scene becomes overexposed and my skin takes on this cartoonish peach colored hue. I am shooting video with a Cannon EOS Rebel t51 in fully automatic mode. (the green A inside a square). Here is a video of the problem. I don't expect you guys to actuall watch it but if you check out My video and scroll forward to 8:00. You can see that in the sun my face and hands are so bright its like I glowing.

Any ideas about what I should do?

thanks for the help

CDK

scroll forward to 8:00

Re: I look like an overexposed peach

shadowsports — Tue, 20 Mar 2018 14:53:14 GMT

I thought you did a pretty good job! Off axis shooting with a bright light source can be tricky.

I don't know anything about canning. Good work.

Re: I look like an overexposed peach

BurnUnit — Tue, 20 Mar 2018 20:01:09 GMT

In general I'd say you got fairly good results for shooting in the fully automatic mode. Later in the video your skin tones maybe do look a bit over-saturated more than over-exposed.

As much as anything I think it's the result of shooting in very strong overhead sunlight. Some scenes have a fair amount of both bright and shadow areas which can be challenging (confusing?) for the camera's fully automatic metering. Beyond that, it may be worthwhile to experiment with using manual exposure and manual white balance, providing that your lighting will be pretty consistent.

Also remember that full mid-day sun tends to lean more towards a cooler (blue) light. When the sun is nearer the horizon it produces a warmer (yellow) light. Your video might have benefited from being shot during the first couple of hours after sunrise or the last couple hours before sunset. Shooting somewhere in the shade (if that's possible where you're shooting) may help too by providing more even, less contrasty lighting. And people look more natural as a result of not squinting so much.

Re: I look like an overexposed peach

Countrydirtkid — Wed, 21 Mar 2018 02:39:10 GMT

Thanks for the help guys. You described the color as oversaturated. That is the word. Some of my videos are so oversaturated that I look like a cartoon. I'm going to investigate white balance and manual exposure and see where that takes me. I see people posting short films on youtube using my exact camera and I am amazed at the quality they get. I want to learn everything I can.

thanks again

Re: I look like an overexposed peach

BurnUnit — Mon, 02 Apr 2018 21:32:02 GMT

I suspect that the T5i also lets you choose from a few different "Picture Style" settings in one of the menus somewhere. They might be listed as something like "Vivid", "Portrait", "Landscape", "Natural" and so on. Each setting controls the amount of things like saturation of certain colors as well as brightness and contrast. I know these settings effect still images but they might also have the same effect on videos as well. Might be another area where you can do some experimenting. The camera manual probably explains these functions as well.

Re: I look like an overexposed peach

Jim60D — Wed, 04 Apr 2018 03:09:27 GMT

Overall, I think the video is very well done.

There is a very wide range of exposures from dark (background) to bright (central area) included around 8 minutes into the video.

If you have metering set to Evaluative, you may want to try Center-weighted to better reflect the area of interest..

If you have it set to Center-weighted, you may want to try Partial metering, but that may be too small an area.

Good luck,

Jim