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EOS R8 RF50mm F1.8 STM - Washed out images of the sunrise

JimmyCanon
Apprentice

Hello,
The images we attempt to take of the sunrise are washed out badly.
1 Manual settings
2 Auto focus - Single point center

As the sun came up, we adjusted the ISO - Aperture - Shutter speed. All washed out.

We took a video, and it turned out very good.

We use single-point center focus for various reasons. Could this be part of the issue? Is it possibly causing the camera to also take the lighting information only from the center of the image?

Any help would be appreciated.

 

IMG_1266-downsized.jpg

 

8 REPLIES 8

Tronhard
Elite
Elite

Hi and welcome the forum:

First, without actual images along with the EXIF settings, it's hard for us to comment, but there are a couple of meaningful thoughts...

Focus will not have an impact exposure unless you have tied the exposure to the focus point - which is possible with AE lock.  Check your manual and menu on that: c013.pdf (start.canon), and consider P172 as it does take exposure from the centre.   If you have exposure lock assigned to the * button, then the procedure is:
1. place the centre on something that is offers a mid-reflectance (you should see the result as you do so in the EVF
2. focus where you wish (depends on subject and aperture) and lock that - I prefer BBF with servo no focus on shutter button
3. recompose and take the shot.

Did you take a photo of the sunrise that was not manual?


cheers, TREVOR

The mark of good photographer is not what they hold in their hand, it's what they hold in their head;
"All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow", Leo Tolstoy;
"Skill in photography is acquired by practice and not by purchase" Percy W. Harris

stevet1
Whiz
Whiz

JimmyCanon,

When you say you took a video, and the video footage turned out good, do you remember what Mode you used? Did you take your video in Manual Mode, or did you use Auto or one of the semi-Auto Modes?

Did you compare the settings of the video against the settings of your stills. In Auto or semi-Auto Modes for your videos, the camera is going to be choosing your settings for you, and they might be different from what you had for yourself for the stills in Manual Mode.

Also, what metering mode are you using for your stills? Evaluative, or Partial, or Spot?

If it's Evaluative, your camera will meter where your focus is. If it's Partial, or Spot, or Center-weighted Average, it will meter in the center of your frame. If the center of your frame is dark, it will overexposed the lighter areas of your picture.

Trevor gave you good advice. Point the center of your camera at a neutral point that is lit like you want, like the grass, meter off that and lock your exposure with your AE lock button. Use BBF in Servo Mode, and while holding down that focusing button, swing your camera around, compose the shot you want to take and hit the shutter button.

I think that will help.

Steve Thomas

JimmyCanon
Apprentice

Hey Steve,

When you say you took a video, and the video footage turned out good, do you remember what Mode you used?

Answer: No, I am not sure what the settings were, we just wanted to run a test to compare them.I have never previously taken video with the camera. I will look at the settings.

Did you take your video in Manual Mode, or did you use Auto or one of the semi-Auto Modes?

Answer: Not sure until I check the settings. I mentioned the video because I think it indicates this is an issue with settings. Thought it would be easy to run down.It is slightly washed out but nothing like the example images above.

Also, what metering mode are you using for your stills? Evaluative, or Partial, or Spot?

Answer: Not sure. The settings were done six months ago and I have not used the camera since. I used it for product shots and is worked great.

Please have a look at the example picture I just uploaded. I will get you guys whatever information you need.

Tronhard
Elite
Elite

Well, looking at this, not knowing the point of exposure or the EXIF data: f/stop, shutter speed and ISO, I will gauge this on what I see, which is not that bad at all.
The problem is one of dynamic range.  What we see will always exceed between white and black, by a significant degree, what the camera is capable of capturing.  This is very much a function of brain power allowing us to adjust between light and shadow over a few seconds.  We do suffer shock when suddenly faced with extremes like coming from a dark room into the sunlight.
Dynamic Range.jpg

So, looking at your image, I would say that the limiting factor is that the camera is seeing the sun full on, (one of the hardest things to do) and that is blowing out that area, whereas other areas fall outside its range to encompass deep shadow.  How to get past that?

One of my favourite photographers, Sean Tucker, has a couple of videos out on the subject of contrast, and as a bit of a philosopher the connects that to life experiences:

and...

 and

Well, you could try an High Dynamic Range shot - where the camera (preferably on a tripod) will take three or more shots at different exposures in rapid succession and combine them into a merged JPG file that flattens out the range.   The instructions for this are on P182 of the Canon EOS R8 Advanced User Guide v1.3.0 Firmware or later.

The other solution is to not shoot the sun directly, but catch it just before it rises or just after it sets, or is in cloud to some degree.  That reduces the dynamic range and sculpts the light on the cloud.  For example.
Fuji X-T4, XF 15-80@52mm, f/10, 1/25sec, ISO-320Fuji X-T4, XF 15-80@52mm, f/10, 1/25sec, ISO-320 EOS 60D, EF-S 15-85@15mm, f/10, 1/250sec, ISO-400EOS 60D, EF-S 15-85@15mm, f/10, 1/250sec, ISO-400
EOS M, EF-M 22mm, f/8, 1/100sec, ISO-200EOS M, EF-M 22mm, f/8, 1/100sec, ISO-200

BTW, it is one thing to take a shot of the sun directly with a relatively low power lens, but it is dangerous to you and your camera to shoot that way with a high magnification telephoto.

I understand you had reasons for shooting in manual, but I would suggest for environments outside the studio, where you have less control over the light, start with Av mode and play with the settings the camera suggests, taking note of what you expose on and the dynamic range shown in the histograms.  It's very enlightening -  no pun intended!


cheers, TREVOR

The mark of good photographer is not what they hold in their hand, it's what they hold in their head;
"All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow", Leo Tolstoy;
"Skill in photography is acquired by practice and not by purchase" Percy W. Harris

 

Here is an example image and the information that is not shooting directly at the sun. It is badly washed out. We will defiantly be using AV mode the next time we go out for testing. I do suspect we will see much better results. If you can garner anything from this all advice is appreciated. Thanks

File Name IMG_1223 - Copy.CR3
File Size 21.0MB
Camera Model Canon EOS R8
Firmware Firmware Version 1.2.0
Shooting Date/Time 7/16/2024 6:34:44 AM
Owner's Name
Shooting Mode Manual Exposure
Tv(Shutter Speed) 1/20
Av(Aperture Value) 16
Metering Mode Evaluative Metering
Exposure Compensation 0
ISO Speed 100
Auto ISO Speed OFF
Lens RF50mm F1.8 STM
Focal Length 50.0mm
Image Size 6000x4000
Crop/aspect ratio 3:2
Image Quality RAW
Flash Off
FE lock OFF
White Balance Mode Auto: Ambience priority
AF Mode One-Shot AF
AF area select mode 1-point AF
Picture Style Auto
Sharpness:Strength 4
Sharpness:Fineness 2
Sharpness:Threshold 3
Contrast 0
Saturation 0
Color tone 0
Clarity 0
Color Space sRGB
Long exposure noise reduction Disable
High ISO speed noise reduction Disable
Highlight tone priority Disable
Auto Lighting Optimizer Disable
Peripheral illumination correction Disable
Chromatic aberration correction Disable
Distortion correction Disable
Diffraction correction Disable
Digital Lens Optimizer Disable
Dust Delete Data No
Drive Mode Single shooting
Live View Shooting ON
Camera Body No. 112022012492
Comment IMG_1223 - Copy-downsized.jpg

 

JimmyCanon,

I will leave it to better photographers than I am to offer you advice on your settings, but I noticed in your EXIF data that you had set an aperture of f/16. To me, that seems like a pretty high aperture for the dim light you were in. With a fixed ISO of 100, your camera had no choice but to slow your shutter speed down to 1/20th in order to let enough llight in to get a good exposure.

I don't think your picture is "washed out" at all. It does look like there was fog on the horizon.

One thing I did notice was that you were using Auto White balance.Every camera is different, I think, in how it handles Auto White Balance. I have a T8i, and in the early days after I first got it, I was using AWB, and I always thought my pictures were looking washed out. I started using the Presets (Daylight, Cloudy, etc.), and I've been a lot happier with the results.

If you want to emphasize the cooler blues and yellows, use Daylight. If you want to emphasize the warmer reds and greens, use Cloudy. A lot of people who shoot sunrises and sunsets will use the Cloudy White Balance to bring out those reds and oranges.

Steve Thomas

Tronhard
Elite
Elite

Thanks again for your fast response Jimmy!

Well, first I would say that it is not perhaps as bad as you might think.  First, however, let's look at the critical data:

Av(Aperture Value) 16 -   I would suggest going for something more like f/8, that gives you two stops of light to play with.
Tv(Shutter Speed) 1/20:  by increasing the aperture by two stops, you can now use a Shutter Speed two stops darker, i.e.  1/80sec: better for hand-holding.

Metering Mode Evaluative Metering - so despite pointing the camera in the centre, Evaluative metering rather averages out the exposure across almost all of the image, which is why you find the image over-exposed
ISO Speed 100   - OK
Auto ISO Speed OFF - If you have trouble juggling the three exposure controls, set this to Auto

So, I would say that your main culprit was shooting in evaluative metering and not realizing that the image would be washed out. Essentially, a sensor will measure reflected light from a subject area and try to set the resultant exposure to a mid-tone (called 18% grey, because colour is irrelevant) which about the same tonal value as grass.  However it can be fooled when the subject is much darker or brighter and will thus over or under expose the image accordingly.  This is where you need to take control and you can do so by:
Being very specific as the the area or point to meter - set by customizing your metering controls
Using the exposure compensation control to reduce or increase the light intensity of the image
Setting everything manually, but you need to be aware of the impacts on other aspects of your image in doing so.

Still, it's not impossible to improve some issues in post production, so for example, this is a crude effort in Photoshop, just using a screen copy of the image as displayed on my computer.  Is that more as you recall it?
Sunrise.jpg
However, it seems to me you are unfamiliar with the use of your camera to control metering and to then apply that to producing an appropriate exposure using your three controls Aperture, Shutter speed, and ISO. 

If that is correct, then my first suggestion is to do some study on metering in conjunction with becoming familiar with the camera controls.  If in doubt, start with P mode and observe the settings the camera wants to use, then change one of your controls at a time, and review the new settings by the camera.
Also, consider watching some instructional videos on these topics:
Starting with: Canon EOS 101 How To - Components of Exposure (youtube.com)
Canon EOS 101: Photo and Videography Basics | Canon U.S.A., Inc.
To get a good grounding controlling your camera, I suggest this video:
Canon R8 Beginners Guide - How-To Use The Camera Step By Step! (youtube.com)
Always download the Advanced User Guide: Canon EOS R8 Advanced User Guide v1.3.0 Firmware or later. it is a valuable resource and you should use it to become familiar with the specifics of your controls.


cheers, TREVOR

The mark of good photographer is not what they hold in their hand, it's what they hold in their head;
"All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow", Leo Tolstoy;
"Skill in photography is acquired by practice and not by purchase" Percy W. Harris

garymak
Enthusiast

 

Two words: "RAW" and "TRIPOD". I only saw one instance each of them in all the commentary.  For me, they are the most important, next to "MANUAL".

I think (IMHO) that the replies here were an excellent background and analysis.  They gave a lot of advice, food for thought, and great methodology for analyzing the photograph sans much detail.  I'd like to offer some additional thoughts in conjunction with, and support of, those comments.

First, "handholding" and "sunrise" are two incompatible conditions for a good photography (although excellent for romance if it’s not a camera you’re holding! 🤣😉) (For “Snapshot" photography, that’s another thing; for that, any ol' result is good enough.)

2) "Previsualization" - so what kind of sunrise do YOU want to take? If you don't know what your settings are, you are asking the camera to take the photograph for you, and the camera will give your the results it decides was best, whether you like them or not. 

3) APERTURE: Following then on “Previsualization” … Aperture is very important for sunrise/sunset photography as it directly affects the capture of the sun.  You want a general golden sky glow encompassing most of the image with a vague outline of a disk? Large aperture, maybe ƒ4 or so.  You want a more dramatic, defined disk with more sharply defined clouds fading off darker away from the sun? Medium, medium-small aperture.  You want a very dramatic, very-well defined sun disk with (possibly) “rising sun" rays shooting out ? Very very  small aperture...  for examples.  YOU need to figure out what YOU want beforehand.  As long as you get what you were looking for, then you're on target.

4) BLENDING TECHNIQUES: As was described in great detail by Tronhard and others, cameras simply cannot reproduce what the eye “sees” (which is a brain function that responds in millisecond adjustments to balance extremes of light and render a "picture" in our heads), so we can see both the sunrise and the sand when we look at them, but in our photos, it is more or less “one or the other” i.e., expose for sun, black sand, or expose for sand, get the sun blown out.  Therefore, various techniques such as have been explained are used to “blend” exposures to get the photograph’s zone exposure close to what we are seeing with our eyes, whether that be from RAW with layers in Photoshop, or and “HDR” stacking or whatever.

5) ONLY USE MANUAL:  change the shutter speed a/o ƒ-stop and see the results real-time in your viewfinder. (Viewfinder is generally for viewing than the screen for this.) If you have your camera set to “bracketing” then you’ll have a very wide range from a 3-4 images from which to work with later.

EXAMPLE: In the attached example (just showing a thumbnail here) of the beach, (Canon EOS R5, ƒ7.1, 1/400 s, ISO  100, RAW,  the sun is actually behind a thin layer of cloud, extremely bright, so the exposure was typically problematic for bright sunrises: expose for the sun and the rest of the scene will be close to black, losing all detail in shadows; expose for the sand and water and the sun will be blown out, losing all detail due to Over-exposure.  Looking through the viewfinder, I stuck a “balance” between the two that I felt would be recoverable in Post, through various means (layers, adjustments of highlights, blacks and whites, etc.)  Result is attached.  (In this particular shot, the sun never was visible as a disk, which was fine, as it attracted me as a kind of “light hole in the sky”.)

Screenshot 2024-07-17 at 12.06.46 PM.pngScreenshot 2024-07-17 at 11.29.00 AM.png

In the example of the tree and sunrise, (just showing a thumbnail here) (Canon EOS R5, 1/500s, ƒ 7.1, ISO 800, RAW, this was much easier as I pre-visualized the foreground tree as just a black silhouette against the sky and sun, so I simply exposed for the sky & sun, looking through my viewfinder until the sun was well-defined round, adjusted and balancing SS (keeping in mind I had a minimum 1/500th due to the lens) and ISO, and then didn’t worry about the tree as I wanted a silhouette without detail anyway.  I used a “rifle sandbag” on the side of the truck (this was in Kenya) for stability.

Screenshot 2024-07-17 at 12.09.38 PM.png

Of course, none of this is possible without a tripod (or sandbag!)

5) And finally, if you are going to be taking a lot of sunrise/sunset shots (even if just for a specific period of time) I would highly recommend using one of the “C” settings on your camera after you’ve figured out your basic settings and what you feel works, so that you can instantly return to them and use them as a starting point on your next outing, so that you’ll just have to make “tweaks” to the settings rather than go through every single one and try to remember everything.  (Personally I never get up early enough for sunrises, but I have one of my “C” settings for “Birds” which I use all the time.)

Good luck!

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