EOS T6 Trouble with bracketing

[K-Emery]

Hey! I have an EOS Rebel T6 and I'm trying to use exposure bracketing. I've looked through multiple manuals, have watched many instructional videos and asked people who have had more experience with cameras how to and everything I have tried, failed. I always end up with one very underexposed or overexposed, blurry picture and I followed every direction I was given. I would like to know if there's something I'm missing or if my camera could potentially have something wrong with it. 

[K-Emery]

Ohh, I meant as in terms of white balance by overexposed. I guess I should've said the image turned out way too bright instead, my mistake. I only seem to end up with one picture that is too bright or too dark. Thank you for your feedback, I will be trying this! 

[Waddizzle]

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@K-Emery wrote:

Ohh, I meant as in terms of white balance by overexposed. I guess I should've said the image turned out way too bright instead, my mistake. I only seem to end up with one picture that is too bright or too dark. Thank you for your feedback, I will be trying this! 

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In one sense, winding up one shot that is a little too bright and another that is a little too dark is the whole idea behind exposure bracketing.

[zakslm]

I'm not sure if this applies to the T6 or even if it answers the question you have on exposure bracketing, but here's what I discovered on my T7:

1) Turn on the camera, make sure the back display in on.

2) Hit the "Q" button (below the Av =/- button to the right of the back screen

3) Use the back pad (round thingy with the up, down, right, left buttons and the set button in the middle) to highlight the exposure compensation scale (goes from -3 to +3) in yellow

4)  Press the center "Set" button

5) A scale from "Darker to "Lighter will appear with 0 in the middle and -3 and +3 on the left and right

6) Use the control wheel (under your right index finger in back of the shutter button) to expand the "bracket" back and forth between 1/3 stop and 2 stops of bracketing.

7)  Press the "Set" button again.  The back of the camera will show the "bracket" you set and the next 3 shots you take will be exposed at 0, the left bracket (minus), then the right bracket (plus).

I always use the menu to "Clear all Camera Settings" after anything like bracketing or if I set the camera differently than any default settings just so I start with "clear" settings before shooting again.

Another way to use exposure bracketing somewhat diffrently is if your starting point is something other than 0 exposure comensation.  If you set Exposure compensation at say -1 1/3rd stops you can still set up bracketing as described above.  So in that case, the first shot would be at -1 1/3rd stops, the second at whatever you set the minus bracket to and the third to the plus bracket.  So if your bracket is 1 1/3rd stops, the first shot would be at -1 1/3rd, the second at -2 2/3rds and the third at 0.  I did this last night when trying to photograph the sunset, starting at -1 exposure compensation and using a 2/3rds bracket.  Below is the minus bracket shot at -1 2/3rds that in my opinion, was the best of the 3 (after cropping and slightly punching up the colors)

Hope that helps.

[K-Emery]

Thank you for your advice! I'll try it to see what it will do for my camera! That's a really nice picture! 

[ebiggs1]

" I only seem to end up with one picture that is too bright or too dark."

Here is a typical three exposure bracket and since we are talking sunsets.

... which yields this final image.

zakslm,

A critical suggestion. Backoff the sliders in your editor a bit. Remember in photography editing, less is more. Let the HDR do its thing.

[zakslm]

ebiggs1,

I understand about backing off the sliders, but not the HDR part. 

To the best of my knowledge, there was no HDR. The shot you see is the - 1 2/3 exposure - in my opinion the most dramatic of the 3 bracketed shots (slightly punching up the saturation and colors) but not getting too crazy.  Sunsets in Arizona this time of year can be pretty spectacular. 

[FloridaDrafter]

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@zakslm wrote:

I understand about backing off the sliders, but not the HDR part. 
To the best of my knowledge, there was no HDR. The shot you see is the - 1 2/3 exposure - in my opinion the most dramatic of the 3 bracketed shots (slightly punching up the saturation and colors) but not getting too crazy.  Sunsets in Arizona this time of year can be pretty spectacular. 

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You have to use a program to combine the three exposures that you captured. I recommend downloading, or if you have it, using Canons Digital Photo Professional 4 (DPP 4). You will load the three exposures in DPP 4, select them, then click the Tools pulldown and select "Start HDR compositing tool" or press CNTL Y at the same time on your keyboard. You will then get a panel with your images thumbnails and get some options on how you want to proceed. After you have made your selections you can combine your three images into an HDR image.

Newton 

[zakslm]

FloridaDrafter,

Good to know!  I have DPP 4 on one of my computers but have only used it a few times when I was experimenting with shooting RAW an editing/doing post with DPP 4. 

I did not know DPP4 does HDR compositing.  Looks like there is a good reason to make sure the program is up to date and may start using it again.  As time allows, I'll try auto-bracketing in continuous and HDR compositing in DPP 4.

The bracketing I've "experimented" with was done in single shot and not continuous, because quite frankly, I didn't think to do so.  Most of my shooting is Single Shot, except for occasionally using a Creative Mode that has continuous shooting as part of the setup (i.e. Sports Mode).  

Except when experimenting with shooting in Raw mode, I shoot in the default JPEG mode which is JPEG 24M 6000 X 4000 (on my T7) and copy the photos from the SD Card to my PC where I edit them in the Photo Editor that is part of Windows 10.  Microsoft recently updated Photo Editor and to be honest, I preferred the previous version over the current version but perhaps I have to use it more and become accustomed to it but may switch to some other photo editor for JPEGs.  

Thanks for the advice!

[ebiggs1]

If you are getting into photo editing you are putting severe limitations on how much you can edit if you don't shoot raw.  The camera deletes any data it sees as not important in jpg. Plus edits can be destructive in jpg, they are not in raw.

[ebiggs1]

Perhaps a definition of "bracketing" is necessary so we all know what we are talking about.

Bracketing is when you take usually an odd number of photos one under exposed by a stop, one correct exposure and one over exposed by a stop. Now for sure there are many other variables you can use in bracketing but this is a common way. After you merge all three into one final image. Supposedly it gives the best of everything exposure wise. But you still must use careful adjustment using the various sliders in the editor or you get a comic book picture look.

Here is an example where HDR made a photo possible. The DR in this photo far exceeded the cameras ability but with three exposures it is easy.