photos washed out

[dcrowex]

Canon 7d, 70-300 IS lens

Been shooting baseball (kids) games for years but really struggling this year.  Usually shooting in morning or heat of day, yes, sun can be strong, or super bright behind the cloudy skies.  To make it worse, uniforms all white.  Seem just "ok" in the view finder but once i check on the computer, the grass doesnt even look green.  

Usually shooting AV, ISO 100, F5.6.  Speed is fast enough, no blur issues, but the pictures are awful.  Never had this problem, what can I do to fix this please?  I am spending way too much time having to edit to darken them up. 

Thank you, debbie

[kvbarkley]

Do you have the exposure compensation up a stop or two?

You might just use the menu to reset the camera.

[ScottyP]

A picture is worth a thousand words. And in this case you are using words to describe a picture. 1000x1000= either post a sample photo or attempt to fully describe the picture in 1,000,000 words. 😉

[ebiggs1]

"To make it worse, uniforms all white."

If you meter off the white uniforms on a bright sunny day the shot will be overexposed.  That's just the way it is.  Change your metering mode to evaluate.

An example would be nice.

[RobertTheFat]

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@ebiggs1wrote:

"To make it worse, uniforms all white."

If you meter off the white uniforms on a bright sunny day the shot will be overexposed.  That's just the way it is.  Change your metering mode to evaluate.

An example would be nice.

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Huh? If you meter off the white uniforms, shouldn't they be properly exposed? And the rest of the picture underexposed?

[ebiggs1]

Exactly!  An over exposed shot.  Isn't that what he said?  "Wsahed out" 

[TCampbell]

I'm also wondering if you've inadvertenly dialed up your exposure compensation and don't realize it.

In "Av" mode on the 7D, the front dial controls the f-stop but the rear dial controls exposure compensation (from -3 stops through +3 stops).  There's a "lock" switch which disables the feature so you don't accidentally dial in exposure compensatin (it disables the rear-dial in normal shooting mode if the lock switch is engaged).

If you post an image WITH all the shooting info (EXIF data) intact (don't let your software strip the data) then we can check the EXIF data and it will tell us if you had exposure compensation dialed in.

For this to be a metering issue the camera would have to be in spot-metering mode (the default is to be in "evaluative" metering mode where it samples metering all across the image frame) and you'd have to target something very dark (which would make the camera think it needs a longer exposure to capture the "dark" subject ... and that would result in everything being over-exposed).    While that's technically a possibility, it's just unlikely to do that by accident.  But it's actually pretty easy to dial in exposure compenstation by accident ... I suspect that's the more likely cause.

[ScottyP]

If the white uniform is close enough to you that the camera exposes for it, shouldn't that be like shooting snow or a brides dress, when the camera tries to make the white look like grey?  (Shot is underexposed by the meter?)  Don't you normally want to dial in a stop or two of positive exposure comp to fix it?

[ScottyP]

I don't see any way this is going anywhere without posting a sample shot. 

[ebiggs1]

I agree.