Shooting in Mixed foreground and background

[gabriel buluran]

I tried taking pictures of birds at Hardin this morning. There were a lot of chances to shoot as pairs of moorhens, waterhens, and three other birds were presenting themselves close to where i was positioned.

My problem was reading the foreground and the background... The water was dark, overexposing the subject. The plants at the background on the other hand are rather bright, underexposing the subject.

Any tips on what settings I should be using. I tried several EV+/- values but did not get any usable pictures. Sigh... will try to shoot again tomorrow. Hopefully, I will pick a thing or two up from you guys.

Thanks in advance.

[Ding Carpio]

What's your gear? Does it have spot metering? I always have my exposure on manual and spot meter. If the bird is not moving a lot, I try to observe the meter fluctuation as I move the center spot on the bird's body (if the bird is large in the frame) and decide on a shutter value within the range of fluctuation. You may occasionally want to meter the background, too, just to get an idea of, for example, how much blooming you'll end up with.

Compensating your exposure is also tricky on white birds (e.g. egrets) and dark birds (crows) to get feather detail.

When you get the hang of it, you'll get better at gauging on the fly how much to stop up or down depending on foreground and background luminance. Nothing like practice and learning from mistakes. At least, we're digital now.

[gabriel buluran]

thank you sir. i use a canon d80. i believe the camera is set on spot metering. however, i am mostly on Aperture priority. Will try manual next time.