Originally Posted by shark:
Brad, you mention that your D100 is all over the place with metering, mine seems to be a bit off with white balance when I leave it in automatic mode. Do you have the same issue? I know that you can compensate a bit either way in the settings. Just curious to see if that's common with this model.
On the whole, neither the D70 or the D100 is very good at 'auto white balance'.
Maybe I am better suited to use the alternative, with my lifetime working in TV,
where I set the white balance manually at the start of every shoot. You simply
call up the 'pre' setting with the command dial and point the camera at something
white and half-press the shutter. (I THINK this is the way to set it, I have forgotten)
I find that you have to treat this as a much more complicated deal than we from the
Point and Shoot side are used to. You need to think about what you are about to
shoot before you go off and snap away. The three things I have found most
important with these cameras is to learn the auto-focus zones and how to move
them around with the Directional pad, and second, finding the best metering mode
for the situation, and practice is the only way to really know. Thirdly, you have to
USE THAT FILL FLASH. Your battery is going to last WAY longer than we are
accustomed to, and you should ALMOST use the flash on every shot outdoors.
I get in the most trouble when I get overly excited and just start firing away
and forgetting that maybe the clouds have come up big time and my old WB
setting is no longer valid, or I failed to look at the result on the tiny little screen
and noticed that I am shooting way hot or way dark. When I slow down and
think first about what I am shooting and what I want, and then adjust the camera
to get it ready to do it, I find I get pretty reasonable shots. After that I still have
a bad habit of shooting the rest of the day with the same basic settings. I did it in
New Orleans. I set up both cameras with a few test shots, and then shot for two
hours without caring about anything but the subject. It hurt me badly, but not
TERRIBLY.
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let me show you what I mean, Shark....THIS SHOT could have been incredible, and it ISN"T BAD,
but as you can see, it needed exposure compensation to tame that sun. The guy is playing under
basically a beach umbrella.
[
Image
D100 Street Musician by
MemphisBrad], on Flickr
And the same thing with this shot. I had to Photoshop it down JUST to get it to where it was ALMOST
worth a crap. But the LCD is so small, I am not sure how well I could have been alerted to the hot shot
anyway, in my absent-minded rush to shoot. I think the main thing to remember with that camera is to
shoot a LOT of shots and angles of EVERYTHING you find interesting. You are unlikely to run out of room
on your card if you dump your shots at the end of the day everytime you shoot. The reason I say that
is that you can literally shoot five clicks on a subject and get 5 different exposure levels. At least that's
what I GET on mine.
[
Image
D100 Horse Overwatch by
MemphisBrad], on Flickr
[Reply]
