Dark subject, white background

spalais

Hi again, this question is in regards to shooting in a multi lighting situation. I was trying to take a shot of people that were in the shade, with the sunlight in the background (ie: subjects are standing under a tree, with a sunny landscape behind them), and they kept coming out super dark. I could barely see them with the background being fully lit. If I messed with the adjustments I would then get a decent lit shot of the people, but the background would be bright white. Help! Thanks :)

bruto

If there's too much difference between the light of foreground and background, you may be stuck deciding which to expose best. However, in this particular situation, you should probably be looking at using flash. In P and A modes, the basic lightning-bolt flash icon should give you fill flash. That will brighten up the subjects in the foreground without overexposing the background so much. For more complex flashing, you'll have to read up. You can adjust flash compensation for more or less fill, and it can do a bunch of tricks.

For a fairly decent compromise that favors the subject, switch to center weighted averaging metering.

ohyeahar

@bruto hit it right on the head there. Fill flash is exactly what you need. I would suggest you to Google “fill flash” for more information. For me, I tend to set flash exposure compensation to either -0.3 or -0.7 if I wanted to use fill flash, but do experiment. It depends on your own preference and how strong the backlight (i.e. sun in the background) is.

The pop-up flash is often good enough, but if you use portrait/tele lens or you have a large group of people to light up, there may not be enough power in your flash. That’s when you would need an external flash.