Light Problem

I have read the manual through and i still haven put my finger on this problem yet....

when filming or just simply taking a picture the light will go dark, then bright so some times my photo's will come out like its night and some times they will come out like im pointing my camera at the sun?
I have mainly been taking photo's with the SV setting, But in the Av settings It's the same?

hello farmer,

People might be able to help more if you could explain what camera you are using and a little about the photograph and lighting conditions etc at the time.

Dave

What settings do you've the metering mode on?

Hi David, welcome to the forum.

Can you give us some more detail about your problem? Which camera are you using, which lens, which flash (if any), what setiings are you using on the camera? I.. Metering mode, exposure mode, aperture/shutter speed/ISO etc.

We need more information to be able to help you. A couple of illustrative example images with intact EXIF data would help.

I suspect you may have your metering set to spot mode, which will produce the effect you describe if the photographer is not aware of how it works.

Try centre weighted or matrix metering if this is the case.

pentax k-x, 18-50mm, only the built in flash, sv and av, metering mode? spreture is on auto along with shutter speed and iso is 200 or 400 usally

From your example here, John was right in that you have spot metering enabled, which means, in that example at least, that the camera is trying to make the black side of the cow, which is in the middle of the frame, a mid-tone. It's done this very well. However, it's resulted in a very burnt out background.

Change the metering mode to centre-weighted or matrix, and all will be much better. Look in the manual for 'metering mode' if you don't know how to change it.

Dan

Metering mode is like the word say the mode in which the camera meters.
I believe there is in the menu the option to change that.

Pentax use 3 metering modes.
- spot metering
- centre-weighted
- Matrix

With spot metering the camera meters a very small spot on the photo and because that spot is small the exposure can change relative mugh when you move the camera a little bit. Something like this.


centre-weighted use almost the whole photo where it looks at the centre for the most accurate exposure and the "priority" get less the further it gets from the centre. It looks something like this



Matrix mode is a special variation.
The camera has several exposure meters across the screen and matrix tries to select the most important ones and try to get the best exposure based on that.
I believe it looks where the focus is locked on, if the focus is locked on the left than the matrix mode will give that part of the photo the most priority to get the exposure right.

You can read more about metering here http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/camera-metering.htm

done and dusted.... for now

thanks for everyones help,
Dave