Excessive underexposure with strong light sources

[MikeMyers]

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I'll quit responding if you wish, but based on your comments, for some scenes you can trust the auto-iso to get images you want, and for others, you can't.  As I see it, it still seems to come down to you, not the auto-iso - but are you metering the same way on both cameras?

From what you've written, it's up to YOU to recognize a scene where the auto-iso won't work the way you want it to work, and in that case it's up to YOU to select settings more likely to get you what you want.

 

I always have a battle going on, between what I want my camera to do, and what it wants to do.  Faced with a scenario as you describe, I would go hunting for scenes where you know auto-iso won't work, and experiment until I found the settings you are most pleased with.  But if I were doing that, accepting that blown highlights will kill my image, I think I would end up with settings like what your auto-iso does now - prevent the highlights from being blown out regardless of what this did to the shadows.  I suspect I would try to  move to another position where the sun isn't hitting the camera the way you showed.  

(Another option is to download the free trial version of DxO PhotoLab, search out scenes where the sky is too bright, capture an image the way your M10 is trying to, using auto-iso, and see if PhotoLab will restore your dark shadows. ) 

 

The way you're doing things now, if your M10 and auto-iso did anything so the shadows weren't so dark, the burnt out sky would get even worse. If you're using manual exposure, you've got the same choice - preserve the sky, or the shadows.  

 

I never owned an M9.  I don't know what they're like, except I was told in the Red Dot Forum discussions that the images from an M9 have more contrast than similar images from the M10.  That should make the M9 even worse at this.

Last question - are you shooting with or without Live View being active?  I don't think the M9 had Live View.  Could that be the reason why the metering seems so different?

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[Huss]

Yanidel, it almost seems like you may have the exposure compensation set to -2 or so permanently.

Have to tried to do a camera reset and start over?

[yanidel]

7 hours ago, MikeMyers said:

I'll quit responding if you wish, but based on your comments, for some scenes you can trust the auto-iso to get images you want, and for others, you can't.  As I see it, it still seems to come down to you, not the auto-iso - but are you metering the same way on both cameras?

From what you've written, it's up to YOU to recognize a scene where the auto-iso won't work the way you want it to work, and in that case it's up to YOU to select settings more likely to get you what you want.

In the case of this picture, I saw the bike coming at 20 meters, so I ran across the street, kneeled and composed in a split second. There is no way I could anticipate the position of the sun and its impact on the exposure. And in street phootgraphy, it happens all the time, be it auto-iso or manual exposure, you just don't have to think about it, just get the shot is the motto.  With the M9, such extreme cases of under-exposure never happened. With the M10 it does. But it is fine, it is part of the way it exposes as several have mentioned in this thread. Now I need to adapt and find time in that split second to identify the situation and adjust exposure accordingly.

[yanidel]

6 hours ago, Huss said:

Yanidel, it almost seems like you may have the exposure compensation set to -2 or so permanently.

Have to tried to do a camera reset and start over?

exposure is fine in 99% of cases!

[Siriusone59]

7 minutes ago, yanidel said:

exposure is fine in 99% of cases!

Thanks for posting those two images.  I was beginning to wonder if my 10r had a problem that I had been ignoring and working around by metering off the ground.  Even a small bright reflection off of chrome or glass will cause underexposure.  It doesn't have to be near the center of the frame.  I did my own test a while back comparing shots with highlights(reflected sunlight on chrome) and even small patches of bright sky.  Was comparing classic metering with live view metering, same image, iso and f-stop and both center weighted.  The live view metering was always .75-1 full f-stop more exposure.  Luckily as pointed out earlier, most can be recovered in post.

[yanidel]

13 hours ago, Siriusone59 said:

Thanks for posting those two images.  I was beginning to wonder if my 10r had a problem that I had been ignoring and working around by metering off the ground.  Even a small bright reflection off of chrome or glass will cause underexposure.  It doesn't have to be near the center of the frame.  I did my own test a while back comparing shots with highlights(reflected sunlight on chrome) and even small patches of bright sky.  Was comparing classic metering with live view metering, same image, iso and f-stop and both center weighted.  The live view metering was always .75-1 full f-stop more exposure.  Luckily as pointed out earlier, most can be recovered in post.

exactly, at the beginning one believe it is a problem with one's camera but this thread seem to show it's standard for the M10.  No big deal, just need to be aware of it and expose accordingly. 

[Adam Bonn]

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M9, SOOC DNG, aperture priority mode.....

Pretty sure it's not just an M10 thing....

One thing to note... IMHO...

Everything else being equal... the M9 generally turns in a brighter image than the M10 (different native tone curves, native colour intensities etc*)

Ignore the guesstimated aperture differences, the lens aperture and shutter speeds were the same... Notice how much darker the M10 image is (on the right), even with the M10 ISO being 200 and not 160 (I don't really use 100 on the M10 and just treat it as a base 200 ISO camera)

Oh the time difference between these shots was as long as it took to swap the lens... The light didn't change (not a cloud in the sky...)

edit:

*Andy's post in this thread (here) explains this better than I ever could

Edited September 20, 2022 by Adam Bonn

[yanidel]

2 hours ago, Adam Bonn said:

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In this case, the bright light source is clearly in the center so any camera would underexpose. The problem is that if the light source was in the upper left corner, the M10 would also underexpose by several stops, that how it differs from the M9.

[Adam Bonn]

6 hours ago, yanidel said:

In this case, the bright light source is clearly in the center so any camera would underexpose. The problem is that if the light source was in the upper left corner, the M10 would also underexpose by several stops, that how it differs from the M9.

+ how much darker the m10 makes pictures