A6000 - Low Light, Varied Light

[willabatrat]

First, I'm brand new here, to the A6000, and to mirrorless cameras. I don't qualify as even a talented amateur. I'll freely own up to huge knowledge gaps in how to make stuff happen, so I'll admit that this question might be better suited to a general photography forum. But I'm using this camera, so I will beg your indulgence this time. The answer to this will be filed away under "one less ignorant beginner question to ask". I am trying to overcome the camera's tendency to overcompensate for low light levels and take a picture the way my brain sees the scene. Sitting on my couch and looking toward a window on the outdoors and an arched doorway to my kitchen at the crack of dawn, there are two different levels of light from two different sources: a dim tungsten bulb giving indirect light in the kitchen and a small amount of natural light from the window. The contrast gives a nice feeling of serenity and a day not yet begun. The camera, doing what it's designed to do, cranks up the available light and gives me a decent picture that, unfortunately, is nothing like what the eyes are looking at. So how do I make it render something close to the actual scene?

[DaveL]

I am really interested in how others answer

 

light meters provide exposure settings that produce 18% grey. Think sidewalk.

 

So if your scene is dark, it will be rendered brighter. so you might change the +/- setting, making the final image darker

 

 

I did lots of winter sports photography. I would overexposed snow scenes to end up with true snow colour.

 

Let's see what others say. I would love to simplify the process

[DaveL]

have you tried the intelligent auto setting?

[willabatrat]

Dave, thanks for the quick reply. I agree that it'll be interesting to see what others have to say and hopefully there will be a lot of input. Yes, I started with Intelligent and moved through Superior and A and S. I stopped and joined this forum before going to get a tripod and checking out Manual, with different aperture/shutter/white balance/ISO, etc. I'm hoping there's a way to do this handheld, while recognizing that there may not be. The beauty of a quality DSLR/mirrorless is its versatility, so I'm sure there's a way to get there. By the way, I neglected to mention that I'm using the kit zoom, the SELP 16-50. Not sure if that makes a huge difference here, though.

[Golem]

You have instant feedback/image review ...

and you have the +/- exposure biasing control

... and you have automatic bracketing ... and

you have in-camera HDR [and the DRO].

 

Get an a6000 bible from a bookseller [there

are a few to choose from] and study up on:

 

#Bracketing

#Auto exposure biasing [the "+/-"]

#HDR

#DRO

 

Later on you can study up on combining:

 

#spot metering [with either]

#AEL set to "toggle" [or]

#Manual exposure

 

All of these features target your problem in

different ways and render different looking

solutions/images.

 

`

[JohnE]

I agree with Golem.

 

Unfortunately there is a lot to find out with all the camera settings and I rarely have time to tinker with settings when I am out on a photowalk.

 

Mostly the problem comes from the fact that your eyes are way better than a camera at adapting to the available light and the camera auotomatic sensor systems struggle with some of the more difficulty lighting situations, e.g. snow, mixed levels of lighting, big range of brightness from very bright to very dark, etc.

 

I am a bit lazy with my A6000 and tend to mostly shoot 3 bracketed exposures with about 1.5+ and 1.5- bracket around a slightly underexposed shot - as I hate losing bright detail due to highlight clipping! I have also put the (centre spot) focus and exposure metering on to the front C1 button (rather than the default half press of the shutter) so that I can choose the subject, focus and exposure and then the shutter button just takes the shot.

 

When I get to check out my shots, I will have 3 different exposures that could just give me the photo or view I expected, but I also have the option of merging 2 or 3 of the shots to give an HDR rendering. The other benefit of this approach is that the underexposed shot will have used a slightly quicker shutter speed, so is less likely to have camera motion- or subject motion- blur.

 

Finally, if you are really wanting the ultimate effect, expose for the inside and the outside in two separate shots from the same position and then photoshop the two exposures together at the edge of the door for the ultimate artistic result.

[willabatrat]

Thanks, gentlemen. Those are all excellent points and I'll be busy trying all of them in the near future. It's been quite some time since my last camera, a DSLR, long enough that the existence of the +/- exposure comp function had slipped my mind! I've already played with it a bit on my new toy, although not in the scene in this topic. I'm pretty impressed with the A6000, I must say. Have to get an extra battery soon, though. Anyway, thanks again for the advice.

[Moody]

OK, that's indeed quite normal behavior as the overall scene gets exposed to an 18% grey level.

 

A few things you can try out to correct the AI of your camera:

 

I usually use A-setting (Aperture priority) as well as ISO Auto setting (100-800 or 1600 ISO). In your EVF, you will see that you dimly lit scene is overexposed due to the camera brightening it up to the grey level. Use the +/- exposure comp to underexpose it to your liking.

 

Another method that I mostly used in the film days (well, and the OVF days as I had no way to see the effect of an exposure compensation in real time) to adjust the exposure to a certain detail of a contrasting scene. Zoom into a detail/extract of the scene that you want correctly exposed (probably the light bulb or light ray from the window) and meter the exposure of that scene. Hold on the AEL button to memorize that exposure and recompose your scene. Without zoom, use spot metering mode (a center weighted mode works too on larger scenes) to grab the exposure data from the spot you want to correctly expose, AEL and recompose.

 

PS: the zooming method only works fine if your ISO is fixed, otherwise you might end up with high ISO settings when zooming in to compensate faster exposure times necessary to avoid handheld blur. The spot metering method would be the correct one, the other one is the lazy approach to it