Quote:
Originally Posted by txpaulranger
What I thought of camera setting was that if you set your shutter speed low, you could capture the dark area brighter.
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This is the point where you are going to have to decide how much you want to learn about photography. I previously suggested you should Google the term "exposure triangle", and to discuss your statement above, you really must understand this concept. So go ahead, Google it now, and read a bit. I'll wait, I've got some free time.
OK, you're back, lets talk about that concept in relation to candid photography.
Basically, on a Digital SLR you have three things you can adjust to get a correct, or desired exposure. You have
1) shutter speed
2) aperture
3) ISO
No matter which one you adjust, there will always be an undesirable consequence, at least when it comes to upskirting.
Shutter speed (without flash):
As I said before, you really, really must keep this above 1/320, preferably 1/400 or even 1/500 if you are using your telephoto lens near or at it's limit of 300mm, in order to PREVENT MOTION BLUR. This is a pretty short amount of time for the shutter to be open, so not much light gets in. So now we have to find a way to get more light using one or both of the other corners of the exposure triangle still available to us.
Aperture:
Frequently, this will be limited by the lens. A lens small enough, and black in color not to attract undue attention (you've seen those big white ones that Canon makes, right?) is going to have a pretty small "largest aperture", which is the size of the hole through which light can enter your camera. Your lens is "variable aperture", so this number changes as you zoom. From somewhere around 200mm on up, this is going to be F5.6. This is not good, but we're stuck with it due to limitations of the hardware (and trust me, you wouldn't be at all stealthy with a big white F2.8 lens that lets in more light).
ISO:
Uh-oh, were down to one thing we can adjust to get a brighter image. Maybe this is the magic bullet that will save the day??? Alas, no. ISO is like the volume control on your stereo. You can keep turning it up, but eventually all you get is distortion, or in camera terms, noise. ISO 400 is cool, ISO 800 is still good, but ISO 1600 is as far as you want to push it (there are values in between these if you set the camera to 1/3 stop ISO adjustments in the config menu - highly recommended).
I'll be blunt - on a cloudy day, in deep shade, or even if the woman is just facing in the wrong direction on a bright sunny day, you will QUICKLY get into a situation where there simply is NOT enough adjustment. Something has to give, so what's it going to be???
Shutter speed?? Motion blur can NEVER, ever, ever, EVER be fixed afterwards in software. Period. Burn that thought into your head. You MUST keep the shutter speed up, because if you blow this one, then your images are all going to be crap. (and please, nobody tell me about the motion blur fixer in Photoshop CC2015 - it does NOT work!!!)
Maximum aperture?? Even if we could afford one of those big white lenses, it sure would be pretty conspicuous walking around with it, wouldn't it?? This is simple physics, the bigger the hole to let in light, the bigger the lens. So we're stuck with what we've got here, F5.6 maybe f5.0 if you don't zoom too far.
ISO. The final frontier, so to speak. This is what we've got left after shutter & aperture, and it's what you are going to end up boosting to get proper exposure... I believe your camera may be set to "auto ISO" mode. This is ok, as long as there is a configuration to prevent it from going too high - check the manual. If it can be configured to stop at 1000, or worst case 1600, then auto ISO would be ok to use. Otherwise you should set it to a fixed value, and learn how to change it quickly.
My point in all this is that, depending on the day and the light, you can quickly run out of options that allow you to get proper exposure. But it's always, ALWAYS going to be better to have an underexposed picture with NO motion blur.
Now, sometimes we've got enough light, but the area we are interested in comes out too dark in the final picture. In other words, sometimes we still have some headroom with either our aperture or ISO. In this case we can use "exposure compensation" to make the panties brighter at the moment we take the picture, although it will *over-expose* other parts of the image. This is what I'm going to call an "advanced topic", and I'll talk more about it in a future post. For now, look up "Setting Exposure Compensation" in the Canon manual if you are interested.
I've made some very basic, quick and reasonably subtle adjustments to an image from your last post. There are probably others here who could do a better job, and some people might prefer a less subtle adjustment that really highlights the panties. This is just a quick take on it using my personal preferences. I want to show you that even though the panties are underexposed, we can fix this afterwards in software. You camera was in full auto mode, so it's pure luck that the picture ended up this way (Canon tends to favor low shutter speeds in full auto mode, frequently ruining shots by causing motion blur), but in essence, this is the kind of settings you want to end up with by setting them yourself. Take a look: