Toronto Photography Meetup Group

So Ive been noticing that my pictures in camera are way different when I upload them (not for the better) They'll look good on my lcd and I'll upload them and they'll be blown out or way too bright .. even shooting in AV, Why would this be?? For instance Ill shoot a shot metered well, looks goo don the lcd .. but when I switch on highlights it shows parts that are blown out (that don't look blown out on the lcd) I can see detail on the lcd but its saying blown out .. then I upload on my computer and its blown out like the highlights show ... Wtffff how can I fix this what is my issue.?

Thanks

you can check the histogram right after you take the shot. LCD can play tricks on you as it depends on reflections and light angles, sometimes it looks brighter than it is, sometimes darker. At night it usually looks brighter - on computer screen it becomes underexposed. During daylight it could become darker, thus your overexposed. You gotta learn to predict it and use the histogram

do yourself a favour and shoot for highlights. digital is like slide. once you hit 255, kiss it good bye if you want detail. easy thing is to set your lcd to blink when highlights are gone. don't rely on raw to save your bacon.

If it looks "good on the LCD", but it isn't, then the problem is your LCD. Try increasing the brightness, so that the blown out areas start to look more blown out.

Stop relying on the LCD and learn to use the histogram.

Moral of the story..... "Never rely on your LCD for final image redering!"

agh, Lately (with the 300s) Ive been relying on raw A LOT, where as my d70 rarely..

The LCD panel on the camera is not calibrated.

What 'looks ok' on the camera LCD can suck on screen.

The only way to know, as the others mention, is to look at the histogram, and to set the option that blinks blown out regions.

The D300 tends to overespose a bit, espeially with Matrix metering (it weights the meter to favour your active focus zone, which is not always what you want). Try centre-weighted metering as it can be more predictible

the LCD is not calibrated and it renders out a camera calculated jpeg to show you a preview of your raw. You are better off relying on a histogram for any clipped highlights or shadows. Expose to the right of the histogram and if you want more details on the shadows, just bring down the brightness or use recovery in LR2 to tone down the brightness and get back the details. Sometimes those overexposed shots can be salvaged this way.

Try dropping your exposure comp by -0.3 and see if you have better results.

yup, LCD not reliable. Mine comes across as too bright so it looks fine on the LCD but then on the computer, it comes out dark. I've learned to use the histogram instead.

hmmmm....can you calibrate a LCD panel on a camera? Seems like an untapped market!! I'm sure photographers would pay $50+ for a device and software for that!

Out of all of the camera's I've owned -- I do have to say that my D700 has probably the best one I've ever seen.

My D2x was horrible -- I couldn't rely on it at all for colour reproduction, as the LCD had a horrible green/yellow colour cast.

check the colour histo for colour levels a well. most lcds on cameras can be fudged a bit, bright / dark, hue etc. for best colour, do preset.

don't forget the color space.

srgb for web

different lenses have different characteristics. not all are neutral so you have to adjust exposure, color, accordingly.

I suppose that I have also just been lucky with all my Nikon Cameras. My D80 was and still is quite accurate with exception to it being a slight bit darker then what i have on screen and the all the D700's i have used and seen are, as lxdesign mentioned, definitely 'calibrated' correctly by the manufacturer to be the best i have seen. Even my tests of the D3 were not as nice as the D700 but the new D3s is about comparable.

But as everyone else has said use the histogram as it makes your life much easier in post production work

Not just Nikon, my 5D mkI's LCD is next to useless. White balance is way off, as well as the exposure. I essentially just use it to make sure no one blinked because theres no way to judge an image by it.