Ah OK I found some of the Hallie shots. Not the static ones but the same day as I did the static ones. Still these all should have been metering off the same thing.

All three are in aperture priority.
In the first one, aperture is f/4 and shutter speed is 1/2000. This is how I would expect this exposure to have looked. It'sa bit too bright for hte background but just about right for Hallie's dark coat.




In this image, the aperture is 1.8. This has caused the shutter speed to go up to 1/6400. It is darker than the image at f/4, but being a wider aperture you would think it would be lighter.



And at this one, the shutter speed has now gone up to 1/8000. The image is way too dark. On a bright day, with a super wide aperture, using aperture priority is giving me a really dark image. The only thing I can think is it forces the SS TOO high, causing too dark of an image. If I had shot this in shutter priority, the exposure would have been dead on. There were other images of her sitting still in the same locations and lighting, that I couldn't find, where the image is so dark you can barely make her out.



Thusly I am afraid to shoot aperture priority for action, but I still don't know why and I've researched this thing til I'm blue in the face. ARgh.

One more...and I promise to stop kicking this dead horse. LOL.

This also was a bright day, aperture priority at f/2.8 hopefully to get background blur, which it did. ...ISO was 200. The shutter speed shot up to 1/8000 causing this unusable dark image. I just don't get it. You would think that the camera would compensate for the wide aperture in the bright conditions with raising the shutter speed just enough to make an accurate exposure. But it seems to go beyond that and make the image too dark with too high of a shutter speed.

That has to be a metering issue. How many focus points do you have enabled? With spot meter, it may just be grabbing something else.

I do not have these problems on my cameras, but, every camera make meters differently. The light meter in your camera is what tells it to set the aperture or shutter speed or both, depending on the mode you are in. If I were having these problems, I would shoot manually so I could have control of the DOF and the exposure. At least over things like you have pictured in the last few posts. Where you KNOW where the subject will be.

Though, your dark images are not unsuable. They just need post processing to bring them back up. You paint from them so it really doesn't matter. If you were selling them, I would rather have the background blurred and fix them in PS(or just shoot manually! )

The histogram on your images do show that they are underexposed by a half stop or more. Here is the dog jumping photo brought up in PS

Dee Dee,
I've been trying to figure out what could be wrong with your metering system if you're consistently getting under exposed images in Av. I can understand what would happen if you were in Av and had your ISO set too high so that the camera wanted a shutter speed of 1/16000 but could only bottom out at 1/8000 because that's your fastest shutter speed. But that would result in over exposure. The images would be too light.

Is it possible you have some exposure compensation dialed in on your camera? Is the exposure bar in the middle of the exposure line when you're in P, Av or Tv mode? Sometimes this setting gets moved inadvertently and it takes some poking around to find the problem. Just a thought.

Other than that, I'd check the meter by shooting a wall under constant lighting in Program mode and recording the exposure. Then I'd shoot it in Av and Tv and check whether the EV is the same for both of them. If all three match, then it isn't your exposure system.

For my action shots, I actually shoot in Program mode on bright days outdoors. I get the optimum combination of F-stop and shutter speed. Indoors, I have to control the aperture more so I shoot Av.

Now, my stuff tends not to be as creative as yours because I'm not trying to selectively focus on my subjects (I can create the same effect later in PS) and I'm always trying to shoot at my lenses' sweet spots (which tend to be F8) if possible.

If you're not getting the effects you're looking for with the camera, it's either the camera or it's your technique:). Now, wasn't that helpful?!!!

Jim

Julie, I usually use center focus point because that is best for the action shots I do. I do shoot manual when I can, but most of the time it is fast action stuff so I can't. It isn't a huge problem since the shutter priority does yield good photos most of the time and actually I did get some nice bokeh this day on the head closeups, etc (the head shot above here wasn't close up, it is heavily cropped). But I'd sure like to understand this thing!

I shoot a lot of events (both dog and horse) and farm calls now, where I am the "official" photographer (or at least one of them ) so I do sell a lot of photos and I am super picky and only sell the ones that are really good quality. I would rather not do this as it's a lot more fun to shoot creatively and just for myself but I do it to help pay for the gear I got to get better photos to paint from so I can sell paintings to pay for more gear. LOL! So even though I do prefer to meter for the subject, I also do need a good background for selling much of the time. And usually it's not a big problem, but again it's silly I don't understand this one aspect totally of the camera.

Thanks for lightening that image...I do lighten in photoshop but when they are lightened this much because they are so dark to begin with, they look over processed and have a weird color cast to them, which I would neither sell or paint(I have to admit I'm a slave to my photos when painting because I paint so detailed and if there is an amount of noise, etc, I don't bother since I do have hundreds of sharper images to work from, unless it's an exceptional pose or something which of course often does happen! Then I can wing it in a pinch it just makes my job harder). I would not offer this image of the jumping pit bull for sale, (although you did as good a job as possible with it!) it just loses too much I think in the heavy processing it needs.

Yeah Jim it's a mystery all right! I did try every test suggested on the other forums before and the wierd thing is the camera seemed to perform as it should. In real life shots though this happens when using aperture priority. I know it's not a supernatural phenomenon (at least I hope not LOL) it's got to be a setting somewhere or SOMEthing. I just haven't figured it out yet. I even called Canon who stepped me through all the custom functions and still couldn't see the problem. I have just learned to shoot around it and really I think my shots are fine normally it's just there are times it would be nice to have the aperture option for action. Again though even in shutter priority I get nice bokeh on closeups. It's all just very strange. Oh and my exposure compensation is always at +2/3 on the MKII, it has to be or everything is too dark, I've heard several other MKII owners say the same thing. It is right at 0 on my 20D and I get similar exposure from both cameras.

Thanks for the input though both of you, you've got me fired up to figure this out again, I had almost forgotten about it until now.

Here is an image from a shoot I did last week of 4 Friesian colts that are for sale. This was in shutter priority and the head pretty much filled the frame. So when I do it "right", even in shutter priority the bokeh is fine. The head of the Lusitano as well as the ones of him backlit on the hill are heavily cropped which makes a big difference in how much bokeh you get. I am just going to have to practice some more on using aperture when not at a real shoot, and get the "shooting in aperture" problem figured out.

Dee Dee,
lightening a shot that's underexposed by a half stop isn't really all that big a deal nor does it normally add much noise. I purposely underexpose my stuff by at least a half stop to ensure I don't blow out any highlights. When I bring them back up, they're clean and noise-free.

What ISO are you shooting at? JPEG or RAW? I have to admit when I first looked at the images you included for examples I wasn't all that concerned about the exposure because it could easily be brought up in PS. If you're brightening in PhotoShop, what kind of color casts are you getting?

Jim

Hi Jim
I do lighten images that are a half stop or so and they look great. But images like the jumping pit bull are more than that and when I lighten that much they look awful. I am very picky though! But I would not for instance, put up the an image like this pit bull for sale.

Here is my quick lightening job, I could do a little better than this with a little more time but it would still not be acceptable in my mind. If you look close around his face for instance as well as the handlers skin, you can see that "pink and blue" colored pixel noise and the dog is just artifacty and blotchy.




This image below is the kind of quality I go for, you can see every hair in sharp focus and no noise or blotchiness (the dog was moving quite fast here). This dog is a little closer than the jumping one in the frame but not by a lot.



I shoot at various ISO's depending on the situation. Here, the jumping pit was at 200 (brighter day) and the biting pit at 400. I always shoot high quality jpg, I know I should shoot raw but I typically take several hundred shots at one photo shoot and the jpgs take me 2-3 days or more to process. Raw would take me weeks! And I really don't normally need the raw benefits that much...

For the color casts, I usually get them when lightening a lot with highlight/shadow. The way I describe it is smearing the image with salmon colored butter. This is only when an image is quite dark, not the ones I lighten that aren't as dark.

I'm feeling bad for dragging you guys into this discussion LOL! I appreciate the input and dont mean to be shooting down your suggestions but I have tried just about everything, I know it has to be something simple. I am going to go back to the drawing board and practice shoot aperture priority again and see if I can get a handle on it too, you've both given me food for thought. Maybe it has magically fixed itself since the last time I tried shooting action in aperture priority!

Dee Dee,
we're all picky and images with defects and artifacts are not sellable either by us or by you. The key is to be able to bring the image up without artifacts which is why I was trying to understand your processing. My only additional comment is that the highlight/shadow tool in PS can only be used very judiciously or it will, in fact, add artifacts to the shadow area.

I have two more words for you:
1. Plug-ins. Pictographics has several that do a much better job than PS in terms of both color balance, dynamic range and highlight/shadow control. You might want to visit their site: www.pictocolor.com/.

2. Lightroom. This is a much better product for the volume of images that you process than PS and it has much more sophisticated processing tools as well. It was made for high-volume shooters like you. You might want to consider investing in it.

Good luck.

Jim

Thanks Jim, ha, I actually do have both of those plug ins and have played some with Pictographics but am not using it to it's full potential I'm sure. I am clueless in lightroom I have to take the time to sit down and really learn it. I know it will help!

This thread has been a good boost for me to get in gear and figure some stuff out! Thanks again for all the input.