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I am newbie trying to get a good picture of my friends (contrasting skin color) with snow covered mountain in the background. I tried using aperture priority mode with f/11 and 1/100 sec, 28 mm. People in the picture looked okay, but the background appeared too whitish or the background looked okay but people turned out too dark. After that I came across metering modes online, and I'm wondering which one I should use (spot metering appeared correct). Shot is taken 8 steps away from the people with Canon 60D. What all things should I consider to get a decent picture in this scenario?

What mode? TC/AV/Manual. What metering mode? What settings?

xiota
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akd
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    It's not about camera settings, it's about the light and controlling how much of it is on your subject compared to how much is on the background. – Michael C Apr 28 '17 at 19:26

1 Answers1

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Meter for the background, and then turn on your pop-up flash and use it to light the people (aka "fill flash", that "fills in" shadows). That's what it's there for.

You're dealing with a very high dynamic range, and without flash, to get the background properly exposed, you'll underexpose people; to get the people properly exposed, you'll overexpose the background.

But flash does have some limitations. f/11 may make it difficult for the light from the popup (which is relatively weak) to reach your subjects, and with the pop-up flash, you can't have the shutter speed go any higher than 1/250s, since it cannot do high-speed sync (HSS). So, if you can't find exposure settings that work for both the background and your shutter sync speed, you may need to consider getting a hotshoe flash (speedlight), which will have more power, and can do HSS.

While ambient exposure is controlled by iso, aperture, and shutter speed, flash exposure is controlled by iso, aperture, flash power output, and flash-to-subject distance.

See also:

inkista
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