Help - Highly backlit situations

[Swampy]

So, any hints on how I can take better shots with highly backlit situations? If I use the light metering from the camera, it tells me a setting where the subject is basically a black shadow and the rest of the picture is ok. If I try and guestamate shutter and aperture, I get a blown out shot. See this picture and the next for examples. This one is an example of the black shadow problem. Can see that there is a bird there, but can't see much of it...

[Swampy]

Here, you can see the bird, but it's all blown out. The sun is at about 2 oclock off to the right side of the picture, but not really near the subject, or even in the picture at all, it was just bright out there...

[Swampy]

Originally posted by swampy101
So, any hints on how I can take better shots with highly backlit situations? If I use the light metering from the camera, it tells me a setting where the subject is basically a black shadow and the rest of the picture is ok. If I try and guestamate shutter and aperture, I get a blown out shot. See this picture and the next for examples. This one is an example of the black shadow problem. Can see that there is a bird there, but can't see much of it... This is an almost identical layout as the example 2 below, the sun is at about 10 oclock to the left of the picture, but not in it. If I set the shutter to a longer speed, and/or aperture to a larger diameter, I get the result of example 2 below.

[memobug]

spot meter a middle grey point, or maybe get better at guestimation by nailing the exposure on manual before the birds arrive?

Regards,

Matt

[Ron Green]

Swampy:
Here are two bird shots taken the same day last week with S2. One lit from front, the other backlit. Nikkor 80-200 AF w/2X teleconverter. Auto exposure using spot metering, shutter priority 1/1500, 800 ISO, Fine JPEG. I shoot birds successfully every week and use spot metering through camera or by handheld Sekonic meter almost exclusively.

[Ron Green]

Hawk front lighted

[Wichita Wayne]

I use a Minolta 1 degree spot meter and love the results with film and digital. You can also use the spot meter on the camera. Also use the bracketing function on the camera to zero in on the exposure. You may have to play with the bracketing setting so that you do not get 3 shots that all look pretty much the same, but combined with spot metering the use of bracketing is well worth a try.

[Swampy]

Thanks guys! I'll give it a go in the next week or so and see what I can come up with.

Bryan