adjusting exposure

[deleuze3]

Hi, I use manual lenses samyang 35mm with canon60d.
How do I adjust exposure to get good results?
I put shutter at 50 since I record at 24p.
I use the meters, to do that I halfpress on the button to take picture and the meter show me if its over or underexpose.
I aim for slightly under expose.
But the meters seems to give me wrong calculations. He tells me its underexpose and it looks too bright. Is it due to using manual lenses?
Thanks in advance,
Ddeleuze3

 

[deleuze3]

I thought of buying a viewfinder and just use my common sense

 

[TylerW]

Using the in-camera exposure meter typically requires a bit of interpretation of what the camera is telling you, as well as understanding the method by which your camera is metering your scene. This is done usually by one of three ways:

Evaluative Metering: The camera is looking at the entire frame and establishing an overall average brightness for the entire scene. This is often the least informative method of metering, but it can work out OK if your scene is very complicated and has a lot of variations of light and dark areas. Crowd shots, city and landscapes are all good examples of where this metering method can work out ok, but in bright sun, watch out for blown highlights. Evaluative metering will completely fail you if your subject is against a very dark or very light background - think of a person with a sunlit window in the background or a singer in the spotlight of a dark club. In these cases, your camera will evaluate the dark or light background as part of your scene, and will under or overexpose your subject as a result.

Spot Metering: This is the opposite of evaluative. Your camera gives you a metering result of a very small spot, generally lined up with the center of the frame or center focus point. This requires a lot more work, but will give you a much more accurate assessment of your scene. If there is a brightly lit area of your scene that you want to make sure doesn't become overexposed, you can place your spot meter on that spot and adjust until it isn't overexposing. You can do the same with shadows. Meter enough spots and eventually you'll be able to find what your best exposure result is.

Center weighted: This is a combination of evaluative and spot metering. Your camera will meter for an average reading of your scene, focusing on the center of your fame and ignoring the edges. This method is reasonably good for evaluating a human subject (especially in a close-up shot) while largely disregarding the background.

Unfortunately, meters alone are a poor evaluative tool for assessing exposure in a dSLR video. If you have a camera with access to zebra displays (warning for overexposed areas and blown highlights) or a histogram (graph which displays the overall brightness and darkness of your scene) or best, a luminance graph you be doing a much better job of understanding if you have your scene exposed correctly.