CONSISTENT UNDEREXPOSURE WITH THE Z9

[dabhand16]

My problem is partly that I have not experimented with the settings on my camera because I am on the hook to deliver.

Surely the time to experiment with settings is when you are not on the hook to deliver.

I think you need to change your workflow and customise it for different events. I mentioned that I shoot my local rugby club home games for them. Before I started this, I considered what is the final use of the images I send them. Are they going to be front covers of a magazine? No. Are they going to be made into posters? No. Are they going into a book, manual or training presentation? No. Are they going to be looked at on mobile phones and put on a website? Yes. So my workflow for this type of photography suits the purpose for the end user. To my (or any photographer's eye), a lot of my images are noisy, but in all of the years I've been doing this, not one of the players or staff have ever said to me "some of those pictures you sent of the last game were a bit noisy".

I do a lot of studio and portrait work and my workflow for this is very different to the rugby pictures. Horses for courses is the answer to your issue along with experimenting when there is no deadlines, pressure or importance to the images. Batch processing is the key. Doing every image one at a time from scratch is just not viable. I used to be heavily into video around 20 years ago. One of the reasons why I gave up was the editing. I came back from a holiday with 2500-3000 clips and way before I got halfway through, I lost the will to live.

Do you think that an artist who might take weeks or longer to paint a picture will use the same techniques if he or she were painting a wall or door in their house?

 

[John Woodworth]

given your description of the context, i think you are stuck doing a fair amount of editing and i think jpgs would work _against_ you, even with dlighting tweaks, because you'll have less image to adjust.

i would set up the live histogram in my evf to help you get the best feel for the exposure.

you may need to push the exposure harder if you want to pull out some detail from the dark shadows.

depending on your focal lengths, the upcoming 135 1.8 and/or 85 1.2 might be of interest.

Surely the time to experiment with settings is when you are not on the hook to deliver.

I think you need to change your workflow and customise it for different events. I mentioned that I shoot my local rugby club home games for them. Before I started this, I considered what is the final use of the images I send them. Are they going to be front covers of a magazine? No. Are they going to be made into posters? No. Are they going into a book, manual or training presentation? No. Are they going to be looked at on mobile phones and put on a website? Yes. So my workflow for this type of photography suits the purpose for the end user. To my (or any photographer's eye), a lot of my images are noisy, but in all of the years I've been doing this, not one of the players or staff have ever said to me "some of those pictures you sent of the last game were a bit noisy".

I do a lot of studio and portrait work and my workflow for this is very different to the rugby pictures. Horses for courses is the answer to your issue along with experimenting when there is no deadlines, pressure or importance to the images. Batch processing is the key. Doing every image one at a time from scratch is just not viable. I used to be heavily into video around 20 years ago. One of the reasons why I gave up was the editing. I came back from a holiday with 2500-3000 clips and way before I got halfway through, I lost the will to live.

Do you think that an artist who might take weeks or longer to paint a picture will use the same techniques if he or she were painting a wall or door in their house?

Thanks for the ideas. Much wisdom here. I need to experiment more and hope to do so in the next few weeks as I am taking on less.

"...I came back from a holiday with 2500-3000 clips and way before I got halfway through, I lost the will to live..." Exactly.