LL compares A900 and 5DII

[David Kilpatrick]

Compared to the Canon 5D MkII, it's a stop under for midtones. What is interesting is that the A900 shadows are actually lighter when its midtones and highlights are darker, relative to the 5D MkII; and its shadows are much lighter than the D3X when midtones are similar. I would describe the difference as a tone curve shift, not an exposure error. The A900 has a very flat, low contrast tone curve compared to the other two and when you combine that with any degree of underexposure the result looks dark.

David

[bfitzgerald]

These are shots of no particular interest photographic wise, but demonstrate something similar with the A200.
All in raw, as shot on left..adjusted on right. Honeycomb metering mode..

+1.3 stops on the right



+1.5 stops on the right again




In many cases an adjustment on the lights slider in LR will do the job..say +40-50 odd. You tend to get better results doing this than the normal exp comp adjustment
So the light tones are flat..this is most noticeable when a subject has bright/light tones in the images. And is very different in behaviour to the 5d.
It's very hard to compare metering between the two, as I have no idea how close the ISO value in camera is to the actual ISO level.
These would be more obvious examples..

[Greg Beetham]

As well as the tone of the subject mid or light, how much shade component etc. there is also the location, it would be very easy to burn the highlights completely here, so I would probably like a camera that underexposed a little, but then the shadows would be correspondingly quite dark if you expose for the highlights, the best here is to have a slight cloud cover...more diffuse light, or shoot early in the morning or late in the afternoon, it's hard too say how the A900 would suit the conditions here, as usual one would have to play with the camera for a while too find out.
Greg

[bfitzgerald]

In many ways it's not a bad thing its more conservative..
On the other hand it's not going to help for high ISO shooting.
The information I have read about honeycomb metering, states it is clearly AF based, and it is aware of in or out of focus areas. In short, it should be able to give a mid tone exposure for the section the metering has covered, with a bias to the AF point area, but taking into account the other areas too..the pattern can obviously vary..significantly..but even with that, the tonal differences between the sony and km cameras is noticeable.
I cannot say if the A900 or other models are similar..though I would expect them to be in "some" respects..different sensors etc etc.
More of an observation than a criticism..though in both of those cases, the camera could have given more exposure, IMO

[Greg Beetham]

Those aren't crops Barry? in that case I agree with you, for some reason I thought they were crops...duh, yes definitely look on the dull side those, but still, they did lift nicely though.
Greg

[bfitzgerald]

Just to clarify, no they are full shots..just screen grabs to save time..that's all that is needed to show the difference. Just to point out this isn't always what you get, just sometimes..I wouldn't say the exposure is always off, maybe a touch under 3rd/Half of a stop on average..not often more. Really depends on the scene.

Still, I would rather this than the D80 type exposure, which just whacks everything up..and can cause major headaches with overexposure.

The ideal scenario exposure wise would be something half way between the Km5d and A200, IMO of course..