Airshows & cloudy days

[M38A1]

What is a camera reading/processing when looking at an airplane on a cloudy day with a gray/blue backdrop? If I'm using spot center metering and aprature priority with the focal point on the plane, is the shot under or overexposed?

I was at the Burnet airshow today and had this situation. I winged it and guessed the planes would be underexposed so I ran the majority of shots at +.3 correction. Then I did some at -.3 and I honestly couldn't tell the difference.

However, when the sun poked out for a few minutes, literally, I went to +/- 0.0 and they came out fairly well.

Thoughts? How do you shoot cloudy day airshows? Or, do you just resign yourself to the fact the day is a bust for good shots?

ETA:
Looks like I had multi-pattern aprature metering going on, not spot. Here's three shots with EXIF data. These are straight out of the camera except for sharpening. I really can't tell a difference.... Maybe the second one is better as it's got colors and the sun tried to poke it's head out?

0.00 Exposure Adjustment
http://i249.photobucket.com/albums/gg237/M38A1_bucket/Photography/09Burnet002_sm.jpg
Nikon D40X
2009/04/11 14:25:58.3
JPEG (8-bit) Fine
Image Size: 615 x 411
Color
Lens: VR 18-200mm F/3.5-5.6 G
Focal Length: 150mm
Exposure Mode: Aperture Priority
Metering Mode: Multi-Pattern
1/800 sec - F/9
Exposure Comp.: 0 EV
Sensitivity: ISO 400
Optimize Image: Vivid
White Balance: Auto
AF Mode: AF-S
Flash Sync Mode:
Flash Mode:
Auto Flash Comp:
Color Mode: Mode IIIa (sRGB)
Tone Comp.: Normal
Hue Adjustment: 0°
Saturation: Enhanced
Sharpening: Medium high
Image Comment:
Long Exposure NR: Off
VR Control: On
High ISO NR: Off

+.3 Exposure Adjustment
http://i249.photobucket.com/albums/gg237/M38A1_bucket/Photography/09Burnet003_sm.jpg
Nikon D40X
2009/04/11 15:16:35.3
JPEG (8-bit) Fine
Image Size: 615 x 411
Color
Lens: VR 18-200mm F/3.5-5.6 G
Focal Length: 170mm
Exposure Mode: Aperture Priority
Metering Mode: Multi-Pattern
1/400 sec - F/11
Exposure Comp.: +0.3 EV
Sensitivity: ISO 400
Optimize Image: Vivid
White Balance: Auto
AF Mode: AF-S
Flash Sync Mode:
Flash Mode:
Auto Flash Comp:
Color Mode: Mode IIIa (sRGB)
Tone Comp.: Normal
Hue Adjustment: 0°
Saturation: Enhanced
Sharpening: Medium high
Image Comment:
Long Exposure NR: Off
VR Control: On
High ISO NR: Off

+.7 Exposure Adjustment
http://i249.photobucket.com/albums/gg237/M38A1_bucket/Photography/09Burnet004_sm.jpg
Nikon D40X
2009/04/11 15:44:19.2
JPEG (8-bit) Fine
Image Size: 615 x 411
Color
Lens: VR 18-200mm F/3.5-5.6 G
Focal Length: 170mm
Exposure Mode: Aperture Priority
Metering Mode: Multi-Pattern
1/250 sec - F/11
Exposure Comp.: +0.7 EV
Sensitivity: ISO 400
Optimize Image: Vivid
White Balance: Auto
AF Mode: AF-S
Flash Sync Mode:
Flash Mode:
Auto Flash Comp:
Color Mode: Mode IIIa (sRGB)
Tone Comp.: Normal
Hue Adjustment: 0°
Saturation: Enhanced
Sharpening: Medium high
Image Comment:
Long Exposure NR: Off
VR Control: On
High ISO NR: Off

[sparkyphotog]

Hmmm, I'd say your best exposed shot is the A-10 at +0.7. You may can even go +1.0. Here's the situation, you have a relatively dark subject (airplane) against a bright background (clouds). You want to expose for the subject, but there is an enormous amount of the frame being filled up with the brighter cloudy sky. The meter in your camera is going to try and make that middle grey, thus it will under expose the frame as in your first image.

Here's one I took of the Blue Angels last November at Lackland in similar conditions. The EV comp was set at +0.7, and I did some additional work in post to bring out the details in the planes. It's still pretty flat, but the light was flat, so there's not much you can do with it.

http://sparkyphotog.smugmug.com/photos/514947494_TgBqW-M.jpg

This one came out a little better, but I had some help from a little bit of sun.

http://sparkyphotog.smugmug.com/photos/514947021_4eCF5-M.jpg


Now when it's sunny and you have a bright blue sky with the sun more or less directly overhead, it's much easier. You can pretty much leave the exposure comp at 0 and fire away.

http://sparkyphotog.smugmug.com/photos/514945802_vyxPw-M.jpg

Now on this one, I had no EV comp, but I still had to do some work in post because most of the aircraft was in shadow and I needed to bring out more of the details.

http://sparkyphotog.smugmug.com/photos/514946641_D8MxK-M.jpg

I would say that the photos you have above have a good enough exposure that they can be improved in photoshop. All in all, I think you did great given the lousy lighting conditions. Airshows on cloudy days are difficult at best.

[M38A1]

Thanks for the tips! I was wondering if going the + exposure route was the way to go on these and a bit reluctant to go more than +.3/+.7. So I'll have no problems in the future going +.7/+1.0 in the future.

Gray planes on a gray background (Pic 1) don't help the situation much either. The second one the sun poked out behind clouds for 15 seconds or so to lighten everything up a bit, but not much.

Again, THANKS!

[sparkyphotog]

You're welcome. One thing I do is to keep my LCD display set so that it shows blinking highlights. That way you can quickly tell what's going to pure white and what parts of the picture you're loosing detail in. When you are dialing in exposure comp on the + side, then you can snap a few frames and see how far you can push it before it gets to be too much.