I’m the one-eyed Queen in the land of the blind that is called Photography.I’m sure there are many blind people in the Blogland of Photography too. (What can be worse than being a blind photographer?) People who own a fancy camera, but only use the automatic setting(s), because they don’t know about aperture and shutter speed. I used to be one of them. But not any more! I know a thing or two now and am willing to share my limited knowledge with you. We can all be one-eyed Kings and Queens together! World domination will be only a small step further.
The only thing is, I’m not quite sure about all the technical photography terms in English. But I’ll try to make sense anyway. And this course (ahum) is not meant for users of the digital point-and-shoot cameras, although they will probably get some useful information and tips out of this too, but for people who have a digital SLR camera.
If you decide to join us on our quest for world domination becoming a better photographer, please post your photos and notify me that you’ve done so (please include the link to that post). I’d be interested to see if what I’m trying to explain is clear enough. If you have any questions concerning the ‘lessons’ please ask them in the comments section of that ‘lesson’. I’ll answer them there too. You can of course also find lots of websites about photography, written by people who really know what they are talking about, but they will be less fun. Of course.
Part 4: Measuring light
(Lots of text, but please, don’t be downhearted. If you practice it on your camera, you’ll see that it isn’t difficult.)
In the previous parts of ‘In the land of the blind…’, I’ve explained about aperture and focus, manual focus and autofocus, and ISO. All important choices to make, when you want to take a photo. When you practice them every time you take a shot, you’ll be able to make snap-decisions about which setting you may have to adjust. I promise you.
But you have to keep using the creative setting, in which you have to make these choices yourself, otherwise you’ll soon be completely lost in the dark again.
And while we’re talking about ‘being lost in the dark’, you need enough light for a good photo. In photography terms it is called ‘exposure’. You can change the aperture (F-number), the ISO, and the shutter speed (I’ll come back to that in another part of ‘In the land of the blind…’), but you also have influence over the exposure by interfering with your camera’s light measuring system.
So, grab your camera and the instruction manual again and look for something called light metering mode (or something similar, because I’m not quite sure what your instruction manual calls it) and see what the differences are in the choices that are available.
What works for me is the Evaluative mode: the black dot with brackets above and under it. When you select that one, light metering is concentrated on the active AF point (if you’ve followed the other parts of this course, you’ll have chosen the middle point in your viewfinder as the active one) and the area around it. The metering system of your camera will do some clever calculations (way above my head) and comes up with a correct exposure.
Or I use the Spot mode (the single dot), which only measures light at the AF point.
Okay, so, your camera measures the light and calculates the correct exposure to get a well-lit photo. And in doing that, your camera assumes that you want everything to be in sort of greyish tones (I’m not explaining this in the correct, technical way, but it’s how I understand it best). If you want to take a photo of a black or very dark subject, your camera assumes that you don’t want it to be that dark and it will let more light into the camera to get your subject looking less dark, more grey. Result: overexposure. Your subject seems lighter on the photo than it is in real life.
Or, you want to take a photo of a white or very light subject, snow for instance, but your camera ‘thinks’: this is way too white! I will underexpose (let less light into the camera) so it will become more grey. Which is why snow often does look a bit dull and grey in your photos.
Now you know this, you’ll also know that as soon as you point your camera at your black cat, you’ll probably get an overexposed photo. If so, you can do a couple of things to get a better result. Apart from adjusting the aperture, shutter speed or ISO, you can do two things that I think are very useful to know about:
- exposure compensation: when you look through your viewfinder and press the shutter button half way down, you’ll see all kinds of information under the image. In my viewfinder I see, from left to right: shutter speed, aperture (the F-number), –2..1..▼..1..+2, ISO (nr), minimum (?) nr. of shots still available and a dot indicating if the camera is ready for you to press the shutter button.
Now, the -2..1..▼..1..+2 indicates the level of light. When the ▼ is in the middle, the light is optimal for a photo with that shutter speed, aperture and ISO. But you know that your camera will allow either too much (black subject) or not enough (white subject) light in for that photo. So you have to compensate, by adjusting the Exposure Compensation a couple of ‘stops’ in the right direction. Simply: adjust to the minus side (left) in case of a black subject (to manually underexpose) or adjust to the plus side (right) in case of a light subject.
If you know which wheel to turn to adjust this, you can do it while looking through your viewfinder and it will make life much easier.
Another solution is (I do this very often):
- AE lock (Auto Exposure Lock = AEL): you can measure light on another area, lock it in the camera, focus on your subject and take the shot. I use it often. On my camera the AE lock is under a button marked with * (the star). You will also see it in your viewfinder. In fact: if your camera is set on One-Shot AF (we haven’t talked about that setting yet) in combination with Evaluative light metering, the AEL will probably already work, even if you don’t push the ‘star’ button. But you will have to keep the shutter button pressed down halfway.
If you don’t keep the shutter button pressed down halfway, or if you’re using different settings, you’ll have to do the following. In fact, I will make it an assignment:
ASSIGNMENT 1:
Take a black (or very dark) object (most camera bags are black), put your camera in Av-mode, choose an F-number and take a photo of the dark object (be prepared for a slow shutter speed). Okay, so, you’ll see that that photo is much lighter than the object in reality is.
Below is a photo of a corner of our very dark wooden table (F5.6, ISO 100, shutter speed 10 seconds). Clearly overexposed and I couldn’t keep the camera still for such a long time, so not very sharp either.
Now don’t change the settings, point your camera on something lighter, preferably greyish (or grass in the sunshine works very well too, which seems weird, but is handy to know), press the shutter button halfway down, lock the exposure information in your camera with the * button (or whatever it is on your camera), release the shutter button, point your camera towards the dark object and take the same shot as you did before. You’ll see that it is remarkably darker now and your shutter speed will be faster too.
F5.6, ISO 100, shutter speed 2 seconds
Result! The table looks exactly like it does in real life. The colour is much better now.
Read more about this using AEL here. Very interesting article.
ASSIGNMENT 2:
As long as you are busy doing your homework (LOL): take a photo of a dark object (same as photo 1 in the assignment above). Now adjust the exposure compensation to the minus side and take the same shot. See the difference?
Good luck!
