EXPOSURE
by
Heather Shimmin
Because photography literally means drawing with light, having an understanding of how light enters the camera is paramount. You cannot develop your photography skills nor your image quality without understanding exposure. If you don't, you're just guessing.
Exposure is how much light reaches the film (or CCD but I will use film interchangeably). “Correct” exposure is when the film has received the right amount of light, producing an image with correct colors and tones.
EXPOSURE DO'S
Purchase a middle grey card. All camera light meters measure light as if it were reflected off of an 18% reflectance grey surface. A black stallion and white snow look the same to a light meter.
Understand the Zone System. Ansel Adams developed this system to precisely understand and control exposure. Briefly, the Zone System suggests you start by visualizing what you want the image to look like and adjusting your exposure based on an object's individual tonality which corresponds to eleven “zones.” If that object is lighter or darker than Zone V (middle grey), then you adjust the exposure accordingly.
Understand The Law of Reciprocity. Once you have determined the correct exposure, you may wish to have a higher shutter speed or a wider aperture. The Law of Reciprocity means that when you change one setting you have to make an adjustment to the other in order to keep the same exposure. For example, you are at the beach with your girlfriend. She is standing in the sand with her surfboard. For a correct exposure your settings are at 1/250 and f/11. But you want a shallow depth of field to blur the ocean and people behind her. At your current aperture, you have a large depth putting everything into focus. You change the aperture to f/4 (letting in more light) therefore you have to compensate by having a faster shutter speed (letting in less light), 1/4000.
There are three stops between f/11 and f/4.
f/2.8 | f/4 | f/5.6 | f/8 | f/11 | f/16 | f/22 | f/32 |
Therefore, you increase your shutter speed three stops from 1/125 to 1/4000 to compensate.
1/15 | 1/30 | 1/60 | 1/125 | 1/250 | 1/500 | 1/1000 | 1/4000 |
Adjust your ISO to compensate for the amount of available light. Low-light situations require an high ISO (400 or higher) while situations such as your girlfriend on the beach require a low ISO (50 or 100).
EXPOSURE DON'TS
Leave your camera on Auto or Program Mode. This is for several reasons. One is that your camera meters off whatever object is in the middle of the view finder. Going back to the Zone System, your camera views everything it meters as 18% grey. Two, leaving the camera on automatic mode takes away your power to adjust the aperture or shutter speed. In summary, you are giving up control of how you want the image to turn out if you let the camera do all the thinking.
Think that you can fix it in PhotoShop. A grave error both amateurs and professional photographers make is thinking that poor exposure can be magically saved in PhotoShop. Minor exposure blunders can be repaired,yes, but image quality is compromised. When trying to lighten up an underexposed image, lots of noise and grain appears. If an image is overexposed, not all of the information is recorded in the blown out areas. You can't go back later and try and bring back details in a photograph which were never recorded in the first place because you overexposed the image.
Meter off the brightest or darkest area. Again, the camera thinks that the area it is metering is a neutral grey with a reflectance of 18%. If you meter off the darkest shadow in the frame and do not adjust your exposure accordingly, everything lighter than that shadow will be too bright. You will loose detail and tonality. Similarly, if you meter off of the brightest area, everything darker will be underexposed.
Meter off the sun. Aside from the stupidity of looking into the sun which will burn your retinas, the sun is so bright that everything else in the image will be underexposed, that is If you can even see after that. If you go blind, I guess it doesn't really matter.
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