Digital Photography Technique - Learning the Correct exposure Setting

Too many people leave their digital camera on its automatic setting expecting the "system" to figure out the correct exposure so they can simply "press the shutter" without having to think about the right way to take the picture.

These people are usually the 1st ones to complain their pictures are no good or they are too dark, or too washed out.

As part of my teaching some basic digital photography techniques, there are a couple of techniques we get people to start doing immediately as they begin our 10 weeks of classes.

Marietta College has produced a website and a very interesting write up all about "How to get exposure just right". It contains a very good description as well as some interesting examples.

Some Basic Rules

An Exercise You Should Perform

The purpose of this digital photography technique is to teach you how your digital camera reacts to different lighting conditions, ie:

• Green grass,
• The white of snow,
• The dark shadows on a mountain side,
• The bark of a tree,
• Or the skin tone of someone’s face,
• The light blue sky,
• The white of the clouds,
• The dark clouds that form as part of a storm,
• The dark gray clouds of a winter storm,
• The dark blue of water on the lake, river or stream.

Then we ask you to take a series of photos of this one subject by taking a meter reading from each of those different areas that you see in front of you. It is important to do this exercise in a number of different scenarios.

It is equally important that when you conduct this exercise, that you take along a note pad to write down what you aimed at for each shot, so that when you look at your camera’s meta data afterwards, then you will know exactly what you have done.

Then we ask you to study those images with the aim of determining which one is the best.

This digital photography technique gets you to:

• Learn more about your camera and how it reacts,
• Learn what areas to meter off of so you know which will give you the right exposure,
• Improve your picture taking skills,
• There are a number of colors, such that if you meter off of them, they will give you the correct exposure.

Background Information on Camera Meters

So, instead of the resulting image showing true white or black, it will show you something somewhere in between. This means that unless you compensate for this, your resulting image will appear too dark (snow under exposed) or too light (dark shadows over exposed).

Some of you may be wondering what is 18% gray? Well, you can go to a good camera store and ask to buy an 18% gray card, or you can aim your camera at the palm of your hand. When you aim at your hand your light meter will register 18% gray.

Exposure Compensation

If you are aiming at snow, then you need to adjust your settings to allow in more light, usually 1-2 “f” stops (depending on the overall brightness of the scene), because the camera will be attempting to make your image darker and you do not want to allow it to do that.

If you are aiming at dark shadows, you will need to adjust your settings to let in less light, again between 1-2 “f” stops (depending on the overall brightness of the scene), because your light meter will automatically attempt to lighten the image.

Point and Shoot Cameras

Similar to the exercise we asked you to perform earlier, we ask you to do the same exercise using your point and shoot camera. So find a subject, in fact find a few different subjects, select a symbol on this dial, aim at your subject, then take the picture. Then turn the dial to the next symbol and retake that same picture. Each time you do this make notes in your notepad because you will need them later.

Marietta College - Photography How To

More Information?

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