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10/01/2003 12:23:25 PM · #1 |
What meter mode do you use ? How much control do you typically let the camera take and how much do you take ?
Something stupid I've been doing for a while is using exposure compensation with the evaluative metering modes. Only recently did it click that those meter modes don't work off the more usual 18% tone point, but give you a result based on the programmed guess, and then add your compensation to it - I'm stupid I know.
Over the last couple of weeks I've been finally getting to grips with how to meter, and then adjust that value to get the correct manual exposures for what I want to achieve - some how everything has just clicked. So how do you do it ? Is it full auto or full manual or somewhere in between ?
For about a year I used aperture priority almost exclusively - taking control over the depth of field and the motion stopping aspects, but not considering how I really wanted tones to fall in my final shots...
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10/01/2003 12:55:47 PM · #2 |
For me, it all depends on the situation. For things like candids, sports etc, where I may not have time to take multiple meter readings or the light is changing a lot, I will just rely on the meter (auto or one of the priority modes) If the lighting is fairly constant I'll use a handheld meter or a gray card and set exposure in manual mode. Also useful is a spot metering mode, use that to get an idea of the exposure and adjust it to your liking using manual mode.
In a studio setting, I meter different areas and adjust the lighting and the exposure settings to put the different areas of the image where I want them in terms of exposure. Usually, I try to keep about a 4 stop range between the darkest area where I want detail and the lightest area where I want detail. This exact range will depend on which film you use when shooting film, and on the camera you use for digital.
You can test this using a Kodak grayscale that has calibrated reflective values and using that to determine what kind of range your camera/sensor has. (I think it's called a printer's grayscale Q-13 and costs about $20US)
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10/01/2003 01:00:25 PM · #3 |
Hey Gordon,
I'm still in that aperture priority group. I'm working with depth of field (especially since I got my new EF 25 extension tube). I've been experimenting with getting deeper DoF's and how much flash I can afford to use without washing out the color or how shallow I need to make the DoF to get a clean shot sometimes in lower light. I almost never use manual settings and I think it shows in my work. Often my stuff just "feels" flat to me (and others it seems). I'm working right now to learn both the composition and setup skills as well as the technical capacity of my camera and finally the post-shot processing that can help me achieve some of the more viable and exciting shots. To that end I have a mentor/mentee relationship with another member here at DPC where we critique each others work and with just a couple of exchanges I've found that has produced benefits in what I see in my photos already.
Hopefully I will begin to just understand some of these more rudimentary skills and I can begin focusing on tones in my compositions. Even though I think about things like that before I get to a location or get setup, once I have the camera in hand and I pay some attention to the aperture, exposure compensation, etc, I either have forgotten to consider the tones within the composition or I just don't understand how to affect them the way I want without screwing up some other element of the shot.
Congrats on your graduation and I look forward to seeing some of those shots.
Kev
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10/01/2003 09:46:28 PM · #4 |
The method I use works very well for me. I'd recommend you try this out. These days, I hardly need to adjust tones during processing.
Print out a copy of the level bar, the white to black boxes found below challenge entries. I numbered them to fit into a zone method system, but that's not really necessary. At any rate, get very accustomed to the ranges of the tones, where they lie, and their relative brightness.
This bar is your basic starting point. It is used for comparison with the photographic object and the histogram on your screen.
Use only spot metering, if you can. If you only have centre metering, zoom right into a block of colour, and take a meter reading from that. Whatever your meter says, call that the mid-point. With your eyes, judge the actual brightness in relation to the chart. If the actual brightness is lighter than the mid-point, you'll need to increase the exposure accordingly, and decrease for the opposite case. Roughly, increase 1 stop for each of the 10 steps in the chart, irrespective of how that appears on the lcd screen. (This is because the lcd only shows an approximation and is not entirely reliable.)
This is a very badly and hastily written account. I hope that you can get some meaning from it.
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