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April 12, 2007

[ EXPOSE YOURSELF ]

 

IMAGING HAS DONE A LITTLE SURVEY OF DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHER PALS to see how they handle the selection of exposure modes on their cameras.

Most digital cameras offer a bewildering number of possibilities. Spot, centre weighted and average meter readings. Aperture or shutter priority. Manual settings of aperture and shutter speed. And all those “scene modes” that we have never found a use for – beach, snow, fireworks, night scenes, portrait, sport, landscape and macro.

Our survey found only one respondent who leaves the camera on Auto. Auto takes over the decision making about ISO speed, shutter and aperture and when flash is used. On most cameras it uses average metering.

John S uses the P setting most of the time because, on his Nikon, he can dial through the different aperture/speed combinations to get the one that suits his subject. P couples aperture/speed according to the exposure value that it reads, and an aperture of f8 with a shutter speed of 1/100 second is the same exposure value as f10 at 1/60 second and so on.

Barbara leaves her Konica Minolta Z5 on P and spot metering. She meters from the brightest part of the picture which sometimes results in under exposure. That’s fixed with the camera’s exposure compensation controls. Most cameras have exposure compensation for a second shot at the subject.

Arthur uses evaluative metering as his default and changes to spot for high contrast subjects. Blown (clipped) highlights are more of a problem than black shadows and when the highlight is simply white there is nothing that can be recovered in post-camera editing. With portraits it is usually best to meter from the bright side of the face and let the shadows take care of themselves.

Arthur also brackets exposures for critical shots. He shoots with Canon DSLRs which will take multiple shots, one at the “correct” exposure and one under and one over, at f stop differences set by the user.

Some cameras can be set to mark blown highlights in image review. John S uses this to get an immediate impression of how many spots there are in his pictures that need adjustment. When he is shooting landscapes he takes readings from both the sky and the foreground and if there is more than three stops difference he brackets his exposures.

Murray has a special professional application for his Nikon D200 that demands accurate colour as well as exposure. He sets the exposure manually and after he has taken the shot he examines it with the RGB histogram and uses the colour balance adjustment slider to get as close as possible to what he is seeing with his eyes. He then saves the adjusted image.

Andrew copies lots of pages from books and he finds that white pages are always under exposed and dark pages over exposed. He uses both average and centre weighted readings but never spot. He uses P, M and A in different situations but never uses shutter speed priority. He finds the exposure compensation on his Canon indispensable.

As Murray says: the advantage of digital is that every image is free, so you just keep trying and ventually you will get the perfect exposure.

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Posted by terry at April 12, 2007 04:09 AM

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Posted by: anandasim at April 18, 2007 12:56 AM

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