Exposure - Digital Photography
Getting the exposure right in-camera should be the goal of all photographers. Sure, professional image editors like Photoshop, Aperture, and many others allow one to make significant corrections to the original exposure in post-production, but who wants to spend more time in front of the computer fixing mistakes that could have been easily avoided had one only had the knowledge and discipline to understand what makes a “correct” exposure in the first place.
Photographers
Photographers Professional
Probably a hundred books on photography have been written about exposure (how to get the correct exposure), and thousands of magazine articles, yet so many photographers still do not understand the concept of a creatively correct exposure thoroughly enough to get it right consistently—in-camera—almost every time.
In order to really get a grasp on proper exposure technique, one must practice—hard. One must experiment with all kinds of shooting situations, and it helps to write down shutter speeds, aperture, ISO, and even the time of day the shots were taken. Fortunately, for those who have modern digital cameras, this information is displayed automatically in image editors such as Adobe Camera Raw, and Lightroom, as well as others. This saves one the time of having to write down the camera settings after each shot, which will improve one’s efficiency while shooting. When you have good ambient light, it pays to spend as much time shooting as possible, since there is always time to chimp the camera and review each exposure in an image editor at a later time.
The Exposure Trinity is a “triangle” formed by the aperture, ISO, and shutter speed. The various settings of each of the above determine what exposure one will end up with. All digital cameras have exposure meters, so the days of having to look up settings on charts, etc. are long gone. Now, all one has to do is select one of the metering modes of the camera, and the rest is done automatically by the cameras built in reflective light meter. When you ask the camera to meter the scene, the camera’s meter quickly calculates a shutter speed and aperture for the selected ISO based on the light values it “reads” from the scene.
Too easy, right? Well, not exactly. If it were that easy, there would not be so many books written on exposure, and we would not be discussing it in such detail right now. At the end of the day, a camera is nothing more than a lightproof case containing film, or digital sensor, and a lens. The image that the camera records is referred to as an “exposure”, and depending on what kind of camera you are shooting, you might be able to record 24, 36, or 1,600 exposures before you will have to replace the film, or change the memory card.
We recommend that anyone who is serious about developing his or her skills in the area of exposure stop shooting in Program mode (P), or any other automatic mode that your camera offers. We do not suggest that you never use one or more of these modes again, but we do recommend that in order to learn the most that you can about how to make a “correct” exposure, that you turn off the automation and go back to the basics. If you understand what your camera is trying to do when it meters, then you will know its limitations. Essentially, you will understand when you can rely on your camera’s auto exposure feature, and when you cannot.
So, without any further delay, pick up your camera and select the Manual Mode (M). Experiment with different f-stops and shutter speeds. Learn how to know what indicators on the camera tell you that the ISO, shutter speed, and aperture that you have select is a “correct” exposure, or if it is under / over exposed. There will be times when you will want to exercise creative control over the camera and deliberately under or over expose a shot. Most of the time you will strive for a “correct” exposure, since the meters in today’s DSLRs are very accurate, but you might find that your camera tends to over expose—since most digital cameras tend to overexpose slightly when a “correct” exposure is set.
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