Darren Smith Photography's photographic tutorials are aimed to teach anyone interested in photography the basics in how to operate their camera and what to consider when you move beyond taking "snaps".
This video is all about how to expose your pictures correctly, the settings involved and how it affects your photographs.
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Hello and welcome to the Darren Smith photography tutorials.
This video is all about exposure, and how your personal style and camera settings can affect it. Essentially exposure is the product of how long light is allowed to be exposed to your camera and the intensity of the lights
This is always controlled by the shutter speed and all the aperture, in other words the settings in your camera are the lay of the light intensity and time to be set to get the right exposure there are a number of settings on your camera which aid you in making the correct exposure.
These are aperture priority is where the aperture is fixed by the camera and the exposure is controlled solely by how long the shutter is open, this is very useful when you want to control the depth of field
Another setting is known as shutter priority, where the shutter speed is then fixed by the camera and the correct exposure is controlled by the size of the aperture of the lens, this is also very useful when photographing fast-moving objects such as sports.
There is also manual which allows the photographer to control both the aperture and shutter speed and gives full control over the image recorded.
A fourth, and relatively new setting is to use auto ISO in which the correct exposure can be achieved by changing the sensitivity of your camera this is particularly useful when you need tight control over the depth of field and the shutter speed of your image
Modern cameras have built-in exposure meters that allow us to take a reasonably accurate shot and some have other features to help with the exposure of the whole image the image here shows a camera exposure meter that is letting us know that the scene is underexposed by nearly two stops of light this is however not always accurate and experience would allow you to produce consistent results every time
Professional photographers will also make use of a light meter to very accurately measure the correct exposure on the subject at a given point. The image here shows one of the more popular models
When we meter our subject, we must use one of the following matrix to get our exposure correct, when using spot metering this technique allows a very small area of the image to be metered correctly this method is often used when needing to focus on a very specific point in the scene like this castle on the hill during the night this method would allow the photographer to get the correct amount of light for the castle whilst leaving the surrounding areas dark as they were seen in real life.
It is quite common to move the metering point to where you want to focus on in the case of this image the castle is lit by a floodlight on the left side allowing the composed image to include the cruise boat on the right with experience in time several meter readings can be taken in both highlight and shadow areas to improve the exposure balance of the shots
Centre-weighted metering is calculated by using a central focusing area in your viewfinder this is based upon the idea that a photographer will often place the subject near the enter of the composition if the main subject is not central then the resulting image will produce strange overexposed or underexposed areas on your picture therefore the castle on the hill in the previous picture would not work with centre-weighted metering as the castle is on the far left and not central in the image it would miss the cruise boat to the right which gives more impact to the picture in the case of the statue the background is dark and the statue is in the centre perfect
For this type of metering, evaluative metering also known as matrix or honeycomb metering is where several areas of your composition are metered and an average reading is taken this produces a very good balance across the whole of your image however it can cause your image to look a little flat if you are wanted to photograph something very specific this image of a boat in sea are men in China is metered using an evaluative method due to the overall light levels of the background the previous two photographs of the castle on the hill and the statue is not suitable for evaluative metering as the resort's would look completely washed out.
This is because the exposure would attempt to compensate for the surrounding areas being dark, making the lighter areas far brighter than they should be.
We can also use a histogram as a tool to help us expose our pictures correctly a histogram is a graphical representation of all the colour tones in your photographs a histogram shows the dark tones and shadows on the left and also shows light tones and highlights on the right the middle of the histogram is known as the mid-tone a phrase you may have heard of if you've ever edited a photograph.
A histogram is a useful tool when assessing if you have the correct exposure an image which has all its tones to the far left side of the graph can lose data in detail in the dark areas and will be underexposed this loss of detail is known as shadow clipping, likewise an image which is all its tones in the far right side of the graph can lose data and data in the light areas and will be ever exposed this loss of detail is known as highlight clipping. There is one thing for you to remember a histogram is a guide you may want to deliberately underexpose or overexpose an image a white background will naturally have highlight clipping if exposed correctly for example
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