RE: Original Photography Tutorial - Metering and Exposure
Thanks for breaking everything down! I really would love to see a collection of photography tutorials evolve here! In this posting, there is one thing that I find a bit confusing for beginners. The part where you overexpose the white kitten and underexpose the black suit is only true when the fluffy kitten is sitting on a snowman at the North Pole or if the man in the black suit fights with a raven in a tunnel. Most of the scenes to be captured in real life are featuring mixed values of brightness: a white kitten on a dark blue blanket or the suit person in front of a white wall. The camera is aiming to find the average amount of 'correct' light for the WHOLE picture and might – depending on your metering method – decide to go for settings that show every crease in the dark blanket but will make the white kitten appear as a plain white spot without any fur...just because there is more blanket than kitty in the picture. In that case you would have to UNDERexpose a little to get a nice cat fur. (You would lose blanket details, but the blanket is less important here.) For digital camera users I would recommend to do a test shot with the camera's exposure suggestion and check, how the most important part of the picture turns out. Then use exposure compensation to improve it.
I would advise beginners to start in aperture priority mode 'A' (you set the aperture and the camera chooses the matching shutter speed). You can still use exposure compensation here, but you don't have to care for everything at once. For ME (and that might of course be different for YOU), photography is all about capturing the right moment. If you have to concentrate on too many things at the same time, the moment will be gone before you have your settings done.
Some photographers recommend to know every function of your camera blindfolded before can concentrate on your motive. That might work for people with a more technical approach. I would always recommend to learn SEEING first. How to choose the right moment. How to recognize a good motive. When NOT to push the button at all. Then get more and more 'manual'. Or don't. :-) Just wanted to add my opinion. Again, thank you!
Thanks for your reply. Yes, the modern matrix metering cameras will usually do a good job. 90% of the time, you can just use the matrix mode and trust the camera.
The light meter averages out the scene and most scenes fall into the average. However, if you want to absolutely ensure that a critical dark/bright subject turns out how you'd like, I would advise center or spot metering specifically on that subject to double check that the suggested values are in line with where you believe the subject should meter.
In challenging lighting situations where the overall scene is not averagely lit, this is where manually metering can save your photos. Sometimes you do need to take a photo of a dark subject in front of a dark background or of your new white Porsche in front of an aluminum (read highly reflective) modern building.
Once a beginner gets out there and learns through experience exactly when and in which situations the camera actually makes mistakes, then he/she will know to meter properly. He/she should ultimately be able to look upon a scene and think, "oh yeah, I can already tell the camera will overexpose the hell out of this shot. I should stop it down to compensate."
And thanks for YOURS! I totally agree. I have a more intuitive approach to photography, but maybe that is BECAUSE I know the basics inside out and don't have to worry about them anymore. Photography has changed a lot. You can take excellent images with nothing but your phone and without thinking twice about parameters of any kind. That makes it easier to concentrate on the moment itself, but as you have your camera with you all the time, there are so, so many moments to choose from. I have just installed my old darkroom again. Let's see where this is leading. Carrying the Mamiya around is like having an overweight pet dog in your purse... :-)