exposure question.

[kimberley]

When you are using you camera meter ( all I got now) do you meter off the brighter areas of the face of the subject.

For instance I had a bear I was using, I put him on a chair in front of a bright (filtered, sheer curtains) window ( purposelly) now should I have metered off the curtain or metered off the bear?

I have been relying on my camera and I trying to learn exposure on my own.

Another question what is the best metering setting on your camera, one that gets the best result.

I want to buy a meter, but I want to learn it the right way before I go out and buy a meter.


Dont call me dumb just slow...and learning this all bassakwards....

K

[Gabby498]

Kimberly, the bare basics—a meter only knows 18% gray (some will argue this is 13% or 12%). Everything you meter the light meter will make 18% gray.

If you meter off of a white object in theory the white will come out as 18% gray.

If you meter off of a black object in theory the black will come out as 18% gray.

Try to meter off of something that is in between the two—faded denim, a grocery sack, a medium complexioned face, equal amounts of white and black—or an 18% gray card.

If you must meter off of white you will need to INCREASE exposure, otherwise the white will be underexposed.

If you must meter off of black you will need to DECREASE exposure, otherwise the black will be overexposed.

Other’s, I’m sure can be more specific, but this is the basics—at least in theory.

Gary

[engstrom]

Gary, what you say is true if you're using a reflective light meter - that is a light meter that measures the light reflecting off the subject - but not true for an incident light meter which measures the light that hits the subject. For an incident light meter you hold the meter where the subject is with the little white dome facing the camera and measure how much light will be hitting the subject and this gives you a reading that will make white appear white and not 18% grey and blacks will be black and not grey. Of course you may need to adjust the exposure the meter reads if you want to brighten or darken the picture.

Incident light meters are more accurate but all cameras use reflective light meters because all the camera can see when you take the picture is light reflecting off the subject.

As for the bear in the picture above, I think you exposed it properly. I camera just does not have the dynamic range to get all the details of the curtain as well as properly expose the bear - you have to choose which is more important to you and in this case I think you choose correctly by exposing the subject (the bear) properly.

[kimberley]

OKay,

I kinda get this. Now the 18% grey that you mentioned, is this where the infamous "grey card" comes in.

Explain to me how this help exposure.

Should I run out and get a meter, I hate gadgets ( ducking for you gadget people)? My goal is to be a natural light photographer, my plan is not to use lights etc, just my camera and maybe a flash from time to time depending on the situation. The type of photography I am striving to do, wouldnt wait for me to say hold that uplanned unposed shot while I meter off your face.

K

[snidow]

Originally Posted by kimberley

OKay,

I kinda get this. Now the 18% grey that you mentioned, is this where the infamous "grey card" comes in.

Explain to me how this help exposure.

Should I run out and get a meter, I hate gadgets ( ducking for you gadget people)? My goal is to be a natural light photographer, my plan is not to use lights etc, just my camera and maybe a flash from time to time depending on the situation. The type of photography I am striving to do, wouldnt wait for me to say hold that uplanned unposed shot while I meter off your face.

K

As Gary mentioned above:
If you meter off of a white object in theory the white will come out as 18% gray.

If you meter off of a black object in theory the black will come out as 18% gray.

Try to meter off of something that is in between the two—faded denim, a grocery sack, a medium complexioned face, equal amounts of white and black—or an 18% gray card.

If you must meter off of white you will need to INCREASE exposure, otherwise the white will be underexposed.

If you must meter off of black you will need to DECREASE exposure, otherwise the black will be overexposed.

What the meter is doing is setting the camera to expose for 18% grey, but if you subject is very white then if you follow the meters guidelines your whites will end up looking darker more like 18% grey. The same holds true for blacks, you need to adjust the meter or they will end up looking more grey then black. If you subject matter has both very white things and very dark things you will have to determine which hold the most importance as you can not have detail in both bright white and dark blacks in the same photos then set your exposure based on that. I hope I explained that okay.

[evil4blue]

Kimberly,

First, your bear photo looks exposed properly.

What Gary is eluding to in his post is the zone system for exposure. I'm going to try and give you a brief description of the simplified zone system which will probably confuse you and clear some stuff up.

The zone system works great for reflective light meters (like in your camera) and uses the fact that all light meters are calibrated to ANSI gray. ANSI gray for reflected light and IS NOT 18%, it's somewhere between 12-14% but no one knows for sure (depends on the meter maker). 18% gray is the calibration standard for printed gray, but whatever...

The zone system really only works reliably if you have a spot meter. If your camera doesn't have a spot meter, I would suggest just learning the nuances of your camera's metering system and forget most of what I'm writing or buy a handheld meter with a spot capability (if you want to use The Zone).

When you spot meter an area in your scene, your camera meter will give you the exposure value for capturing that area as middle gray (remember that you cameras meter sees things in B&W). If the area you're metering is approximately the color density of middle gray, then your exposure will be correct (or really close).

There are a lot of scenes that don't have middle gray (or enough middle gray) to meter off of, so what do you do then. Simple, just remember these 5 zones (simplified zone system)

Black -2ev
Dark Gray -1ev
Middle Gray 0ev
Light Gray +1ev
White +2ev

Truthfully, most digital cameras have a little higher dynamic range than the above, but this should get you within .5ev of the correct exposure.

Okay, back to our problem, no middle gray in the scene. Looking at your scene, look for known colors, like white or black. To get the correct exposure for a scenes, you can always meter off a "black" area and subtract 2 stops from what the meter says to get the correct exposure. The same thing can be done for white. Meter the white area and add 2 stops of exposure.

Relating this back to your bear scene, I could have metered it 2 different ways. First, meter off the white curtains and add 2-2.5 stops (since they are white/blown out (pure white)). Second, meter off the bear's chest fur and maybe add 0.3-0.5 stops (since his fur is a little lighter than middle gray). Either way would get you very close to the proper exposure for the bear.

When looking at a scene, you have to first process what's important and what needs to be exposed properly (especially in a high dynamic scene), then start taking you meter readings.

I personally like the zone system, but it can be slow, and modern digital cameras actually have very good exposure calculators which are correct a majority of the time. So use your technology when possible, but for tough scenes the zone system can still be valuable.

If you where to use an incident meter for your bear scene, I would have metered off the bear's face, with the bulb pointing into the camera, then metered the light coming from the window. If the ev difference was within the camera's dynamic range, I probably would have split the difference to retain more highlight detail and then PP the image to bring the exposure down a little (kinda like exposing to the right). If the ev difference was out side the capability of my camera, I would have used the reading off the bears face since that's what's important to the scene.

Exposure is an exact science, but photographic exposure isn't. Being able to manipulate your exposure is one of the keys to making photography an art form.

If I've made a mistake, feel free to rip me. Also, I'm not advocating anyone switch to using the zone system, but knowing it wouldn't hurt either.

[CincoJoe]

Very helpful info...thanks

[johnastovall]

Here are two starting points.

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tu...e_system.shtml

and the Book on it. Any good library should have a copy to look at.

The Negative by Ansel Adams

My feeling are every serious photographer should know about it even if they don't use it.