Welcome back to the 365 Project with Picaboo! As you may have noticed, Facebook has a bug that frequently hides our Event Page. Because of this, we’d like for you to post your pictures on our Facebook wall. This way, we can all continue to see and comment on your amazing photographs. Also, we’re interested to know how you’re creating your Picaboo 365 Project Book. What layouts are you using? Mind sharing with us? We’d love to include suggestions for a future blog post. If you started your book, share a link with us at 365@picaboo.com. And don’t forget, if you missed a week, that’s no big deal. You can join anytime. To see all of our photography tutorials, take a look at this post.
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Week 9 Challenge: Understanding Exposure
Week 9 Theme: Find the light!
The past few weeks, we’ve had fun getting creative with angles, taking self-portraits, and watching the sun rise and set. This week, we are going to get a little technical. Remember when we went through your camera modes? Well, they are coming back.
This week we are going to talk about proper exposure. Understanding how to achieve proper exposure is the fundamental key to photography. No one likes a too dark or too bright picture. That is exposure! Also, if you underexpose or overexpose a picture too much, no amount of post-processing can fix that.
Exposure is the “is the total amount of light allowed to fall on the photographic medium during the process of taking a photograph” (Wikipedia). A long exposure will give you a brighter or blown out picture. On the flip side, a short exposure will produce a dark photograph.
Due to the many levels of brightness that can occur around you, you need to be able to control exactly how much light you are letting into the camera. You can do this by adjusting any one of your three main settings: aperture, shutter speed, or ISO.
When adjusting your aperture, you are widening the hole in which the light is allowed to pass through. When setting your shutter speed, you are telling the camera how long to keep the shutter open. Finally, when setting your ISO, you are setting the sensitivity of the sensor to light.
Have I lost you yet? Trust me, it will start clicking very soon! (No pun intended.)
You know when you look into your viewfinder and you see that little bar on the bottom? That’s your light meter. Your light meter is determined based on the settings that you just put in place.
Go ahead and take a test picture. How does it look?
Too dark? Than you want to move your light meter up a stop or two {in this case, a stop is one movement along the light meter bar}. Too bright? Back that light meter down. Ideally, you want your light meter to sit right at 0. But sometimes, you will need to adjust accordingly. I tend to shoot a stop or two higher but that’s a personal preference of mine.
Since I am visual learner, and I am sure most of you are as well, here is an example picture. To make things simple, here are my settings: f/ 2.8 {that’s the aperture}, 200 {ISO}, 1/400 {shutter speed}.
Let’s take a look at the example pictures. The base exposure picture was taken with the light meter sitting right at 0. All the settings were the same above. It’s pretty well exposed, perhaps a tad dark for my liking. As I move my light meter up a few stops, you can see the image getting lighter. In the +4 ev image, the tomatoes are starting to be “blown out”. They are too bright and you are losing details. On the flipside, as I move down on the light meter, the image is getting darker. I actually don’t mind the -4 ev because I can lighten it to my liking in post-processing.
Understanding exposure will take awhile to master. That’s the great thing about photography! You are always constantly learning and growing!
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Did you miss one of our photography tutorials? Catch up quickly with our growing Photography Tutorial Library!
Want to see some amazing pictures shot by our fans? Take a look at these blog posts: Finding the light in 35 steps, 43 night shots and 37 pictures taken from creative angles.
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Are you enjoying my 365 Tutorials? Are you in the Philadelphia Metro Area? On March 24th, I will be holding a dSLR Basics Workshop where you will learn hands-on how to use your camera and get out of Auto mode! Grab your ticket today HERE.
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I’m really enjoying your tutorials. I’ve heard a lot of this information before but it never really clicked through from theory to application in past. This weekly approach is paced just right that I’m not overloaded and can absorb it. I’m so happy and proud for all I’m managing to learn!
I’ve been working on my book of my photos, and I keep changing up my layouts. I have a general goal of a week per two-page spread, but I think I would be bored if used the same layout over and over. I change the relative sizes and number of photos per page to be able feature certain pictures larger than others, and to make sets that go well together.
When you say +1, -1, etc, means change the aperture or shutter speed?
I didn’t get how to use the meter. I”m not sure if it means change the settings or if it has an specific buttom to change the meter. Could you help me?
To move along the light meter you are going to use your dial. The same dial you would use to change your aperture or shutter speed. When you move the dial to the left or the right, you will see the light meter move.
Hope that helps!
Thanks Steph!
I did that…but when I did this, in the manual mode, it changes the shutter speed. But I think that what you mean is that shutter and aperture remain the same, so I’ll read my camera manual to figure it out!
Thank you!!!
This weeks challenge and always been my biggest photography “challenge”. When you shoot in manual, do you just use your light meter, set it at 0 and then go with it? Or do you manually set each setting? When do you want to use full manual, and when do you want to use aperature priority or shutter priority. For some reason this whole concept confuses me.
Thanks.
@Priscilla
When you change the meter, you essentially ARE changing the aperture, shutter speed, or both. It’s a light meter. Therefore, by changing aperture and/or shutter speed, you’re altering the amount of light falling on the sensor. The important thing to remember is to look through the view finder as you are adjusting these settings and pay attention to the light meter. If it swings to the right, your pictures will be brighter. To the left, darker and underexposed. I always start by zeroing out my meter (centering it) and going from there. Hope this helps!