Professional Documents
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Master
Exposure
TAKE STUNNING PHOTOS
USING OUR EXPERT TIPS
■ How to read a histogram
■ Metering for different tones VITAL
■ Coping with unusual lighting SKILLS
GUIDE
Master
Exposure
Trying to get the ‘correct’ exposure is one of the
greatest challenges for those beginning in
photography. But it needn’t be. This book will
show you the pitfalls to avoid, when to alter
your camera’s settings (and by how much) and
how to get creative with metering.
Exposure 3
Master
Exposure
TAKE STUNNING PHOTOS
USING OUR EXPERT TIPS
Contents
■ Exposure basics p10
Exposure 7
Use your grey matter
T he biggest advantage digital has over film is the
fact that you can check your shot once you’ve
taken it. You can bring up a histogram to check the
brightness range of a scene – and make sure you’re not
underexposing or overexposing it. You can, if your
camera allows, switch on a flashing highlight to show
you any blown highlights where detail will be lost in
your photograph. You can then change your exposure
accordingly. And if all that fails to produce the balanced
exposure you want, you can go some way to rectifying
it while image-editing.
It is, however good to get things right first time – to
produce a high-quality image in-camera which you
only have to do minimal tweaking with later. This book
arms you with practical advice for getting the
exposures you want, and the confidence to take
control when the camera’s being fooled. We’ve got
clear examples of when this can happen and what you
should do. We also show you the inspiring work of
three master photographers to give you an idea of you
what can be achieved once you’ve nailed the basics –
which start on page 10…
Marcus Hawkins
Editor, Digital Camera Magazine
8 Exposure
Exposure
basics
O n the face of it, exposure seems a pretty
straightforward business. In order to
produce a good range of tones in your picture,
the camera has to make sure the right amount
of light reaches the sensor. And it does this (or
you do) by adjusting the length of the exposure
(the shutter speed) and the light intensity (the
lens aperture). The image is formed by the
accumulation of light on the sensor during the
exposure. All digital cameras incorporate
exposure systems which will do this
automatically, so what’s the problem? Even the
most sophisticated metering system is unable
to understand what the camera’s looking at, or
what the photographer’s intentions might be.
This is where you need to take control.
10 Exposure
Digital’s dynamic range Mid-tones
Cameras will struggle to deal with scenes where The idea of ‘mid-tones’ is important in exposure.
there’s an extreme brightness range. With film, On one level, it describes areas of the scene
this is called ‘exposure latitude’, with digital which are more or less in the middle of the tonal
cameras it’s called ‘dynamic’ range. On a very range. You might say these are the parts you
bright sunny day, it may be impossible to find an want to expose correctly. But how dark or light
exposure which records some detail in the are these mid-tones? In order to work out the
shadows without ‘blowing out’ the highlights, or exposure, your camera has to work to a
vice versa. It’s generally agreed that digital standardised average ‘grey’ tone – 18% grey, to
cameras have a similar exposure latitude to slide be precise – and try to adjust the exposure to
film, and you can start off by assuming a reproduce your subject with this level of
dynamic range of about 4 EV values. This means brightness. This is one of the principle drawbacks
you should still be able to see or recover useful of all built-in camera meters, no matter how
shadow detail 2 EV darker than the mid-tones sophisticated. They don’t know what it is they’re
in your image, and highlights 2 EV brighter than looking at, and what intrinsic tone the subject
this mid-tone value should record well too. So ought to have. All subjects will be reproduced to
what do you do if the brightness range in the this 18% grey value, which is a problem we’ll
scene exceeds this 4 EV range? There are ways come on to shortly.
of dealing with this, and we look at these a
little later on.
Exposure 11
Metering patterns Aperture and shutter speed
Light meters may not be able to understand that Digital cameras control exposure using both
different subjects may have different intrinsic shutter speed and aperture. Why both? Wouldn’t
brightness levels, but camera makers have at least one or the other do the job? There are creative
been able to allow for difficult and contrasty advantages to these two means of exposure
lighting conditions. By default, digital cameras control. Smaller lens apertures offer more depth
use ‘multi-pattern’ metering systems that of field (near-to-far sharpness), while fast shutter
measure the light values at numerous points in speeds let you freeze fast-moving objects.
the scene. This helps them build up a picture of Shutter speed and aperture are interchangeable,
the type of lighting you’re shooting in, and the so that if you want to use a smaller lens aperture,
camera may adapt automatically to backlighting, you can compensate with a longer exposure. Or,
for example. Multi-pattern metering systems are if you want a shorter exposure, you simply set a
hard to second-guess, though, and many wider lens aperture. For example, if your camera
photographers prefer simpler ‘centre-weighted’ indicates an exposure of 1/250sec at f/8 but you
metering, which averages the whole scene but want to shoot at 1/1000sec, which is two stops,
places extra emphasis on the central area. Spot or EV values, faster, you need to increase the
metering is very specialised. It takes a reading aperture value by two stops as well, to f/4. Some
from a very small area of the scene only. cameras allow you to adjust shutter speed and
aperture values in 0.3 EV steps, but the same
principle applies – a change in one must be
mirrored with a same-sized change in the other.
12 Exposure
Exposure 13
Adjusting +1.5 EV
exposure
S o how precise do you have to be with
exposure? Even though digital cameras only
have a certain amount of ‘exposure latitude’, in
practice there are many different ways of
interpreting a scene, and many exposure errors
can be rectified or at least improved with a bit of
image-editing. To give you an idea of how the
subject brightness changes with exposure, here’s
the same scene at seven different exposure
values, all shot at the same lens aperture, but
with shutter speeds 0.5 EV apart. These also
demonstrate the idea of exposure latitude and
dynamic range. There isn’t one shot where
detail’s been recorded both in the foreground
and the garden outside – the scene is outside the
dynamic range of the camera’s sensor. You might
prefer the ‘overexposed’ shot because it shows
the subject’s face with a nice high-key effect, or
a darker silhouetted version. Or you might open
one of the in-between shots in Photoshop and
attempt to balance the tones more evenly.
14 Exposure
+1 EV +0.5 EV 0 EV
-0.5 EV -1 EV -1.5 EV
Exposure 15
When things
get tricky
Metering for dark tones/black
W e explained in the previous
section that camera exposure
systems could adapt to a degree to
We used a black background for this shot
of an ornamental elephant, which itself
No Adjustment
‘difficult’ lighting, but that they had no was a mixture of dark red and black. The
sense of the intrinsic lightness or camera didn’t know any of this, of course.
darkness of specific subjects. But does All it could do was measure the amount of
this really make much difference? Indeed light it ‘saw’. Not surprisingly, this wasn’t
it does. If any of your digital camera very much! As a result, the camera
shots come out badly exposed, it’s often increased the exposure. Remember, all it
the intrinsic brightness of the subject can do is attempt to render the subject as
that’s caused the problem, not ‘difficult’ an overall 18% grey tone, because while
lighting or any error on your part. you and I might realise the elephant and
Just to show you how much the background is black, the camera
difference intrinsic subject brightness doesn’t have the cognitive powers of the
does make, we’ve arranged a series of human brain. It’s dark, increase the
still-life experiments… exposure. That’s the limit of its thinking.
The result isn’t too hard to predict; an
18% grey elephant against an 18%
grey background.
16 Exposure
-2 EV
Exposure 17
Metering for light tones fairly light-toned, along with the cloth shot. At first you might need to experiment a
Unusually dark-toned subjects are not an beneath them, but even so you might expect great deal to find appropriate EV
everyday problem. Light-toned subjects are the camera to expose them correctly without compensation values for light or dark-toned
far more common, and they typically distort any help. The result, though, is distinctly dull subjects. But with practice, and a growing
the camera’s meter reading to a greater and gloomy. Only by reshooting with understanding of your camera’s behaviour, it
degree. Our still life shot demonstrates this +0.3 EV compensation were we able to gets a lot easier to work out when to override
well. The ginger, onions and squash are all restore a realistic-looking brightness to the the camera and how much by.
No Adjustment +0.3 EV
18 Exposure
No Adjustment +2 EV
Metering for white life demonstrates this very well. Remember, default black elephant shot, demonstrating
White subjects are a special case, and the we want objects to appear in photos as they how the camera attempts to reduce all tones
cause of the most severe underexposure do in real life, and not reduced to the 18% to the same value. In order to reproduce the
problems. They’re a special case because the grey assumed by camera meters. Our first whiteness of our subject, we had to increase
world is full of white objects and attempt, shot using the camera’s default the exposure value by 2 EV. You’ll have to do
backgrounds, and because you might be exposure reading, was a disaster. Indeed, the the same with snow scenes, for example, or
surprised at just how bright they are. This still overall tones are very similar to those of the close-ups of wedding dresses.
Exposure 19
Master of
exposure
Ansel Adams
20 Exposure
This is unmistakably an Ansel
Adams landscape. The
richness, depth and detail is
astounding, the exposure capturing
every nuance of light. It pictures the
Tetons and Snake River in Grand Teton
National Park, Wyoming, and was shot
in 1942.
anseladams.com.
Exposure 21
Background problems
I t’s not necessarily the subject of your
photograph that can give you exposure
headaches. The tone of the background is just
judge exactly how much emphasis the camera
is giving to the subject itself, since multi-
pattern metering systems may concentrate on
ginger take up nearly all of the frame, while in
the other they’re quite small relative to the
background. In both cases the camera’s
as important, and can have a big influence on the object in the middle of the frame, which default auto-exposure readings were used.
the exposure reading. Even if your subject may or may not be where your subject is. The close-up shot is correctly exposed, but in
consists of fairly even mid-tones, an unusually the zoomed-out version, the larger proportion
light or dark-toned background can produce Size matters of dark background has fooled the camera
exposure errors. The size of this error will This shot uses a mid-tone subject set against a into overexposing by 1.3 EV.
depend on how much of the frame is taken up dark background, but shot at two different We tried the same experiment using a light
by the background. It can also be hard to zoom settings, so that in one the onions and background. By zooming right in on the
22 Exposure
artificial fruit, we’ve excluded nearly all of the
background, and the resulting exposure is pretty
well spot-on. When we zoomed out, though, the
proportion of the frame taken up by the
background was far higher, leading the camera to
reduce the exposure by 1.3 EV, which has left the
shot underexposed. The degree to which the
background influences exposure will depend on
the amount of the frame it takes up and its
brightness, but it can make a big difference.
Exposure 23
Complimentary tones
Here’s another experiment showing how the
exposure changes when you place a dark
subject against a light background. In this
case the best exposure is the middle one,
because the light background has reduced
the exposure. This helps render the dark
tones of the lenses more accurately.
You can also see what happens when you
place a light subject against a dark
background. The results are similar. Close-up,
the while flowers and vase in our set-up
cause the camera to underexpose. In the
wideangle shot, the dark background has
caused overexposure. The middle shot is the
best because the tones average out well.
24 Exposure
Exposure 25
Unusual
lighting
J ust to make life that little bit more awkward,
it’s often the most dramatic and ‘difficult’
lighting that makes the most exciting
photographs. You face two challenges here. The
first is that the brightness range of the lighting
will often exceed the dynamic range of your
camera’s sensor, so you have to decide which is
the most important part of the scene and base
the exposure on that, leaving extreme highlight
or shadow detail to disappear. Once you’ve done
that, you need to work out how to take an
exposure reading that will render the important
part of the scene properly.
26 Exposure
Backlit subjects
With backlit subjects, the light’s coming from
behind your subject and towards the camera.
This means that the side of the subject facing you
is in shadow against a bright background. It’s
unlikely that your camera will be able to record
detail in the subject and a full range of tones in
the bright background too, so you’ve got a
decision to make. You can expose the shot to get
detail in your subject, and render the background
as a brilliant, ethereal white, or go for a silhouette
effect, as you might with a dramatic sunset, for
example. In both cases, spot metering can be the
most reliable solution because multi-pattern
metering systems can behave a little
unpredictably. Some are designed to give priority
to subjects in the centre of the frame, especially
with the tonal distribution characteristic of
backlighting (the camera can detect this). You
may get a properly exposed subject when you
wanted a silhouette, and vice versa.
Exposure 27
Sidelit subjects
Sidelighting is less difficult to deal with. The
overall contrast tends to be lower because you’re
not shooting into the light. However, the long
shadows cast by the light can influence the meter
in ways you don’t want. Digital cameras,
especially non-SLR models, seem to favour
shadows over highlights in a scene, so you can
often end up with an overexposed image with
‘blown’ highlights and shadow detail that’s too
light. The strong, textural quality of sidelighting,
however, relies heavily on deep shadows and
richly-coloured highlights. It’s a good idea with
sidelit subjects to at least bracket your exposures,
or take one at the default meter reading and then
another with -0.3 EV or -0.6 EV compensation.
With digital cameras, a little underexposure is a
lot easier to correct later than overexposure.
Blown highlights are lost for good, but you can
often extract an amazing amount of colour and
detail from gloomy shadows.
28 Exposure
Spotlit subjects
Spotlit subjects are particularly difficult to deal
with. The situation here is comparable to that we
set up when photographing subjects against a
dark background, but the contrast in tones is
going to be even higher. Left to its own devices,
the camera will attempt to compensate for the
darkness of the background, leaving your main
subject hopelessly overexposed. The solution
here is to take a spot reading from the area being
spotlit. In addition, you’ll have to make
allowances for the intrinsic brightness of your
subject, which is one of the reasons why spot
metering is quite a skill. For example, if you’re
photographing a performer on stage in a white
costume, you might need to take a spot reading
from the costume, then dial in +2 EV exposure
compensation to make sure it reproduces as
white. Landscapes spotlit by the sun breaking
through clouds are generally easier to meter for,
thanks to their more mid-toned nature.
Exposure 29
Master of
exposure
Galen Rowell
30 Exposure
While Galen Rowell rose to
prominence with his
staggering images of
mountains, he was a master craftsman
of landscape and wildlife photography
as well. This shot of sunflowers taken in
the eastern Sierra, California, in 2000
shows how skilled he was at reading
light. The strong backlight and delicate
form of the flowers have been captured
with perfection. The use of a graduated
filter has tamed the harshness of the
top part of the frame, making the
dynamic range of the scene more
manageable. The resulting image
takes your breath away.
Exposure 31
How to read
a histogram
S o far we’ve been basing our assessments of
exposure levels on the appearance of images
on a screen or in print. There’s a more technical
way of assessing the tonal balance of digital
images, though, and that’s using a histogram.
Many cameras can display ‘live’ histograms as
you compose a shot and/or histograms for saved
images. You can display a histogram in
Photoshop and other image-editors, too.
The histogram will tell you whether you have
‘blown’ highlights, blocked-in shadow detail,
whether there’s a full range of tones, and how
light or dark the image is overall. It’s basically a
bar chart (though with so many bars they
blend into a continuous curve) showing how
many pixels there are for each brightness value
across the tonal scale, from dense black to
brilliant white.
32 Exposure
Exposure 33
Unusual histogram shapes
The ‘typical’ histogram tails off at the left and
right-hand ends, but swells to a maximum
somewhere round the middle. Some subjects,
though, produce very different results. If you
shoot a shadowed subject against a bright sky,
you might get two ‘peaks’, one in the shadows,
one in the highlights,
and practically nothing
in the middle. There’s
nothing wrong with
your exposure
technique, it’s just
characteristic of this
type of subject.
‘Flat’ histograms
On overcast days, or in other situations where
there’s not a lot of contrast, you might end up
with a histogram that tails off to zero long before
the left and right-hand ends of the scale. This is a
characteristic of flat-looking images. As the
histogram shows, there are no really dark or
really light areas,
which is a problem
because photographs
usually rely on a full
range of tones for
depth and richness.
34 Exposure
Clipped shadows
Histograms can reveal obvious flaws in your
images. This shot has been underexposed, and
this has moved the whole histogram to the left,
with the result that the shadows have been badly
clipped, while there are no real bright highlights
(the histogram doesn’t reach the right-hand end
of the scale). You
can adjust the image
in Photoshop to
restore brilliant
white highlights,
but you can’t do
anything about
those lost shadows.
Clipped highlights
This image has the opposite problem. It’s been
overexposed, with the result that the whole
image histogram has effectively been moved to
the right. Even though we’ve recorded the
shadow detail nicely, the highlight end of the
histogram has been
clipped, just as the
histogram curve is
rising, indicating the
presence of lots of
bright tones in the
sky. These tones can’t
be recovered.
Exposure 35
Controlling the dynamic range
E arlier, we mentioned the idea of dynamic range – the
range of tones your digital camera’s sensor can record. This
ties in with our look at histograms in the previous section. You
Before
36 Exposure
Using balanced fill flash
After Outdoor portraits are often difficult to pull off
successfully, especially in bright sunlight. If you
face your subject towards the sun you reduce the
contrast range but you make them squint. If you
position them side-one, you get ugly shadows
across their face. And if you shoot them with their
back to the light, you have the problem that their
face is in shadow against a bright background.
However, if you set your camera’s flash to forced
flash mode, and as long as your subject’s just a
metre or so away, it can provide enough ‘fill light’
to even up the tones. You can use fill flash
indoors, too, as we have here, to balance up dim
indoor lighting against bright daylight outside. If
your camera has a ‘slow sync’ mode, you can
create interesting flash effects at dusk, too,
illuminating nearby objects against a colourful
sunset or twilit sky.
Exposure 37
Using a neutral density grad
Landscape photographers often struggle with bright
Without Filter
skies, particularly on overcast days, where the sky
acts, in a sense, as a vast, diffused light source – and
one which is 2 EV to 3 EV brighter than the
foreground. You have a dilemma. Either you expose
for the foreground and risk the sky bleaching out to a
featureless white, or you expose for the sky and hope
you can drag up enough detail from the dark
foreground in your image-editor. If the brightness
range is too great (it often is), you need another
solution. For this shot, we’ve used a ‘neutral density
grad’, a filter which is darker at the top than the
bottom. By positioning this carefully in the filter
holder, we’ve darkened the sky enough to even up the
exposure, but without affecting the foreground.
Graduated neutral density filters come in various
strengths, which you can match to the brightness
range of the scene. It’s largely a matter of personal
taste though – do you like the heavily filtered ‘moody’
look, or something more natural? They also come in
both soft-edged and hard-edged forms. The soft-
edged sort can intrude intro areas of the frame you
don’t want to reduce in brightness (the top of a hill
that’s protruding into the sky, say), but the hard-
edged ones demand even more careful positioning.
To get the most from a neutral density grad, you
really need a digital SLR, though filter maker Cokin
does supply an adaptor kit for digital compacts.
38 Exposure
With Filter
Exposure 39
Using Photoshop After
Photoshop CS and Elements 3 have a Shadow/Highlight tool
for balancing the tonal values in high-contrast scenes. It works We needed to reduce the
by selecting the darker areas only and then lightening them. exposure by a massive 6 EV in
The results can look a little artificial if you’re not careful (you our second shot, the one
need a large Radius setting, which blends the effect more being used to record the dusk
subtly), but they can also improve shots considerably. This will sky in this beach scene. The
only work, though, if the image contains a full range of tones in blended image records a
the first place. If the shadow or highlight detail has been dynamic range impossible to
clipped, there’s no getting it back. For scenes with too high a capture in any other way.
contrast range for this approach, there is an alternative. You
can take two shots at two very different exposure values – one
aimed at capturing shadow detail, and one aimed at capturing
highlight detail – then blend them in Photoshop. Our
walkthrough shows you one way of doing this. (You’ll need to
use a tripod to ensure the images align exactly.)
Before
40 Exposure
1Combine the shots
The first thing to do is add the lighter
exposure to the darker one as a new layer. You
2Blend the exposures
Now use the Colour Range command and
select Highlights from the pop-up menu. You’ll
3Blur the transition
The transition between the two image
layers is too abrupt at the moment, but the way
can do this by using the Move tool to drag it on need to make sure the Invert box is checked. to fix that is to blur the layer mask. Making sure
to the other image’s window. If you hold down Close the dialog box, and click the Add Layer the mask is selected in the Layers palette, try a
the Shift key as you do it, the image will align Mask button in the Layers palette. This will Gaussian Blur of 250 pixels (less for lower-
automatically. mask the bleached-out areas in the top layer. resolution images).
Composition 41
Master of
exposure
Pål Hermansen
42 Exposure
This shot of black-legged
kittiwakes, taken on Norway’s
Lofoten Islands, proves that
sometimes, searching for the ‘perfect’
exposure isn’t always desirable. Would
this picture have as much impact if it
had a more neutral composition and
exposure? Notice how the soft edges of
the bird that’s out of focus work in
combination with its overexposed white
feathers to make it almost glow. It’s an
image that provokes extreme reactions –
you’ll either love it or hate it.
Exposure 43
Low light exposures
S hooting at night is easy, it just needs much
longer exposures than you’re used to in the
daytime. You could increase your camera’s ISO to
its maximum and try shooting handheld, but the
image quality will drop through the floor, and
shutter speeds will still be so long that camera shake
is nigh-on inevitable. The best approach is to use a
tripod, reduce the ISO to its minimum (to maximise
image quality) and experiment. Yes, experiment.
While your camera is perfectly happy with the
long exposures needed at night, its metering
system is likely to be all at sea when faced with
the naked light sources and much higher contrast
levels after dark.
44 Exposure
Night photography presents special
exposure challenges. Often a purely
experimental approach is the quickest and
best solution.
Exposure 45
High key/low key
T he concept of the ‘ideal’ histogram can be
useful when choosing exposure settings and
evaluating images, but it’s a mistake to imagine that
High key
all images must conform to this even distribution of
tones. Intrinsically light subjects, for example, can
be expected to produce histograms where the tones
are clustered up around the right-hand (highlight)
end of the scale, whereas dark subjects should
produce histograms shifted towards the darker, left
end. This is exactly how these subjects should look.
Deliberately light images are called ‘high key’
photos, while dark shots are ‘low key’.
46 Exposure
You can do effective high key and
Low key low key portraits using either natural
or artificial light.
Going to extremes
You can take high key and low key exposures to
extremes, and produce striking and creative
results. For example, if you place a fair-skinned
model against a bright background, and use an
exposure which just captures the details of the
face at the highlight end of your camera’s
dynamic range, the result will have a brilliant,
ethereal quality. Or, to produce a far more
sombre, dramatic portrait, you need to choose a
dark background, contrasty lighting, and set an
exposure that records the highlights on the
subject’s face but the shadowed side and the
background as very dark, near-black tones.
The histograms for these images will be very
far from the ‘ideal’ shape, and may also have
clipped highlight or shadow detail.
Nevertheless, they can work very well as
photographs. The point about histograms is
that they simply tell you what the image is like –
they’re a diagnostic tool. They’re not there to tell
you what the image ought to be like. That’s your
job as the photographer.
Exposure 47
Master
Exposure
Top 10 tips...
TAKE A MID-TONE WITH YOU RESTORE THE WHITENESS
Exposure 49