Is it wrong to expose myself this way?

68lbs

68lbs

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April 2008
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I've been doing 'this photography thing' for a couple of months now and even in this short amount of time I feel I've come a long way. What was once a boring overcast landscape with a badly blown sky, is now a dynamic wide angle with interesting clouds. Ok, so I might be over exagerating a little, but the point is that I can now get a reasonably well exposed shot out of the camera. But something occurred to me last night...

I DON'T THINK I KNOW HOW TO METER PROPERLY!

This is how I work... I shoot fully manual and start off deciding what kind of DoF I want. Once I've selected the aperture, I then find a shutter speed that gets me 'in the zone' on the light meter for a given point on the image that I want exposed best (I use 'partial metering' on the 400D) - I find I sort of instinctively know whether it needs to be +/- a bit depending on the scene as a whole. I always shoot ISO 100 if possible, and only change this if I can't get a suitable shutter speed. I then shoot. And it's now I do 'my version' of metering. I look at the histogram and use this to decide if I need to shoot slightly faster/slower. If I'm playing around with still life stuff, I might try a variety of apertures, and after my first 'batch' of shots at say f/6.0 I might try f/2.8 and I just whack the shutterspeed up a bit to compensate and shoot with no regard whatsoever for what the light meter might be telling me. Then I look at the histogram again, and adjust accordingly.

Now this seems to work ok when I'm 'playing around at home' or outside doing landscapes etc. However, it would be completely impractical where time is an issue and the shot might be gone in an instance.

My point of all this is...

Is the way I do things completely wrong, or with experience would I instinctively get better and better at getting it right first time? And if my technique is completely wrong, what 'should' I be doing? I've read things on here about metering off bits of grey card etc, but am left wondering if you have time to point the camera at bits of card, why don't you just fire off a shot and adjust depending on what the histogram says?

Thanks for listening. :wave:
 
Your technique is about right. I wouldnt want to pick holes in it.
I hardly ever use full manual, generally when I'm doing macro or being creative with flash. Most other times I use Av and set the aperture for the DOF I want etc.
 
I often shoot in aperture priority mode if I'm doing instant grab stuff ...which is most of the time. I use the matrix meter mostly to maintain good exposure ...I totally trust it, very seldom wrong and usually only in unusual light.

Very easy to dial some stops down whilst shooting too.. should you want more depth of field....Just spin that command dial.
 
I would agree with oldgit, I use AV to set depth of field and only use manual when using flash or some macro.

Your technique sounds about right to me.
 
You've not mentioned what metering mode you're using.

If you're going the whole hog manual wise then you need to bin matrix metering as it takes quite a lot of control away from your own mind's picture of what the exposure should be. Also unless you bracket and post process or use a a graduated ND filter you'll struggle to get an overall 'good' exposure for land & sky on a digital body.
 
Sounds about the right way of doing things.
I think what matters is, at the end of the day, you're getting the right results you had in mind, so you're doing it right for you.
I normally shoot in Av too, and if I dont get a fast enough shutter speed, I then up the ISO.

I have to say though....best thread title ever!
 
sprog said:
You've not mentioned what metering mode you're using.
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You've not read the post properly :D

68lbs, I don't think there's anything wrong with your technique. The important thing it to find a system that works for you and how you think about and approach a shot. With more experience you'll probably find you get a better eye for judging how to compensate for what the camera is saying.

The advantage of using a grey card or palm of your hand is that you can take a reading and keep using it until the light changes which saves a lot of mucking about checking the reading for each shot.
 
Pretty sound way of doing it.

I shoot in manual ALL of the time, whether I'm doing landscape stuff or my magaziube work*–*I just prefer it.

Okay, there are times when I'm fiddling around changing settings that P, AV or Shutter would alleviate, but i just like working in M and I've got used to doing working in my head and you soon becaosme prefiecenet with 'reading' the light by eye. Anyway, if you take a duff shot, it's not like you've wasted film or anything!

I don't meter the scene though first. I just take a shot, check it's okay and then make a change if required. I also use manual flash all the time, as I just feel more comfortable that way.

What you're doing isn't wrong*–*there are many way to skin a cat as they say.
 
Oooo, as a newbie it's good to know I am not doing anything majorly wrong. I shall continue. :)
 
First thing to say is that you appear to have advanced considerably in just two months - manual exposure, partial metering, histograms - magic! So congratulations on getting to grips with things so well. I don't think your approach is at all unusual for an environment as you describe - meter, shoot, review, adjust (if necessary), shoot again - seems pretty normal to me.

I understand your difficulty where time is of the essence and you need to nail your exposure in one. I did start typing a really long reply but it just got a bit rambling, so I gave up. It would help if you could give some specific examples of situations that you want to be able to deal with. The answer would then be more focused.
 
tdodd said:
It would help if you could give some specific examples of situations that you want to be able to deal with. The answer would then be more focused.
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At the moment I don't have any specific examples, I guess I just wanted to make sure I wasn't falling into bad habbits that would obviously be harder to break later on. If I'm going to do this, I might as well try to do it the right way from day one.

If I'm pushed for an example...

I'm walking through Middlesbrough town centre when I spot Angelina Jolie. She's wearing a skimpy black dress, stood outside Binns leaning against the pale stonework. It's a hot day and she is pouring a bottle of evian over her to cool down. Luckily I have my camera with me... But by the time I've taken a test shot, looked at the histogram, sussed what I need to do, recomposed, readjusted the settings, and shot, I find that shes moved and I'm left with a shot of a fat bloke, fag hanging out his mouth and last night's curry down his ill fitting t-shirt.

Not sure if that's a precise enough example, but it was the first thing that sprung to mind. ;)
 
68lbs said:
I'm walking through Middlesbrough town centre when I spot Angelina Jolie. She's wearing a skimpy black dress, stood outside Binns leaning against the pale stonework. It's a hot day and she is pouring a bottle of evian over her to cool down. Luckily I have my camera with me... But by the time I've taken a test shot, looked at the histogram, sussed what I need to do, recomposed, readjusted the settings, and shot, I find that shes moved and I'm left with a shot of a fat bloke, fag hanging out his mouth and last night's curry down his ill fitting t-shirt.

;)
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That's what RAW files are for :D
 
:lol: At thread title, i was in two minds to look or not :lol:

68lbs said:
I'm walking through Middlesbrough town centre when I spot Angelina Jolie. She's wearing a skimpy black dress, stood outside Binns leaning against the pale stonework. It's a hot day and she is pouring a bottle of evian over her to cool down. Luckily I have my camera with me... But by the time I've taken a test shot, looked at the histogram, sussed what I need to do, recomposed, readjusted the settings, and shot, I find that shes moved and I'm left with a shot of a fat bloke, fag hanging out his mouth and last night's curry down his ill fitting t-shirt.
Click to expand...

I don't like my photograph being taken :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

If you use M, with F8.0 1/400th (i think) then you should be alright for that sort of stuff, but in Av with F8.0 works just as fine
 
Techno-Geek said:
If you use M, with F8.0 1/400th...
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Based on the fact you've just quoted that off the top of your head, can I assume that my technique is fine, just continue as I am, and as I gain more experience, then I'll just get to 'know' straight away what shutterspeed to start with for a given aperture in any particular situation?
 
I dont see how Tony can know what to use when he isnt not at the scene!!!

You have to be there... as they say!!! :D
 
Turns round
Picks up boots
Puts them on
:runaway:

:lol:

:lol:

I know but was the F8.0 bit right? :D
 
OK, great example. Here's my take...

She could be on the sunny side of the street, or in the shade, backlit, frontlit, who knows? You might need fill flash but your popup won't be much use (unless you are very close to her), so forget it. This is important because using the flash will limit your maximum shutter speed to 1/200. If you are filling on a bright sunny day at 1/200 and 100 ISO your aperture will be around f/11. At f/11 your flash will have an effective range of about 1m. So we're talking natural light exposures here.

Shooting in raw will give you some scope to tweak dodgy exposures, a bit, so use raw. Evaluative metering will probably make the best stab at the exposure, if you are just aiming and banging out shots quickly. Partial will just be too sensitive to what's in the middle of the frame. A black dress would not be a good target for metering. CWA would be (much) better than partial, but I think evaluative is the way to go. It should also help save your bacon a bit in a backlit scenario.

So which exposure mode?

Manual
Forget manual - far too slow.

Program
Program should get you something usable, if lacking artistic flair. That would surely be the safe and easy option. Set ISO to 400 and you'll have all the bases covered.

Tv
You could go with Tv mode and a speed of, say 1/250. At 100 ISO that should give you an aperture of around f/9 in the sunshine. That would be a good combo to freeze motion blur, and camera shake (you might need a higher shutter speed :) ) and plenty of DOF to rescue you from focus errors. In the shade, guessing here, you might need another 4 stops of exposure. That would require an aperture of close to f/2, which you don't have. If you have safety shift enabled then the camera would slow the shutter to save you, so that might be OK, but might risk too much subject blur. Alternatively, have 200 ISO set and you should be OK with the 24-70. For your wide lens, or for extra security on all fronts, set ISO to 400.

Av
If you want to go Av and have shallow DOF, for example, while risking focus errors throwing you off the game a little, then you can do that. Alternatively, pick a "safe" f/stop, like f/8 that will net you most things safely. So let's do the maths on that. f/8 at 100 ISO gives you 1/400 in bright sunshine. Seems good. But if we assume we need 4 stops more exposure in the shade the shutter speed would plunge to 1/25 - blur city. So if we went with 400 ISO and f/8 the shutter speed woud likely range from around 1/100 to 1/1600, which seems a good range to me. If you set f/5.6 as your aperture you could drop the ISO to 200 and benefit from lower noise, or benefit fom higher shutter speeds and less risk of blur/shake.

So to draw conclusions from my ramblings, and summarise that lot....
- Shoot in raw to give you more scope to recover highlights and boost shadow detail
- Use evaluative metering to cope best with unusual and difficult lighting
- Use 400 ISO to cover all bases and allow sharp, blur free images
- Shoot in P mode and let the camera take care of it all, or....
- Shoot in Av mode at around f/5.6-f/8 for safety, or f/2.8-f/4 if you like danger, or....
- Shoot in Tv mode at 1/250 and let safety shift dig you out of any holes.

That only leaves exposure compensation to deal with, but perhaps we can leave things there.
 
fantastic post tdodd.

Ive been taking pictures since last year, but didnt really get into until I got my first lens (nifty fifty) 2 months ago. At the moment I am all guess work, I shoot in M mode all the time, or for the rare occassion that I need something doing quickly (like at a party) I might just throw it into AUTO mode as these arnt really artistic shots.

I have a LONG way to go as all these numbers dont sit right in my head, but 68lbrs you seem to be on the right track and doing well, you explanation seems very sound to me.
 
Thanks, foz, and 68lbs. I may sound highly knowledgeable, from the post above (maybe not?), but it is mostly based on knowing just one little bit of information - the Sunny 16 Rule. You can read about it here - http://medfmt.8k.com/mf/sunny.html.

What this tells me is that on a clear sunny day, with the sun high in the sky - say from 10:00 till 15:00 - if I pick an aperture of f/16 then my shutter speed will need to be the reciprocal of my ISO. In other words, if my ISO is 100, my shutter speed will be 1/100. If my ISO is 200 my shutter speed will be 1/200. 400 ISO gives 1/400 etc..

Now I can play around with the exposure triangle and come up with all sorts of combinations of aperture, f/stop and ISO and still keep the same exposure for this lovely sunny day. If I don't want f/16, but would prefer f/4, that is 4 stops faster. f/16-f/11-f/8-f/5.6-f/4. If my aperture is 4 stops wider I need to speed up my shutter by 4 stops, or reduce my ISO by 4 stops, or some combination of a bit of each. Well if I'm already at 100 ISO I can't set that any lower (on most cameras) so I will have to increase my shutter speed by 4 stops. 1/100-1/200-1/400-1/800-1/1600, so at f/4 and 100 ISO my shutter speed will be 1/1600 with a subject lit by clear blue skies and bright direct sunshine.

So doing the calculations for Angelina in the sun was really quite easy. But in the shade? Well I don't have a magic rule for that, so I guessed at 4 stops. Maybe it should be 5 or 6, or 3, but I guess 4 might be about right. If we assume it is 4 stops for the shade then all the calculations for the shade are just as easy.

The task then comes down to figuring what settings you would like to use, ideally, if you were in control and had time to adjust everything until you were happy. Well your choice of f/stop dictates your depth of field. A wide aperture (small f/stop number, like f/2.8) gives you a fairly narrow DOF, which will help isolate your subject in focus and blur the background into relative obscurity. This would be a great choice for papping, and portraiture. If you want a shot of Angelina pouring water all over herself do you want to see the Woolworths sign behind her and some plastic toys in the window? Probably not. But, what if you are uncertain of your focus accuracy? Maybe you want a safety margin. Pick something like f/8 or f/11 and you will expand your DOF and create a buffer for focus errors. So you have choices to make. I can't tell you what you should choose, because it comes down to artistic wishes and playing off risk vs safety.

It's kind of the same thing with shutter speed. Go high, to freeze all motion competely, or slow it down a bit and catch the ends of her hair just blurring slightly as she throws her head back in an arc and water flies off into the air, sparkling in the sunshine. Be ready, with high speed drive, as she continues to pour water over herself - her expression may change, she may look right at you. Be ready to shoot some more. But shutter speed choice is influenced by aperture and ISO. You have to play them all off against each other and pick a balance that keeps your settings roughly where you would like them to be, in an ideal world.
 
pxl8 said:
You've not read the post properly :D
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Ooops, sorry. I'm not familiar with Canonisms... what's 'partial' metering? Is it the same as spot metering?


Some top tips coming out of the wood work here BTW, a very worthwhile thread.
 
Partial is like a big spot - 9% of the centre of the viewfinder for partial, instead of 3.8% for spot - on a 40D. A 400D does not have spot metering.
 
I just came across this lengthy but informative article on exposure calculation without a light meter, which is basically how I was guessing/estimating/testing out combinations of settings in my earlier posts. It is quite nice to see that towards the end he recommends using Sunny 16 as an anchor point for figuring out other exposures manually. His table of exposure values also suggests a 4 stop offset for a subject in open shade as opposed to direct sunshine, so my reasoning above holds good :)

http://www.fredparker.com/ultexp1.htm

I haven't read through every word but it looks like there is some good stuff there. Enjoy :)
 
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