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Understanding the Camera
This section will go into all the different settings that you can use on your camera.
Light Metering
The light meter is now of the things that remain constant during photography. You will have to be able to determine the amount of light in your scene to make the necessary adjustments to shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. The tool used to determine the light present is called the light meter.
Understanding the light meter is crucial to helping you advance your skills in photography. This section should help you get a good grasp of how it works.
An Analogy for the Light Meter
The light meter can be analogized to cooking meat on a grill. No matter the kind of meat you use, you already have an idea in your mind of what you want it to look like. For most amateurs, that will mean using a meat thermometer to ensure the food has been well cooked. In this analogy, the camera meter is the meat thermometer. How you place, this thermometer is essential in ensuring that you get accurate readings.
How the Light Meter Functions
When a camera is pointed at a scene, you will need to measure the incoming light to know the quality and how you need to alter your camera’s settings. That way, you will be able to ensure that your photo comes out just the way you wanted.
Most modern cameras use TTL Metering. This simply means through-the-lens metering. The camera examines the light passing through the lens and assesses the brightness at the scene. The camera can then adjust settings to ensure you get the exposure you wanted. You may not even notice the light meter working unless you are shooting in manual mode.
How to See the Light Meter in Manual Mode
When you place your camera in manual mode, check for a series of vertical lines or dots at the bottom of the viewfinder.
Getting the Exposure You Want
With your camera set to manual, check the bottom of the viewfinder. Look at the scale that has zero in the middle. When the scale is at zero, it means the photo is at just the right exposure. However, as you begin to change the aperture, shutter speed, and ISO, the scale will begin to shift up or down the line. You can then expect a picture that is too light or too dark.
Where Does the Camera Check to Determine Light Measurements?
You will need to understand how the light meter works to get accurate settings. Does it check all incoming light or just a small section of it? To understand this, you will need to understand something known as the metering modes.
How Cameras Measure the Light
Most cameras use these basic methods to measure incoming light:
Evaluative/Matrix Metering
The camera checks the entire scene and produces an average figure.
Center Weighted Metering
This method also takes an average of all incoming light. However, it lays emphasis on the light coming from the center of a frame.
Partial Metering
It only samples a small portion at the center of the lens.
Spot Metering
Measures light in an extremely small spot around the central autofocus point, which takes about 3% of the entire frame.
There are many other names used to describe these modes. However, they all work in the same way. The way your camera will measure light has a major effect on getting photos that are properly exposed.
Incident versus Incident Metering
This is another aspect of light metering, which you need to understand if you want to get properly exposed photos.
Reflective Metering
This type of metering measures the amount of light coming in through the lens. However, unless, the camera is coming from the source, it is being bounced off the subject first. The colors we see in the world result from all other colors being absorbed. When a camera measures light, it will essentially be looking at the light bouncing off the subject. This can have a major effect on exposure.
For instance, if the subject changes from light clothing to dark clothing, the camera will make a different reading. The camera will think that it requires more exposure to get an accurate reading. The result is that the whole image will be overexposed.
Incident Metering
This can be quite troubling when shooting images at a wedding. Grooms wear dark clothes while brides wear a dazzling white dress. This can throw the TTL metering into disarray. The solution for this problem is to utilize an external light meter. It will help to measure the light that is falling on the subject.
The handheld light meter is especially important when flashes are being used. It allows you to tell how much extra light needs to be accounted for at the scene.
Light Metering in Summary
The goal is to understand how the light meter on your camera works. By doing that, you are able to tell how you need to alter exposure to get the shot you desire. Understanding light metering modes can help you makes the shots that you desire. None of these methods is worse or better. Each has its weaknesses and strengths. It is just a matter of having the right knowledge and making the right adjustments.
Histogram
Histogram is a crucial but often misunderstood tool of photography. It can be useful in helping you get the right exposure for your photos. This section will cover how to use it to make your photos look better. Getting the best exposure for your shot should be your goal during all photos shoots.
Defining the Histogram
The histogram is a graphical representation of pixels exposed in an image. The left side of this graph will show the shadows and the right side will show the bright areas. The middle section shows the mid-tones. How high each areas peaks shows the pixels in that tone.
What Can a Histogram Teach You?
A histogram can help to tell that the image is well exposed it reaches from edge to edge without any spaces on either side of the graph. In an ideal setting, it should touch the left and right edges and not spill up the sides. It should also have a nice curve at the center.
When to Adjust Exposure
When there are gaps on either side of your histogram, it means you are missing information and exposure can be shifted without loss of detail. When the graph is shifted too much in one direction, it means you can shift exposure safely to cover a wider range of tones.
If the image is over exposed, the graph will show a gap on the left side, which shows there are no dark spots present. It will also mean a lot of detail will be missing in the white areas. In such an instance, you will need to reduce exposure and shoot the scene again.
If the image is under exposed, a gap will appear to the right of the graph, showing there are no white pixels present. You can safely increase exposure for the image until the graph touches the right edge.
How to Interpret the Spikes on either Side
Spikes on the right or left edge are signs of ‘clipping’. It shows that a lot of detail has been lost for that tone. In the highlighted areas, the image cannot be recovered. However, that may be possible in the dark areas.
In some scenes, keeping the graph within an acceptable range can be quite difficult. For instance, when shooting a sunset scene, or inside a building where you need to show the outer walls too. In these cases, clipping will be hard to avoid.
Should You Correct Spikes on the Sides?
Sometimes the graph will have spikes on both ends and almost nothing in the middle. You can correct this by changing the settings. To make things easier, you can correct for both light and dark contrast and try to interpret the scene later.
Highlight Warning
Most SLR cameras have a highlight warning setting. When an image becomes overexposed, the camera will begin to flash. This feature has to be set up by the user. That way, they are always assured of taking well-balanced images that do not have too much exposure.
Histogram in Summary
A simple conclusion is that histogram is not necessarily the best tool for analyzing exposure. Correctness depends on too many factors that would require a lot of time to analyze. In most cases, you will need to account for your vision to adjust the histogram. The scene is also important when thinking about histogram. The histogram is only good for showing you the amount of varying brightness in the image and nothing else. You can use it to discover whether you have clipped any detail with a certain exposure setting. It can be a good guide to avoid losing detail in your photos. As long as you have that in mind, there is no good or bad histogram.