exposure meter manual mode

exposure meter manual mode

LINK 1 ENTER SITE >>> Download PDF
LINK 2 ENTER SITE >>> Download PDF

File Name:exposure meter manual mode.pdf
Size: 1570 KB
Type: PDF, ePub, eBook

Category: Book
Uploaded: 6 May 2019, 18:12 PM
Rating: 4.6/5 from 650 votes.

Status: AVAILABLE

Last checked: 1 Minutes ago!

In order to read or download exposure meter manual mode ebook, you need to create a FREE account.

Download Now!

eBook includes PDF, ePub and Kindle version

✔ Register a free 1 month Trial Account.

✔ Download as many books as you like (Personal use)

✔ Cancel the membership at any time if not satisfied.

✔ Join Over 80000 Happy Readers

exposure meter manual modeIt’s not uncommon for people to take a majority of their photos in Automatic mode since it generally does a good job of getting decent results, though more advanced photographers will often use Aperture or Shutter Priority. Shooting in Manual, however, might seem intimidating and highly complex but once you understand a few basics it starts to make a lot more sense. Certainly you should have a working understanding of the three components of the exposure triangle: shutter, aperture, and ISO. You might also have noticed a little triangle moving back and forth, or some vertical hash marks appearing and disappearing from time to time, in a fashion that seems nonsensical or completely random. If these numbers and symbols make no sense at all, don’t worry, you are not alone. It can be a bit confusing to understand the light meter at first. But once you get the fundamentals you will probably find yourself growing much more confident in understanding how photography works. Maybe you’ll even venture out of Automatic and into Manual for the sheer amount of control you are able to have over your photos. Note that this diagram is highly simplified and your viewfinder might look slightly different, or include other information, but all cameras (except some point-and-shoots) include the elements shown here. But, I’ll show you a few pictures to see what happens as the camera’s exposure settings are changed. If you want to try this yourself you will need to have your camera in Manual mode, and I would recommend reading the rest of this article with your camera at your side so you can do a bit of experimenting on your own. The values shown on these images are exactly what I used in my camera to get these shots, and nothing has been edited or retouched in Photoshop. Don’t worry about the technical jargon though. For now just follow along with the examples to see what happens when the exposure values are altered.http://giorgiadrudi.com/images/educating-students-with-autism-a-quick-start-manual.xml

Tags:
• exposure meter in manual mode, exposure meter manual mode, exposure meter manual model.

And indeed, the resulting photo turned out just how the light meter predicted: it’s so dark it looks like it was taken at night instead of mid-afternoon. By adjusting the aperture, shutter, or ISO you can change the exposure settings with the goal of getting that little triangle to hover above the zero. Watch what happens when I change the shutter speed but I leave the aperture and ISO fixed at their present values: Because the viewfinder itself does not change as the aperture, shutter, and ISO are adjusted, you have to rely on your light meter to tell you how bright or dark the image will be. Here is what a properly exposed photo looks like. Note that there is no one correct way to do this, and a proper exposure could have also been obtained by changing the aperture or ISO instead of the shutter speed, or a combination of all three.The answer lies in the fact that you, not your camera, know exactly what kind of photo you want to take. Your camera does not know whether you are shooting landscapes, portraits, sports, starry nights, kids, pets, or anything else. All it sees is how much light is coming in, and it tries to adjust the shutter, aperture, and ISO to get that triangle to hover above the zero. But if you know how to control those values yourself, you can open up vast new areas of photographic creativity that Automatic mode can never do for you. The problem with Automatic in this case is the camera does not know that I am looking at berries. It just sees light, and would attempt to adjust the shutter, aperture, and ISO to get a proper exposure even though it might not end up with the exact type of picture I want to take. Notice how the tree in the background just behind the berries looks speckled and grainy instead of silky smooth, which is what usually happens at high ISO values. Thus, raising the ISO might not be the best way to get the image I want even though the photo itself is properly exposed.http://www.astik.sk/edubuntu-manual-pdf.xml If you are shooting fast-moving subjects like cars or sports, you would want to start with a fast shutter speed and adjust the other settings until you get that little triangle to hover above the zero. If you are taking portraits and want a shallow depth of field with nice blurry backgrounds, keep the aperture wide and change the shutter and ISO until the exposure is correct. It’s all about giving control back to you, the photographer, instead of letting your camera make the creative decisions for you. By reading the light meter while carefully adjusting my exposure settings I got precisely the shot I was aiming for.Additional settings like your camera’s metering mode and the Exposure Lock function are even more tools you can use to take control over your photography and unlock your true artistic potential. Using manual mode and reading the light meter might seem like a complicated way to take photos, but remember that you know better than your camera what kind of picture you want to take. Once you know how to read your light meter and adjust your camera’s settings accordingly, you can open up a whole new world of creativity that has been right in front of you just waiting to be discovered. Now start changing the aperture, shutter, and ISO values and watch what happens to the light meter. Is your image going to be overexposed. Lower the ISO, raise your shutter, tighten the aperture, or try a combination of all three. Is your image going to be underexposed. Do the exact opposite. The more practice you get, the easier it will be and soon you will feel much more comfortable shooting in a mode that might have seemed hopelessly confusing before. If so, how did you get yourself off Automatic mode. Or do you actually prefer Automatic. Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below. We won't share it with anyone We won't share it with anyone We won't share it with anyone. Setting your camera to auto and pushing the shutter button will only get you so far.http://www.liga.org.ua/content/dass-questionnaire-manual Your camera is essentially a tool, and to use it to the fullest, you need to be the boss and tell it what you want.what you really, really want.:)I always recommend putting the camera in manual mode (M) so that you can have complete control over your settings. When you can do that and get the type of image you want exposed properly straight out of camera, you know you've mastered your tool. So first thing is first -- set your camera to M mode.All of them can work, but I prefer evaluative metering. Evaluative metering will have the camera look at everything within your composition frame (what you see when you look through the viewfinder) and give you meter results based on the average. Your camera wants everything to be 18 gray, so it will advise you based on that goal. As you'll learn if you keep reading, while this is helpful, oftentimes we will want to take this advice with a grain of salt and do what we want. Because when we master photography, we end up being smarter than the camera. There are three settings that work together to determine your exposure:The order in which they are listed above is the order in which I set them initially, so let's work through them in this order as well. I would suggest that you have your camera in hand as you read through this post and that you take time to find where each of these settings are located and play with them a little. Take your time to really understand each setting and you will be set up for success once you reach the end of this post.For those of you who have ever shot film, it's kind of like film speed. You will want to adjust your ISO whenever you enter a new environment. You won't need to change it often -- just whenever the lighting situation you are in changes drastically. Every camera is a little different with the range of ISO options it offers, but here are some of the usual suspects: 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600. The value you choose for your ISO when you enter a new lighting environment is basically an educated guess. So if I'm in bright sun, I will start with an ISO of 100, cloudy outdoor light 200, indoor bright window light 400, typical indoor light 800, low-light 1600, and so forth. The more light you have available to you, the lower you should set your ISO. The reason for this is that all cameras will produce a cleaner, clearer image at a lower ISO. The higher the ISO, the more grainy your images will become. This is especially true for lower-end, less expensive cameras. But don't under-estimate on your ISO just to avoid grain. That will cause you to end up with an underexposed image -- which is much worse quality than a grainy but properly exposed image would be. The goal is to pick the best setting for the situation. That's how you'll end up with the best results.Aperture limits are determined by the lens you are using. The most expensive and best quality lenses allow you to set your aperture very low (2.0 or lower). This is why I always recommend that you don't get the kit lenses that come with digital camera bodies. It's better to purchase lenses separately and invest a little more in them. Good lenses will last you a lifetime whereas you will likely want to upgrade your camera body somewhat regularly. For Canon shooters, this 50mm 1.4 lens is a great quality, reasonably priced option that I always recommend for newer photographers. The 1.4 in the name of the lens tells you that the lowest aperture it goes to is 1.4. This gives you greater latitude in a number of ways, which I'll get to here in a second. So the lower the aperture number, the larger the aperture. Your aperture setting impacts two things: how much light is coming into your camera when you push the shutter button AND your depth of field (what is in focus). Let's talk about both of these individually.You will find that some of the kit lenses are only good for outdoor shooting because they don't have low aperture options. When you set your aperture lower to allow more light in, you can set your ISO lower and get less grainy images. Or you can shoot at higher shutter speeds to freeze motion. But I'm getting ahead of myself.So less of the image is in focus. I explain the three factors that determine your depth of field in this post, and while aperture is just one of the three, it allows you to have quite a bit of control over what is in focus and what isn't. I love to focus in on my subject and allow the background to fall into a soft blur like this: That is only possible when you set your aperture on a low f-stop. We're not going to get more detailed on depth-of-field in this post, but feel free to click through above to read more!So light travels through the aperture in your lens and then through the shutter and both settings work together to determine how much light gets through. Shutter speed is how fast that little door opens and closes. But when you look at the screen on the top of your camera, it typically just shows the bottom part of the fraction: 80, 200, 500. So you can assume when you see those numbers that they represent fractions of a second.But shutter speed also impacts the freezing of motion when photographing moving subjects. The faster your shutter speed, the more frozen action shots will appear, and the slower your shutter speed, the more you might see motion blur in your images. But another thing to keep in mind when you are setting your shutter speed is that your images might appear blurry because YOU are moving. Keep that in mind for now, and I'll come back to it in a minute when we bring all three variables together. So now you know the basics of what ISO, aperture and shutter speed are and some of the ways they will impact your final image. Hopefully you've taken some time while reading this post to figure out how to set each of these settings on your camera. Now let's talk about how all three work together to properly determine your exposure.This is what I do and what I would recommend:Using my descriptions listed above, choose an ISO and set it. You can always come back and adjust this later.So I typically shoot at the lowest aperture setting my lens offers. Typically, the only exception to this rule is when I'm shooting group portraits. Look through your viewfinder. See the little meter that looks like this along the bottom or side of your screen. When you aim your camera at something and push your shutter button half-way down, it should have a little mark that shows you where you're at on this meter. The center of the meter is where you want to line it up. So if the mark is to the right, that means if you take the photo with your current settings the image will be overexposed (too much light); and if the mark is to the left of center, that means if you take the photo with your current settings the image will be underexposed (not enough light). So try it. Look through your viewfinder, and change your shutter speed and notice how the mark moves back and forth along that in-camera meter. Change your shutter speed until the mark lines up in the center (or on the zero). If not, you will want to go back to either ISO or aperture (or both) and adjust them in order to let more light into your camera. The reason for this was mentioned above. If it did, you're golden. The final option is you could use a tripod and shoot with a slower shutter speed. Hope you're hanging in there with me. You may want to take a break and practice shooting in a few different scenarios using the above 4-step method. Take some photos and see how they look. There is one more thing I want to cover in this post, but it would be great for you to master everything up to this point before I share more so that I don't confuse you too much:). That's what it's doing with the in-camera meter mark. It's giving you a recommendation. But since we have brains and can ideally use them while shooting, there are a few situations in which we will not want to take that recommendation, but will rather want to over- or under-expose the image (according to our in-camera meter) in order to properly expose our subject. MOST of the time, shooting with settings that cause your in-camera meter to zero-out are fine, but these are the exceptions:Remember, your camera is taking EVERYTHING in the frame into consideration when determining a recommended exposure. In this scenario, we don't care about properly exposing the outdoors in the shot, we want our subject exposed correctly. The smaller tick marks represent thirds of a stop.) So you're over-exposing by 1 stop whenever you shoot with a window in the background. 2 -- When your subject is back lit, or there is a brighter background The subjects always have a hair light due to the sun lighting them from behind, and I want to overexpose this hair light in order to properly expose my subjects. Likewise, if you have your subjects in shade and the background is full sun (the worst possible lighting situation that I would never recommend shooting in) you will want to over-expose according to your in-camera meter in order to properly expose your subjects. 3 -- When your subject is predominately white The reason for this is that again, your camera wants that white to be 18 gray, so it will give you a recommendation to make it appear gray rather than white. 4 -- When your subject is predominately black The reason for this is the same as above -- your camera will want to make the black gray. So you need to compensate for that and be smarter than it is:). I hope you've found this post helpful. The only thing left to do is PRACTICE. PRACTICE. PRACTICE. If you repeat the above 4-step method when setting the settings on your camera whenever you enter a new situation, and do this over and over again, you will get the hang of it. And it will quickly become second nature. I rarely consciously think about my camera settings anymore; these adjustments have become more of a subconscious activity for me. So get out there and practice. And feel free to leave any questions you have in the comments below. Click here to download a FREE list of 50 Goals for Your First Year in Business that is sure to give you some ideas to get you started on the right foot! Click here to view the comments. First of all, I want to explain that I leave my camera in the Evaluative Metering mode now. For long time listeners, you may remember that long ago I used to use center-weighted average metering, but I stopped that years ago, because I now just like to see what the camera “thinks” about a scene, and Evaluative metering allows the camera to think for itself a little more. I know people that use spot metering as well, which works well, but I haven’t used spot metering in years either, as I just don’t feel there’s a need for it. I should also explain that just because the camera is set to Manual mode, that doesn’t mean that the camera stops metering. As you look through the viewfinder in Manual mode, the little caret that indicates where the camera think the exposure is, still works, so for example if I have my camera set for too short an exposure compared to how the camera sees the scene, the caret will be below zero on the Exposure Level Indicator scale, and if I have my exposure set too high, the caret will be above zero. This means that when shooting in Manual mode, we aren’t flying blind. We still have the benefit of seeing where the camera thinks we should be, and that allows us to quickly make adjustments based on what we see in the scene. I’ve spoken about this before, but just to recap with an example, but the most common manual mode compensation that I do, is when photographing in the snow. Metering for a Snow Scene The first thing I do when I am shooting a snow scene, is point the camera down slightly, and fill the frame with snow, as you can see in this example image (below). I usually start at ISO 100, and then set my aperture for the depth-of-field that I want to shoot at, and then start to adjust my shutter speed, until the meter indicator shows me that I am 2 stops over zero. I aim for plus two stops, because I know that is how I need to exposure for whites to be white, and not grey. Remember, the camera wants to make everything 18 grey, so without this manual compensation, the photo would look more like this example (below) and we don’t want that. Once I have my exposure locked down like this in Manual mode, I know that my snow is going to be beautiful and white, and the red-crowned cranes that I shoot are also going to be perfectly exposed, even with texture visible in their beautiful black feathers. If I left this up to the camera, the white of the cranes would be grey, not white, and their black feathers would be so dark there’d be no texture in those areas at all. Also, in case you are wondering why I wouldn’t just use plus two stops of Exposure Compensation in Aperture Priority mode, that’s because the birds can move from their white snow background, to a very dark background in an instant, as we see in this next photo (below). And when that happens, instead of the camera underexposing the whites, trying to make them grey, it sees all that dark and increases the exposure trying to make the black grey, and the white bird goes super-nova. Soft Arched Wings So remember, for snow scenes, if you fill the frame with snow, and adjust your exposure so that the camera thinks you are two stops over exposed, you will be in good shape. For very dark scenes, you would usually do the opposite, but as I explained in the Why Expose to the Right episode, you may not always want to do that, but if you missed that episode, I suggest you go back and check that out instead of me covering that again today. What About Other Scenes. With other scenes, I really don’t meter the subject as such. I literally look through the viewfinder, estimate how much of the frame is bright and how much is dark, and adjust the exposure to what I think will be close, then take a test shot and check the histogram. The estimation process takes a bit of getting used to, but the more you do it, the easier it gets. I leave my metering mode in evaluative. I don’t use spot metering, because even with spot metering the camera still wants to make everything 18 grey, so I find that it takes longer to find my ideal exposure than adjusting based on a guestimate, and then shooting the test shot. I would still want to shoot a test shot even when using spot metering, and still may have to fine tune, so I just leave my camera in Evaluative Metering mode now, as I mentioned earlier. Which Parameters to Change. To arrive at my ideal exposure, with the data almost or just touching the right side of the histogram, I might change any of the three parameters in the exposure triangle. I generally start with the Aperture because I usually want to control depth-of-field first, then I set a low ISO of say 100 if there is plenty of light, and then adjust my exposure with the shutter speed. If it turns out that my initial ISO setting was a little too low, I might revisit that and increase it some more so that I can get a shutter speed that suits my subject matter. Also, if there is a bit of patchy cloud around, I might find that I have to adjust the exposure every so often, and I usually do this with the ISO, so I might increase from ISO 200 to 400 while the cloud is there, then back to 200 when the sun comes out again. How you handle this will depend on your camera. Canon cameras generally have an ISO button to select the setting you are going to change, then you just turn a dial to change it. Some Nikon cameras bury the ISO setting a little further into the menus, which can make this a bit of a pain, so you’d need to figure out the best way to make these changes for your own equipment. No Need to be a Manual Snob Young Himba Man I also want to note that I’ve become so used to shooting in manual, that I have a hard time going back to Aperture Priority mode, because it actually takes me more time to adjust my exposure with exposure compensation than it does to adjust my manual settings. I do wish however, that I was better with Aperture Priority, as it makes more sense in some situations. When I’m doing street photography for example, I am now using Aperture Priority with Auto ISO, and I’m getting used to it, but it’s hard for me. I forced myself to use Aperture Priority for example in Namibia earlier this year, when we visited the Himba people. We were shooting in a variety of lighting conditions, and it just made more sense. I’d of course set the aperture, because I was in Aperture Priority, and the camera selected ISO 400 because that’s what I needed to maintain the minimum shutter speed. Had I not dialed in that compensation, the young man would have been too bright, probably over-exposing the highlights on his forehead, and his two sticks would also have been over-exposed. Use a Handheld Light Meter One last tip that I want to relay, because I found it very useful, is that if you have or can borrow one, a light meter can really help to understand exposure. Mine is a quite old Minolta light meter that is now discontinued. I think if I was to go out and buy one now, I’d go for the Sekonic L-478DR light meter, because that’s the one Zack Arias swears by. Of course, you don’t really need a light meter now that we have the histogram on the camera, but I do still use mine sometimes in the studio. Especially when I’m setting lights up at a customers home or office. I can plug my Profoto Air Remote right into my meter, and then trigger the lights with the meter to get my readings. That’s going off topic though. The point I wanted to make here is that when I first got a meter, I was already shooting digital, but just spent a lot of time taking incident light readings, which is where you use the little white dome to read the level of light falling on your scene, and just seeing if that was close to my estimates. Even without a camera, I would carry the meter around with me and just meter stuff. I also used the spot meter which is where you look through the little viewfinder in the meter to take a reflective reading of the light bouncing off of your subject. It can really help you to hone your exposure estimations just doing this, and also when you are out shooting. Compare how your camera sees the scene with it’s limited artificial intelligence based on stored scenes, and compare that to the raw readings from your hand-held meter. I don’t suggest you buy a meter for this, as you’ll probably never use it, but if you know someone that has one, ask if you can borrow it for a month and meter the hell out of your world for a while. It’s a lot of fun. Anyway, that’s about it. I wish I could talk more about metering, but really, the histogram is king to me, so I generally start with my guestimate, adjust while viewing the in camera meter, and then take a test shot and check the histogram to ensure that the lightest part of my scene is just up to the right shoulder of the histogram. That’s pretty much it in a nutshell. Show Notes Why Expose to the Right. Music by UniqueTracks Audio Subscribe in iTunes for Enhanced Podcasts delivered automatically to your computer. Download this Podcast in MP3 format (Audio Only). Download this Podcast in Enhanced Podcast M4A format. Share this post with your friends. Here is this post's shortlink:Share 11 Pocket Email Tweet Share 11 Shares He's a pioneering Podcaster and blogger, Capture One Brand Ambassador, and X-Rite Coloratti member. I now better understand why and when I should use the exposure button and when to use the compensation button. Martin Bailey Marc de Boer I need to make the 2 stops faster shutter speed 2500. Doh! ?? Quazi Ahmed Hussain For wildlife shots; I overexpose dark subjects and underexpose bright subjects. The metering is always in Evaluative mode. However, when the subject is located in a low light area; I use Spot metering and crank up the ISO if necessary using wide apertures. May I have your comments on the above. Thanks in advance. Martin Bailey The camera usually over-exposes dark subjects, so you would under-expose them, and visa versa. Personally, I just expose to the right for everything. If you didn’t see my other post on this, take a look here: I depend more on the histogram and highlight warnings, so rarely use spot metering, but I too also increase the ISO when necessary. It’s better to use a higher ISO when shooting rather than brightening in post later. Cheers, Martin. Hotels in Letterkenny Learn how your comment data is processed. Take a look around, and if you need anything, drop us a line! View our Cookies Policy OK, got it. Annoyingly, it’s also one of those things that, once you get it, seems so easy. Keep working towards knowing how to control exposure and you will get there. The first step to mastering photography is understanding how to use the exposure meter. This is the first in a series of tutorials that will walk you through the fundamentals of how to control exposure settings on your camera. Each tutorial will build up your knowledge and before you know it, you’ll be able to use manual mode. If you’ve only ever used auto, program, aperture priority or shutter priority you won’t be used to seeing the exposure indicator at the bottom of the frame when you look through your camera. The exposure indicator is also called the exposure meter. This might be what is holding you back from using manual mode. Never seeing the exposure meter would of course make the whole idea of setting the exposure yourself very intimidating. So, here you are, I’d like you to meet your exposure meter (exposure indicator). I’ve included Nikon and Canon examples as these are the most popular brands. If you have another brand of camera, it won’t be that much different from these. This might be a good time to grab your camera so that you can read and do at the same time. Put your camera into manual mode. If you are in program mode, aperture priority mode or shutter priority mode the exposure meter won’t show, because you don’t need the meter to tell you if the exposure is okay. UNLESS, you’ve set your exposure compensation. Then it will indicate either over or under, depending on what you’ve set. Let’s not get into that just yet. Let’s first understand how to read the exposure meter to take an accurately exposed photos. Look through the viewfinder of your camera. It doesn’t matter what you aim at, just don’t aim into the light as that’s not ideal for your eyes. Part depress the shutter so that the camera focuses and meters whatever you’re pointing at. Can you see the exposure meter at the bottom of the frame. You might have the plus sign on the left or it might be on the right. I have mine set to the right, because it just makes sense to me that minus is on the left and plus is on the right. If you want to change it, you can do so using your camera menu. Look for “reverse indicator”. So back to what we were doing. You’re in manual mode, pointing your camera at anything that takes your fancy, but looking at your exposure meter in your viewfinder.