richfavinger
Premium Member
Understanding Exposure
Why Is Exposure Compensation Necessary?
A camera's exposure meter is always calibrated at the so-called middle gray level, which means the gray color that is in the middle between complete white and complete black and reflects 18% of the incoming light. When you point your camera at your subject and take a meter reading, the meter will consider the intensity of light being read as middle gray. This creates problems!
Suppose most areas in your scene is white, say snow covered. The exposure meter will treat that white area as middle gray. When you take your shot, the white area looks grayish. The image below shows a snow covered area, and, as a result, the camera exposure meter considers this white area being middle gray if no compensation is applied. So, the snow covered area looks grayish.
More About Exposure Compensation
Remember, most people forget, using or shooting digital is more like using SLIDE FILM, in this you have very little room to play with in error +/- bad exposure. You can have as much as 3 or even 4 stops of exposure in negative film. In Digital and slide, you only have about 1.5.
In your reef tank using your spot meter on your camera can help a lot.
Also understanding your cameras Histogram is key...
Understanding the Histogram
If you nail your exposure, remember it's just less work you need to do in Photoshop!
It also makes you a better photographer...
Rich
Why Is Exposure Compensation Necessary?
A camera's exposure meter is always calibrated at the so-called middle gray level, which means the gray color that is in the middle between complete white and complete black and reflects 18% of the incoming light. When you point your camera at your subject and take a meter reading, the meter will consider the intensity of light being read as middle gray. This creates problems!
Suppose most areas in your scene is white, say snow covered. The exposure meter will treat that white area as middle gray. When you take your shot, the white area looks grayish. The image below shows a snow covered area, and, as a result, the camera exposure meter considers this white area being middle gray if no compensation is applied. So, the snow covered area looks grayish.
More About Exposure Compensation
Remember, most people forget, using or shooting digital is more like using SLIDE FILM, in this you have very little room to play with in error +/- bad exposure. You can have as much as 3 or even 4 stops of exposure in negative film. In Digital and slide, you only have about 1.5.
In your reef tank using your spot meter on your camera can help a lot.
Also understanding your cameras Histogram is key...
Understanding the Histogram
If you nail your exposure, remember it's just less work you need to do in Photoshop!
It also makes you a better photographer...
Rich
