Film and CCD (charge-coupled device) sensors are less efficient than human eyes at recording what they see and therefore the suggested exposure settings produced by a camera's meter may not always be the best. A well exposed photograph as that which appears identical to how you remember the scene. Detail should be visible in the lightest parts and the darkest parts shouldnt be completely black or featureless.
Most scenes are neither completely light or completely black so the most convenient way of measuring the light is to point the meter at the subject. The meter will provide the photographer with a shutter speed and aperture that will give an average exposure. Through-the-lens camera meters work well most of the time.
My Canon EOS 450D has four different Metering Modes, these are:
The snow in my first photograph made the background extremely bright, the meter tried to average the scene but the snows overwhelming brightness meant that the leaves were too dark. I had to over expose the shot by two stops in order to correctly expose the leaves and berries.
I took my second shot outside Monument underground station in London. The Monument was erected to commemorate the Great fire of London and celebrate the rebuilding of the city. I over exposed this shot by 1 stop otherwise the monument would have appeared as a silhouette.
I under exposed this shot by too stops because I wanted to capture as much detail in the sky as possible. Cropping a lot of the dark area at the bottom off this image would probably improve it
- Evaluative Metering; The camera analyzes the entire frame, it then selects an exposure that's designed to produce a balanced exposure
- Partial Metering; The camera bases exposure only on the light that falls on the centre 9% of the frame
- Spot Metering; Similar to Partial Metering however it only bases exposure on the centre 4% of the frame
- Centre-Weighted Average Metering; The camera bases exposure on the entire frame but puts extra emphasis/weight on the centre
Evaluative metering is what I'll be using most of the time until I become a bit more experienced.
After flicking through "the textbook" (Photography A Concise History by Ian Jeffrey) I have found a number of pictures that I feel have been purposely over or under exposed in order to capture specific qualities.
The high contrast, black and white photograph on page 19 is slightly over exposed (Maxime Du Camp 'The Eastern Part of the Peristyle of the Temple of Rameses - Meiamoun. Medinet-Habou (Thebes)'. I can see from the shadows that the sun is directly overhead. The stone is white and due to the direction of the light the carved details can be easily made out.
Page 73 displays a slightly under exposed photograph (Eugene Atget 'Marble Vase by Jean Cornu, Versailles'. The Photographer possibly chose to under expose this capture to emphasise the shadows that outline the subjects detail.
Page 93 shows a photograph of an over exposed female. (Robert Demachy 'Academie'). The model's position combined with the direction of light emphasise her shape. The light source is above and behind the model, she is almost a silhouette however the photographer has over exposed his image to capture details of her body.
On page 201, the exposure of 'In the Kitchen' by Bill Brandt has been set to capture the table and models surrounding it as accurately as possible rather than averaging the light entering the camera from the entire room. The light source is directly above the table therefore this area is very bright, under exposing slightly will keep the table nicely exposed but make the background slightly darker.
I have taken four photographs which exposures are either lighter or darker than average, below I will explain why.
ISO 200, 55mm, 1/60sec, f/5.6
The snow in my first photograph made the background extremely bright, the meter tried to average the scene but the snows overwhelming brightness meant that the leaves were too dark. I had to over expose the shot by two stops in order to correctly expose the leaves and berries.ISO 400, 18mm, 1/2000sec, f/6.3
I took my second shot outside Monument underground station in London. The Monument was erected to commemorate the Great fire of London and celebrate the rebuilding of the city. I over exposed this shot by 1 stop otherwise the monument would have appeared as a silhouette. ISO 200, 36mm, 1/3200sec, f/5.6
I under exposed this shot by too stops because I wanted to capture as much detail in the sky as possible. Cropping a lot of the dark area at the bottom off this image would probably improve itISO 1600, 55mm, 1/25sec, f/5.6
The last photograph is of my girlfriend Lindsay. I decided to underexpose this photo because the light on her face is very bright and I like how my eyes are drawn straight to it without their attention being caught by the rest of the image.
‘Bracketing’ is the term used to describe taking a series of slightly different exposures of the same picture. This technique offers useful insurance to photographers that are unsure about which exposure setting will look the best.
Next I will bracket a few subjects to see if there are any exposures that I prefer to the average. There will be five versions of each image, average exposure in the middle, overexposed by 2 stops at the top and underexposed by 2 stops at the bottom.
My first subject is a plaque on the side of a World War One commemorative statue at St Martin's Church in Sale.
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Out of the five exposures above I most prefer the shot that is underexposed by 1 stop. The detail appears more defined and the dates on the stone are very easy to read.
Next, during my visit to Hartshead Pike I decided to bracket some shots of the Tower there.
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My favourite shot here is again the one that is underexposed by one stop. The suns rays are visible streaming round the sides of the tower which they aren't as much at -2 stops. The silhouette of the tower and the plant on the left against the highly detailed sky make for a very interesting photograph.
My next shot was taking in Newcastle, I liked the combination of the nice sky, trees, grass, fence and snow so I took the shot.
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My favourite here is at +1 stop. Detail in all parts of the photograph are visible and the snow doesn't appear pure white, it seems a little grey but I like this as it truely portrays the time of day. The sun is setting and it's getting darker.
This shot was taken at Hartshead Pike.
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I have two favourites here; my first being at -2 stops and second being at +1. I like -2 because the sky is very detailed and this highly contrasts with the silhouetted foreground. I like +1 because it's not so bright that detail in the sky has been washed out but it's bright enough to bring the foreground into view in full detail.
My last shot was also taken on top of Hartshead Pike. It is the view from the top towards The City of Manchester.
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I feel that at -1 stop this shot looks the best. All of the detail in the sky, background are visible. The foreground is a little dark but as the day is coming to an end this helps to show an accurate representation of the time of day.
