Category Archives: Exposure

Advanced Metering

Aug
14
2013
by Peter | 5 Comments

Advanced Metering

In the blog post “How to Shoot in Manual” I gave some very basic information about where you meter is in your camera and how to use it. In this post we’ll talk really In-Depth about your Camera’s meter

and how to get the most out of it and when to know when it is lying to you and how to correct for that.

What type of Meter do we have in our camera?

The Meter we have in our cameras are known as “Reflective” meters. What they actually meter is the light reflected off of our subject, what we are shooting. This is different than Hand Held Meters. While those meters can be used also to measure reflected light, they normally measure the light source itself also known as “Ambient” or Incident” light and are mostly used to measure the light from Strobes/Flashes that a reflected meter can not. Continue reading »

Anatomy of a Shoot – Long Exposures

Aug
06
2012
by Peter | 5 Comments

Anatomy of a Shoot – Long Exposures 

Long exposure shots are all the rage right now. You’ve all seen them; Pier, Cotton Candy Water, B & W. We are not just talking silkening the water with 10 second exposures on waterfalls. We are talking cotton candy, fog or mist look to water (or Clouds) of exposure for 5 minutes or even an hour. It’s the newest thing to catch on in landscapes so if you want to know how, follow me through a recent shoot. Continue reading »

Shooting in Manual Mode

Apr
10
2012
by Peter | 5 Comments

Shooting in Manual Mode 

In order to get the most out of this tutorial, you should first read and know our tutorial on Exposure: Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO.Reading and understanding that tutorial will help to make much more sense of this tutorial on Manual Mode 

I hear a lot of photographers proudly proclaim, “I shoot only in Manual Mode” Which I suppose is good. You certainly should know how to even though I will confess I use one or another Semi-auto modes (AV/A – TV/S) about 50% of the time. But I do think that an essential part of knowing photography is to know how to shoot in Manual Mode. 

But it surprised me while assisting teaching a Photography class that had the requirement of knowing how to shoot in manual mode. That a good number that said they did, did not really when it came time to. Yes they shot in manual mode but they really didn’t understand what to do and the biggest part they didn’t know was how to meter. In fact a good many didn’t know where their meter even was on their camera. 

And that’s okay, that’s why we’re here. 

Continue reading »

The Basics of Exposure – Aperture, Shutter Speed, ISO

Apr
09
2012
by Peter | 1 Comment

The Basics of Exposure

Have your camera handy so you can follow along and look at the settings on your camera as we talk about each of them. 

Exposure, exposure is getting the perfect amount of light onto your digital sensor or film. We want to have as good exposure as possible so that we have detail in both shadow and bright areas; there is contrast (The range from dark to light) and good color. We’ll talk about the 3 things that control exposure and then how to use each of those to make every photograph you take artistically interesting and also how to balance the 3 for a perfect exposure.

Continue reading »