About The Photograph – The Importance of Metering and “Correct” Exposure
Birch Tree and Leaf. Near Boston, MA.
Buy This Print - License This Image
“One of the greatest difficulties the photographer, and especially the amateur has to encounter, lies in correctly estimating his exposure.” – Vero Charles Driffield
During my
Introduction to Photography classes and my
Metering and Exposure Classes I stress that the exposure setting that our camera provides us with is merely a starting point.
When I began a deliberate practice to hone my exposure skills, I was drawn to scenes that were not “average”; not average meaning high contrast; uneven lighting, etc. In addition I would use transparency film, because of its unforgiving exposure latitude, to force me to think even more critically about how I wanted the final image to appear and the exposure choices that would accomplish this.
When I evaluated this scene with my in camera meter, a 20/80 center weighted reflective meter, I realized that the meter would provide me with misleading results because my main point of interest was such a small part within the meters angle of view.
My main point of interest was the yellow leaf; since the leaf was translucent and backlit it appeared to glow. The image I visualized was a detail filled, glowing yellow leaf within the context of darker, more subdued tones.
Instead of my in camera meter, I used the one degree reflective spot meter that was in my camera bag. After evaluating different areas of the scene to get an idea of the contrast range, I had a good idea how different brightness areas of the scene would appear as tonalities on the final slide.
I metered off of the brighter areas of the leaf and overexposed by two stops. By doing this I effectively reproduced the leaf as a zone 7 tonality (brightest area with full detail) the other areas of the scene that are not reproducing as black with no detail or white with no detail fell within the approximate five stop contrast range (in varying degrees) that transparency film (and digital media) is able to hold. The white bark seems to have reproduced as a zone 5 tonality (a mid tonal value)
One of the reasons why understanding metering and exposure is important because it helps us visualize what we want the final image to look like and to make exposure choices that will yield the tonalities that we desire in our photographs.
Similar Posts:
This entry was posted on Sunday, September 21st, 2008 at 12:35 pm. It is filed under About The Photograph and tagged with exposure, metering, photography.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
