Understanding Exposure p. 138 - end

It's late.  Very late.  I'm tired.  But I really want to improve.  So I'm up. And writing.  I've been reading ahead, and am dying to read more, but I really want to record my thoughts.  So I'm here.  And blogging.  (UPDATE:  I started this post almost two months ago.  How is it possible to take this long to write a blog post?!?)

I'll admit that I wasn't very interested in reading the last two sections of Peterson's book:  Special Techniques & Filters and Film vs. Digital.  But I did learn a thing or two.  Like don't read the chapters and then wait a month and a half to blog about them.  No, more than that.

*A deliberate overexposure is accomplished best with subjects who are front or evenly lighted.

*A lot can be done with double exposures, but it's never been something I've particularly gotten into.  Of course, photoshop opens up worlds of options.  For those who enjoy double exposures or sandwiching:  in-camera double exposures should be done at one stop under, and out-of-camera sandwiched photos should be done at one stop over.  Thus, when the pictures are combined, the correct exposure is achieved.

*Multiple exposures, like overexposures are best done with front or even light.  Multiple exposures are just the same shot taken many times while moving the camera a bit between each shot.  One thing to avoid:  lots of sky.  Makes for boring multiple exposures.

*Polarazing filters reduce reflective glare.  They allow detail to come through in landscapes and they deepen the blue of the sky.  They do this when the light is at a 90 degree angle, so take the shot with the light coming at you from the side.  When the light is in front or behind, the polarizing filter does nothing.  And when the light is not at a 90 degree angle, the polarizing filter only works on a portion of the picture.

*Polarizing filters also cause a decrease of 2 stops, so up your camera stops by 2 in order to accommodate.

*Graduate Neutral-Density Filters are like sunglasses that have a variable amount of shading spread over the lens.  "Graduate ND filter(s) reduce light only in certain areas of the scene." (p. 150)

And now....the LAST SECTION of the book.  

*ISO:  Fast speed is 400 +, Medium speed is 100-200, and slow speed is 25-64.

*One roll of film is one ISO speed.  Digital allows the photographer to change ISO speeds with each shot.

*Peterson says he shoots at ISO 100 about 99% of the time.  As a portrait photographer of toddlers, I just don't see how this could be possible.  They would always be blurry!  But perhaps I will aim for ISO 100 when I'm not dealing with fast moving toddlers.

*Color: Film comes in several different kinds.  There is also color print and color slide film (ending in chrome) to choose from.  And, yeah, given that I never shoot in film, that's all I'm going to cover here. Peterson covers more about different brands of film and slide vs print if you are interested.

*Pushing and Pulling.  I had never heard of this before.  Probably because it's not a concern for digital shooters and I never learned photography in the film age.  The concept is pretty cool though.

Film can be pushed (set to a faster ISO) or pulled (set to a slower ISO).  If you have film in your camera but it is not the right ISO, you can manually set the ISO and treat the film as if it is that speed.  Then you ask that it be developed at the manually set speed.  According to Peterson, film is rarely pulled.  Also, it's better to just have the right film speed in the camera to begin with.  Makes sense.

So there it is.  I finally finished a whole book.  And it took me way to long, but it's done.  I really enjoyed this book and found it easy to understand, easy to read, and very helpful as a beginner with some general knowledge.  I'd highly recommend it as the first book for a photographer.

Stay tuned for the next book about lighting.  Hopefully I'll get that started before another two months goes by!

Apologies and Excuses

All evidence to the contrary, I am still here.  Truth be told, I thought about taking down the blog.  But my better half informed me that this is what the internet is for - more information.  How can it possibly be true that the world wide void is still in want of more information.  But since I seem to value other's opinions above my own, I'm leaving the blog up.

As I mentioned, I knew better than to try to take a picture & read something daily.  Turns out my life and/or focus doesn't really allow for weekly either.  However, furthering my photography knowledge is still important to me, so...

In light of my apparent inability to maintain a weekly schedule, I'm changing the format a little bit.  I won't be posting pictures every week.  I typically post my pictures in a forum I am involved in, and posting here is just one more step.  Apparently I'm supposed to post pictures on a blog in order to get it to come up on search engines, but what the heck...I'm not really doing this for the search engines anyway.  I do plan to still get some pictures up here, but I don't want that to stand in the way of posting in general.   I will still try to take one picture a week, you may just not see it.

Instead of having weekly assignments/reports as though someone could follow along, I'll just be summarizing the chapter I read when I get around to it.  I'll aim for once a week, but no promises.  At least this way if you check back once a month, you can get a brief overview of whatever chapters I've managed to actually read.  Who knows, you might even be able to pick up something worthwhile.

Lastly, for some reason I feel compelled to apologize.  A lot.  As my husband says quoting a movie - "don't be sorry, be quiet."  (In a nice way...not in a shut-your-face way.)  So here's my last time to apologize on this blog.  From now on, I just write, even if it's been a year since my last post.  No more apologies...after these:

Sorry it's been so long...
Sorry I haven't posted in awhile...
Sorry I haven't read anything worthwhile in a bit...
Sorry I can't seem to find the right words...
Sorry it's been over a month...
Sorry I suck...

Ok.  I've said it.  And of course, what apology is complete without an excuse?  So, here are my list of excuses.  Hopefully they won't all apply at once, but I'm sure at some point or another most of them will be true:

...Life's been busy.
...I had a baby.
...My grandmother/grandfather died.
...I've been swamped with photo sessions (hooray!).
...We're moving.
...My kiddo was sick.
...My husband was sick.
...I was sick.
...We were travelling.
...I'm a new aunt!
...I've taken on a new hobby.
...I just didn't make the time.

Whew.  Now that all the apologies and excuses are out of the way, it's time to move on.  And so begins a new era for this blog.  Let's hope it sticks.

WA: Understanding Exposure *Read p. 138-158 + Take 1 & Study 1 Picture*

I decided to combine the last two chapters of this book since the last section is only 4 pages long  and I'm excited about moving on to another book!  

This week's task, should you choose to accept it:  

* Read the sections titled "Special Techniques and Filters" and "Film vs. Digital" (p. 138-158)

* Take a picture.  You get five chances to take one great shot.

*Study someone else's picture

Taking a picture in this way will occur every week.  It can be of anything.  When I take pictures, I tend to take a lot trying to get the composition and settings just right.  By limiting myself to five attempts for THE shot, I'm forcing myself to take the time to check the settings and composition ahead of time.  I'm also trying to prevent myself from getting overwhelmed with a large number of unnecessary images.  I'm just too much of a scardy cat to limit myself to getting it right with only one shot.

The picture to study can be any picture.  On a billboard, in a card, in the current reading, on the web...you get the idea.  The simple act of looking at someone else's photography makes you a better photographer.  A great way to do this is to subscribe to receive Better Photo's Photo of the Day.  I have been doing this for a couple years now.  You get a different picture every day sent to your inbox.  It helps me branch out since the pictures are always of something different.  (Not all nature or landscape or kids.)  And you don't even have to go looking for it - the photo comes to you!

I'll post a Weekly Report (WR) with my picture and any thoughts about the chapter sometime this week.   I do not plan to discuss the picture I viewed unless there was something particularly striking about it.  I see a lot of pictures and it is sometimes difficult for me to put my thoughts into coherent words when it comes to analyzing them.  Also, in order for it to be helpful to you, you'd need to be able to see the picture as well!

I'm not predictable enough to guarantee the WR on a certain day, but it'll be here before Sunday at midnight.

WR: Understanding Exposure *Read p. 94-135 + Take 1 & Study 1 Picture*

Well, if this had been a class I would have failed.  Or at least gotten an incomplete.  But, blessedly, it is not.  So I'm back with my weekly report.  Suffice it to say, the past couple of weeks have been extraordinarily busy.  Some key words from the week include:  increased number of clients (hooray!), travelling, flu, newborn, and toddler.  I'll spare you the gory details,  but you can see how time might have slipped away from me.  

Anyway, on to what's important.  Here's the picture I took a couple weeks ago.  I missed taking a picture last week, and I still need to do one for this week.  This particular picture seemed to go well with my tardiness though.

f/11, ISO 100, 50mm, 9 min. exposure

The reading this week was very dense and about two to three times as long as the previous readings.  Go figure that this reading would occur during my week of chaos.  I found this chapter to be immensely helpful.  If the elements of the photographic triangle are ISO, aperture, and shutter speed, then metering is what enables you to correctly draw the triangle.  Until this year (as in, the past 12 months), I did not have a firm grasp on what metering was or how to use it.  I still have a whole lot to learn.  I know now that metering will make or break a picture.  It really is a key element in photography.

This will be a long list, but here are some things I picked up from this week's reading:

* Peterson covers the idea of a "creatively correct exposure."  It's very logical that there are many different correct ways to expose a picture.  However, his emphasis on this concept really gives me the confidence to try new/different exposures and to ignore the camera's light meter sometimes.

Lighting

*Knew this one:  best light is early morning/late afternoon.  It was helpful to learn that this means a couple hours after sunrise and a couple hours before and a bit after sunset. 

* These are the different types of lighting Peterson identifies:  Frontlight, Overcast Frontlight, Sidelight, and Backlight

* Apparently there is a sunny f/16 rule for frontlit subjects - Shoot at f/16 and the shutter speed at the closest number to your ISO.  (p. 114)

* Good sidelight pictures can be achieved by shooting toward north or south.  This is a problem for me since I have absolutely  no idea which way north is.  I suppose the light will be able to tell me.  

* When taking sidelight pictures, take an additional exposure at -1 (digital) or +1 (film).  This allows for greater contrast/shadows and produces a more 3 dimensional picture.  

* When using a telephoto lens for backlight, meter off the sky just beside the sun.  This will result in accurate silhouettes.  

* If you have backlight and don't want a silhouette or to use artificial lighting, move in close to meter off the face/object, and then recompose the shot.  

* Transparent objects (leaves, webs, flowers) make good subjects for backlight.

18% Reflectance

* The camera meter sees the world as gray.  Gray subjects reflect about 18% of the light back.  (White - apx. 36% and black - apx. 9%)

* The meter wants to make things reflect 18% as gray does.  Thus, pictures with strong contrast are made dull when you follow the camera meter.  White or black becomes more gray as the meter tries to achieve 18% reflectance.  You must choose a creatively correct exposure and ignore your camera meter.  A gray card can help in these situations since you can get the correct meter and then recompose and ignore what the light meter says.

* You can use a gray card for metering.  I got one of these for Christmas and have only used it for white balance.  Makes perfect sense that it can also be used for metering because oft he 18% reflectance.  

*  Apparently the palm of your hand makes for a good meter reading as well!  If you sink it with your gray card and know how far the difference is, you can use your palm to meter and then make the appropriate adjustment.  How 'bout that!  Only problem would be with my telephoto lens - my arms aren't that long.  

Metering Basics

*  Peterson calls the light meter the center of the photographic triangle (aperture, shutter speed, ISO).  

* Peterson recommends taking a second exposure at -2/3 for digital (-2/3 for slide film, +2/3 for color negative film).  This often leads to better contrast and gives you another option to work with.  (A side note - I've tried using the bracket feature on my camera (click for more details on bracketing) and ended up royally messing up some pictures.  I complete the full bracket, and so I would go to take a new shot and end up with it being overexposed/underexposed depending on where I stopped in the previous bracketing process.  I imagine this would happen less with a carefully composed nature scene, but with kids it was dern near impossible for me to keep up.  The idea of going out of my way to take a shot at -2/3 would probably work better for me.)

*Built in camera meters measure reflected light.  (Makes sense.)  Unless it's using matrix metering.  Read on.

* As much as a try, the different types of metering are still hard for me to remember.  Here they are: 

1) Average or Averaging reflected-light meters - takes an average reading of the entire shot.  Good in general, but can really screw up a shot with extreme shadows.

2) Spot meter - Takes the reading form 1-5 degrees of the specific area (or spot).  Peterson notes that "they have limited but important use in my daily picture-taking efforts." (p. 116)

3) Center-weighted meter - Meters from the entire scene, but is biased towards the center.  To take a reading, you'd center your subject in the middle of your frame, set the meter, then recompose.  Peterson uses this for the majority of his shots.  Since my camera doesn't have the next type of metering, which also gets Peterson's recommendation, especially for beginners, I'll be using center-weighted metering with an occasional trip to see spot metering when the situation arises.

4) Matrix metering - The camera is loaded with a preset of subjects.  When you compose a shot, it pulls from its bank of images and chooses the closest one and uses that to generate the correct exposure.  

Metering Tips

Peterson comes up with several helpful suggestions on how to achieve accurate metering.  This was the part of the chapter I found to be most helpful.  The names a kinda hokey, but at least they stick in my head.  I tried a couple of these out and got mixed results, so I still want to play around with it a bit, but I'm very happy to have the suggestions.  

* Sky Brothers:  Brother Blue Sky, Brother Backlit Sky, Brother Dusky Blue Sky, and Brother Reflecting Sky.  Basically, the sky gives you an accurate meter reading.  For backlit - you take the reading just to the side of the sun.  And for Brother Reflecting Sky, you take the reading from the water/whatever that the sky is reflecting from.

My issue with this suggestion is that I'm not sure how well it works for portraits.  I watched a video recently where the photographer metered off the sky, and then set his light to produce the same lighting situation for the model so that the model would be correctly exposed and the sky would be blue behind her.  It seems to me that this might not always be the case.  If the person is in a shadow, for instance, metering off the blue sky probably isn't a good idea.  I suppose this is common sense though.

* Mr. Green Jeans:  Use when you have a shot with a lot of green in it.  You meter off the green, but set the exposure -2/3 stops from what the camera meter says.  

Night and Low-Light Photography

* Use a tripod.  Yup.  Imagine that.  Get to know the bulb exposure feature on your camera while you're at it.  

* Low-light photography seems to require some math skill.   In his examples, Peterson often metered off the sky at 2.8 (or whatever wide open is) and then adjusted the correct meter to fit his desired aperture.  For example, he'd start at 2.8 and 1/4 sec., but want to be at f/22.  So he'd change the shutter speed to 30 seconds.  (Both changed 6 stops).  

* If taking pictures of a "moonrise," don't go on a full moon - go the day before.  Then the sky and landscape are almost identical in exposure.

Whew!  What a chapter.  One definitely worth reading.  Hope the summary wasn't too boring.  I was a little more detailed on this one than previous ones.  Almost done with this book!  One more chapter to go.

Extension

Dear Readers,

Please allow Photography Unfiltered an extension for her assignment this week.  She has been travelling a lot and has been very busy.  She will complete the assignment by Wednesday.

Thank you!

WA: Understanding Exposure *Read p. 94-135 + Take 1 & Study 1 Picture*

This week's reading will cover light.  It's a long chapter.  Imagine that!

This week's task, should you choose to accept it:  

* Read the second section titled Shutter Speed (p. 94-135)

* Take a picture.  You get five chances to take one great shot.

*Study someone else's picture

Taking a picture in this way will occur every week.  It can be of anything.  When I take pictures, I tend to take a lot trying to get the composition and settings just right.  By limiting myself to five attempts for THE shot, I'm forcing myself to take the time to check the settings and composition ahead of time.  I'm also trying to prevent myself from getting overwhelmed with a large number of unnecessary images.  I'm just too much of a scardy cat to limit myself to getting it right with only one shot.

The picture to study can be any picture.  On a billboard, in a card, in the current reading, on the web...you get the idea.  The simple act of looking at someone else's photography makes you a better photographer.  A great way to do this is to subscribe to receive Better Photo's Photo of the Day.  I have been doing this for a couple years now.  You get a different picture every day sent to your inbox.  It helps me branch out since the pictures are always of something different.  (Not all nature or landscape or kids.)  And you don't even have to go looking for it - the photo comes to you!

I'll post a Weekly Report (WR) with my picture and any thoughts about the chapter sometime this week.   I do not plan to discuss the picture I viewed unless there was something particularly striking about it.  I see a lot of pictures and it is sometimes difficult for me to put my thoughts into coherent words when it comes to analyzing them.  Also, in order for it to be helpful to you, you'd need to be able to see the picture as well!

I'm not predictable enough to guarantee the WR on a certain day, but it'll be here before Sunday at midnight.

WR: Understanding Exposure *Read p. 72-91 + Take 1 & Study 1 Picture*

Had a busy weekend of picture taking - hooray!  If we're lucky, I'll get some of the pictures on here.

I realize as I cover these book chapters, it would be more helpful to actually summarize them, but time just does not allow.  So, I'll assume that you can read them yourself and keep on saying what I liked about the chapter.

This week's reading was about shutter speed.  Here were the things that I found really helpful this week:

-You need a shutter speed of at least 1/500 to 1/1000 to stop motion (p. 76).  I've attempted on a few occasions to stop motion, only to fail miserably.  Now I know what to aim for.

-Use slower shutter speeds when panning - 1/60 to 1/8.  Huh.  I'm still not sure how to do this and not get blur caused from the movement of my hand (ie, up and down /crooked blur).  Something to work on later.

-1/2 sec gives you the cotton effect with flowing water.

I suppose I already knew the basics of shutter speed, so what I took from this reading were numbers that will give me a basis when I'm out shooting.  It gives me an idea of what shutter speed to look for.

The picture this week:

This was a very good exercise in the use of light for me.  This is a wine glass with water in it and a candle behind the glass.  Moving the candle closer or farther from the glass completely changed the shape of the light around the glass.  Very interesting.

This picture kept looking slightly crooked and I couldn't figure out why.  I think the glass is actually now straight (after a little post-rotating), but the water is still crooked!  No wonder it looks funny.  I may attempt this shot again at some point now that I have a better idea of what results.