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.
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