Megan by the window

[Joan Breckwoldt]

Dear Mike,

Thank you so much for your post and the helpful information. I have pushed down the shutter release button half-way to 'hold' settings on my still camera but wasn't aware that I could do the same thing on my digital camera. And it's been so long I don't even remember what settings I was trying to 'hold' or capture with the still camera. I will have to see if I can get that to work.

I probably need to get some kind of metering device, if nothing else it would help me understand why when I look through the lens and see light, but then when I load the digital photos on the computer, they're dark. Well, it might not help me to understand it, but at least I won't be surprised by my dark images.

Mike, thank you again for helping me out with this. You have such a vast amount of knowledge when it comes to photography (obvious in your reference photos and all the help you give on this forum) that you have saved me untold amounts of time.

We're leaving town tomorrow but the first thing I will do when we get back is try out your suggestions. I'm glad I saw your post before I left and was able to answer so you wouldn't think your help went unappreciated.

Joan

[Mike McCarty]

I probably need to get some kind of metering device

Joan,

Every modern camera has a "metering device" built in. This is how it determines proper exposure for any given light situation. Exposure being the combination of two factors a) how wide the aperture is opened (aka f stop, this can range from 2.8 to 22 and many points in between) and b) how long the aperture is left open (aka shutter speed, ranging from full seconds to many thousandths of a second). Or in other words, how much light, and for how long. These two things combine to determine the amount of light which hits either the film, or in the case of digital, the chip. In very low light situations the aperture would want to open wide for a long time.

It makes this determination based on what it sees through the viewfinder, not necessarily what is in front of the camera.

Some cameras allow the viewfinder to be further separated into smaller "zones" such as, the middle 1/3, or in the case of spot metering, the center 5+-% of the viewfinder. When one of these zones is selected, only the lighting conditions within this zone is used to determine the exposure of the scene. There may be other calculus going on depending on the sophistication of the camera.

So if you can, through any of these methods described in this or the above post, explain to your camera that you would like to expose only for the area of the face, then you will get a proper exposure for that section of the viewfinder. Understanding that other areas of the picture may be either over or under exposed, but for your purposes, you don't really care.

In the following example the girl was standing in front of pure sunlight. If the camera were allowed to consider the entire frame it would have tried to balance all that light coming in and the result would have been a completely washed out face. Instead, I asked the camera to only consider the light on her face for exposure. This gave a pleasing facial exposure and completely over exposed the background, which was fine with me.

[Sharon Knettell]

Mike,

Thanks for jumping in with some great advice. I have a beautiful reliable FE2 Nikon which I only use on manual mode. It does not have too many bells and whistles anyway. It does have through the lens metering and I always meter for the face and bracket like ****, for the rest. My printmaker burns in the lights, if need be. I am so used to shooting in available light manually, it is hard to relay that information to someone starting out with different equipment.

As I understand nowadays that kind of printing adjustment is no longer an available option for digital. The exposure has to be right on the money. Any lights or whites, if they are washed out cannot be retrieved.

Thanks again,

[Mike McCarty]

As I understand nowadays that kind of printing adjustment is no longer an available option for digital. The exposure has to be right on the money. Any lights or whites, if they are washed out cannot be retrieved.

This is what I've been told as well, although, I don't have any solid experience yet with my new digital camera.