The first thing I tell students that come to my studio to undertake one of my photography tutorials is to take their camera off automatic and put it on manual.

This means that you can still use the cameras light metering system to tell you what exposure is needed, but instead of it choosing the shutter speed, aperture and ISO settings, you will have to manually dial these in. What this forces you to do is move the dials and take more notice of what each shots settings are.

Knowing about camera calibration

What is important to know, is how the cameras internal exposure metering system works. I am not going to go into too much depth about the technical side here, but instead I want to make this explanation as simple as possible to follow. The camera is calibrated by the manufacturers in such a way that it will give the correct exposure in most situations most of the time. To do this it is calibrated to midtone reflections of light. Which means that things that are midway been the extremes of light//white or dark/black, which make up most of the world we see. Grass, tree leaves and bark, pavement stones, bricks, stone, most of the things around us are somewhere on the midtone range. Snow is on the light/bright side and dark shadow is on the dark end. The camera meter looks out of the lens to whatever you have it pointed at in that moment, it evaluates all of the scenery (assuming you have it on matrix metering setting) gives each piece of that scenery a light value and works out what will be the correct exposure.

The scale at the bottom of your viewfinder tells you where on the exposure scale you are with your current cameras shutter, aperture and ISO settings (check out exposure triangle for more about these). -2 on the scale means you are at least 2 stops underexposed, and +2 means you are 2 stops overexposed. By manually moving the shutter or aperture dial one way or the other you will see the marker on the scale move towards the center. When the marker is in the middle of the scale it is at the correct exposure.

so for illustration purposes we compose the shot we want to take and see that the display indicates two stops overexposed. which means there is too much light using the current camera settings, so we move the aperture from f2.8, to f4 (which is one stop different see aperture for more about stops)

At f4 we are still one stop overexposed, so we move it to f5.6 (below) Now the marker is in the middle, indicating that we have the correct exposure.

Taking the shot would provide a perfectly good exposure at this point (providing there is no back lighting,the sky in the shot could provide a slight misreading of the exposure, zooming into the flower only and cutting out the sky, then taking the meter reading may help this, before re-composing the shot and taking.

If we then move the aperture to f8, we see that the marker has moved to the left my one stop, meaning that the shot is now underexposed and needs more light for the correct exposure.

Finally moving onto f11 shows us we are now 2 stops underexposed.

If you take the photography at f5.6 (using the illustrations above) you will get a well exposed image. If you then shift the camera and point the lens to something else, check the scale to see if the marker is still in the middle, if it isn’t then dial the shutter or aperture in one direction or the other until the marker moves to the center, take the shot and you should have a perfectly good exposure.

Photographing in extreme lighting conditions

Now you are using the meter on your camera to give you an exposure reading, based on the average scene, and as we said before this will work in most cases. However if you are photographing a particularly bright/light scenes, such as a snowy scene than you will have to make a slight adjustment. Taking the photography of a snowy scene may fool your camera meter, which thinks the scene should be mid tone, not as white as it is.

Taking the photograph with the marker in the middle will provide an off-white greyish look to the scene, which is because the camera has been fooled into underexposing the shot. If you dial the marker so that it is showing +1 on the scale this will over-ride the incorrect underexposed reading of the  built in camera meter. The opposite is necessary when pointing to a particularly black or dark scene.

Back lighting

Back-lit scenes provide a similar problem for the camera meter. Imagine If you are photographing someone on a sunny beach with blue sea and sky in the background and the person you are photographing is facing towards you and away from the sun, so that they are stood in their own shadow. When you set your exposure and move the marker to the middle of the scale, you will have a perfectly exposed image for the sky and the scene as a whole but the persons face will be very dark, because their face will be in shadow.

Again your camera has taken all the data from the scene and worked out the best exposure for the scene as a whole, it doesn’t know that you want a particular part of that scene (ie the person), who is not in the same illumination as the rest of the scene exposed correctly. So you have two choices, either turn the subject so that the sun is shining on their face and retake, or zoom into the subject with your camera so that they fill the viewfinder, excluding any background illumination. Get the marker into the center of the scale. Zoom back out and retake the shot (don’t readjust the exposure again though). This will mean you have metered on the person and the light level that is on them only. This will result in them being perfectly exposed but the rest of the scene will be overexposed. It is your choice as the photographer what you want from the shot and which way is best for your purposes. Actually there is a third option, which is use your cameras built in flash. Meter for the scene as a whole and use your flash to fill in the subject. This is the best option, providing the subject is not too far away from the camera when you take the shot, otherwise the flash will not have the power to illuminate the subject over a larger distance.

• White scene = +1 or even +2 overexpose
• Black or dark scene = -1 or even -2 underexpose

Further considerations

Something to bear in mind when you are dialing in the shutter or aperture to get the marker into the middle of the scale on your camera is to think about the speed of your shutter, if it is under 1/60 you will need to use a tripod to steady the shot. Otherwise you will get some camera shake. Alternatively you can open the aperture more so that you can speed up the shutter, allowing you to hand hold. Faster than 1/60th second will allow you to handhold the camera without camera shake.

So you want to be a better photographer, and don’t know where to start. Well you’re on the right page. This is the first page to giving you a better understanding of photography and getting the most from your camera. All the articles I’ve included in this blog are based on you having a SLR camera.

What is a SLR camera and why do I need it?

SLR is an acronym for Single Lens Reflex,  Which is a camera that typically uses a mirror and prism system (hence “reflex”, from the mirror’s reflection) that permits the photographer to view through the lens and see exactly what will be captured, contrary to viewfinder cameras where the image could be significantly different from what will be captured. I am not going to get into viewfinder cameras in this article as this is not our focus at this time. Professionals prefer to use SLR cameras for this very reason, they know exactly what they are going to capture, when they take the photograph (some cameras only show 90% of the final image captured), but in terms of proportion and lens distortion what you see is what you get. Check out this cross section of how an SLR looks

Capture the light

Think of your camera as a light box. different values of brightness of light enters through the lens and when you press the shutter, the sensor (in the case of a digital camera) is exposed to the light and captures an image. The exact amount of light can be controlled by you the photographer, depending on the settings you choose on your camera. Your SLR camera has a built in light meter, that will help you decide what settings you need to use to get the right amount of light so that your photo is not too light or too dark (correct exposure). This meter is calibrated to capture midtone images which have been deemed by the manufacturers to make up the vast majority of scenes that are likely to be taken in a photograph. Most often this will give the correct exposure reading, but there are some situations that will fool your camera into giving you an incorrect reading and will result in incorrectly exposed photographs. By knowing what your camera is trying to do, you will be able to override your camera settings to make the correct setting and get a well exposed photograph. The use of a separate light meter can also help if you are at a more advanced level

Flash

Using flash whether that be on-camera flash or off-camera flash can help you get good quality photographers in situations where there is very little light to work with, such as poorly lit rooms.

Getting creative

There are three controls (shutter speed, Aperture and Sensor sensitivity) that you can adjust which will affect:

• Exposure – how much light you allow onto the sensor, hopefully avoiding underexposure (not enough light) and overexposure (too much light)
• Sharpness and freezing of action – controlled by the speed of the shutter, slow shutter provides movement in shot, fast shutter provides frozen action or no movement
• Blurring background or foreground – often referred to as shallow depth of field, the opposite of this is everything being in focus from front to back of the image.
• Quality of photograph – whether the image you capture has some graininess to it or is of a higher quality (no grain)

Check out exposure triangle for more information about achieving these

 White balance

White balance boils down to the concept of color temperature. . Color temperature is a way of measuring the quality of a light source. In laypersons terms it is how different light sources and colours are recorded by your camera and how you can adjust your settings to record these light sources to look cleaner and less of a colour cast of yellow or green or blue.

 Composition

Composition relates to how your frame your images, so that they look more interesting and provide the viewer with a more interesting experience when looking at that photograph

If you find it easier to learn in a more hands-on way and would like to know more about my one to one photography tuition please check out my tutorial page

Would you like to be able to go out on a sunny day and know what would be an appropriate exposure without having to use a light meter or your cameras built-in meter to calculate the correct exposure? Well there is a little rule which will help you do just that. One of the best and easiest to memorise and as simple as it is, it can really help you out if you find yourself without a light meter. It’s a great learning aid too. Here is what the rule says

if it is a bright sunny day (mid day is usually the brightest part of the day with the sun at its highest point, noticeable by the shadows having well defined edges) match your shutter speed (1/125 of a second with your ISO setting (or as close as you can get it ISO 100) and your aperture should be F16.

• shutter = 1/125, ISO = 100, aperture = F16
• shutter = 1/250, ISO = 200, aperture = F16

I have never come across a situation here in the UK where you will overexpose your photograph when you stick to this rule. This is only when you’re shooting subjects in the full exposure of the sun of course, you will have to adjust settings if shooting in darker shadow areas. Sometimes it can be difficult to see your camera display settings clearly in bright sunshine and having a rule like this helps a lot I have found, repetition through practice will help you lock this into your memory.

A slight adjustment on this rule I use when I am wanting a shallow depth of field (to blur the background more) is to set my aperture at F5.6 and set my shutter to either 1/1000 if shooting at ISO 100 or
1/2000 if shooting at ISO 200 or
1/4000 if shooting at ISO 400

this is effectively the same settings as the sunny 16 rule as you move through the various setting

• 1/125 f16 ISO 100 is the same exposure as
• 1/250 f11 ISO 100 is the same exposure as
• 1/500 f8 ISO 100 is the same exposure as
• 1/1000 f5.6 ISO 100

This setting is a little bit more advanced, so if you’re just starting out forget the last bit of this article and practice using the earlier example. Once you have this technique memorised and well practiced move on to the later example. Hopefully you have a better understanding of the sunny 16 rule and it will help as a guide if you are without a light meter or your camera meter is playing up.

If you would like a one to one tutorial with me check out my photography tutorial service