Imre Z. Balint, BSc, MPM, MBA

A few days ago I posted a quick quiz on my page on Facebook and I promised a blog post to explain it for those who might not have been sure of the answer. So, below are the three exposures (sensitivity - aperture - shutter speed) I provided and the question was: if you took a photo of the same scene, would the pics look identical or different? A. ISO 100 - f/5.6 - 1/60 sec. B. ISO 400 - f/8 - 1/125 sec. C. ISO 3200 - f/11 - 1/500 sec. Strictly Exposure In regard to exposure, A, B and C are identical. In fact, you could put your camera into manual mode and take three photos of the same scene with these settings and the shots should look very much the same (in the section below I discuss some other effects that occur). In making up this quiz, I decided to stick with standard values for sensitivity, shutter speed and aperture. Therefore, you can use full-stops to figure out any differences between the exposures. In case you're not familiar with the concept of "stops...

Well I thought I would do a video on this, but time has been a little sparse lately so I decided to write up a post instead. Now if you're not familiar with how camera metering works then I'd recommend you check out Episode 6 which is on the topic to get you up to speed; the supplemental post has some good resource links if you'd like to learn even more. The Setup Have you ever looked out at a beautiful snowy landscape thinking what a wonderful photo it would make, then after taking the shot you ponder why it turned out so flat? Well, you can pretty much blame the way the camera's metering system works for this outcome. Let's use a simple example to understand what is happening. Before us is a landscape covered mostly with snow, a cloudy (thus white) sky and some trees also mostly covered with bright white snow. To our adaptive vision, all is well and the snow is a brilliant, almost blinding, white and the shadow areas of the scene (trunks of trees and expose...

Well I have to admit that I didn't think Episode 6 was going to be this long! And I tried to keep to the basics as much as possible too. Perhaps this is perfectly normal though, as indeed getting your exposure just right (or the way you want it) is really not that simple. In the video I covered five different methods of controlling exposure: 1) Metering modes, 2) Locking the exposure, 3) Using filters, 4) Using a light meter, and 5) Using the exposure compensation button (that one with the +/- sign on it). By the way, EV = exposure value. Before moving on to further details, I would like to add that I could have mentioned exposure bracketing, which most dSLRs support. What exposure bracketing does in general is that your camera will take 3 to 5 photos (depending on the setting) in rapid succession using various exposure compensation values; those values can be set to your liking on most cameras. So for example, if your camera is set to take 3 photos from -1 EV to +1 EV, then y...

Well it's been a long day of video shooting, editing, and uploading, but Episode 6 is live. As it's a tad late now, I'll finish my usual supplemental blog post tomorrow evening after work. And yes, I plugged my new album, Just Listen, at the end of the video. Currently, I know it's live on iTunes, but in a matter of a week or two, it should be popping up in other digital locations.