There are some simple rules and “tricks” when taking photographs, which can improve the result of your photos. An absolute basis, which I want to convey to you today as an introduction to photography, is the use of the camera’s internal exposure meter.
What is the camera’s internal light meter on your digital SLR?
The light meter in the camera determines the exposure time for your photo in three camera modes. As I’ve noticed, Nikon photographers are more likely to use auto-exposure on the camera, whereas Canon photographers are more likely to use auto-iris.
The exposure measurement on your camera, however, plays in both automatic settings, as well as in the fully automatic your camera a crucial role in the “image design.”
The exposure time is measured with the camera using a field in your viewfinder, which is also crucial for the focus sensor. Usually, this is the sensor field in the center of the viewer (but you can also move this field somewhere else).
Also, SLR cameras usually support different types of measurement, but I recommend that you switch to the frequency with a sensor field. This setting gives you the most power directly while taking pictures.
Incidentally, some time ago, I found two apps and tested the subject of exposure metering with the iPhone.
How best to capture the mood of light on photos?
Often, as a photographer, you are faced with the situation that the ambient light that you want to capture in available light photography is a delicate light situation for the sensor of the camera.
A very typical example, in my view, is the photography of sunrises and sunsets, but also in situations with different lighting situations such as a house in the shade and a bright sky in the background.
Procedure for the exposure measurement
If you do not press the shutter button down, but keep it pressed lightly so that no photo is taken, your camera will usually save the exposure information and focus to the center of the sensor measurement field. Most manufacturers recognize this when the sensor measurement point in the viewfinder briefly lights up red. If you now hold down the button and you wave the camera, then take a photo in which you press the trigger completely, so a picture is made with the values that you have received at the first point.
What you should watch out for is the following: If the camera is set to save the focus and exposure metering, the sharpness level will be taken next to the appropriate exposure time. This means in detail: If you first focused on a very close subject (perhaps because it was just lighter or darker than the main topic focused and you hold the shutter button halfway down), the sharpness in your photo will not change.
If you want to capture a subject with the values, which is farther away, the final photo will be blurry because the lens does not focus again, of course, you can use it creatively, which I will explain in another post tomorrow wants to tell.
On the left, you can see a photo where I focused on the distant treetops first, pressed the trigger halfway, and then centered on the clouds in the background and fired. The result is that the exposure meter now the trees are well exposed with an exposure time of 1/10 seconds, the sky and its structure through the clouds but now almost torn out, or in general, as you say, has lost to draw.
If you now focus on the clouds and the meter now saves the exposure time of 1/40 seconds, you will get slightly underexposed trees but a sky, including the structure of the clouds as it should be. You can easily see this from the photo on the right.
The same principle should, therefore, apply to sunsets.
How best to photograph sunsets or sunrises?
You’ve probably experienced it now and then, even if you’ve taken a picture of a sunrise or sunset, that the landscape or what’s outside is usually exposed and you could see all the details. Nothing was too dark (underexposed) in the scene. However, the sunset was no longer recognizable, since the sky around the sun is almost white, and the actual color impression is wholly gone.
This “phenomenon” occurs when you have focussed on a dark spot in your subject first and then pressed the trigger on your camera.
In the case of a sunset or sunrise, it would be right to focus in the middle of the bright “body” of the sun, to hold down the shutter button halfway, and then to select the desired section. So you get the lighting mood and still get the motif displayed.
If the landscape is still too dark for you, there is really nothing left to do but take a tripod, focus on the sun, and then take a series of bracketing exposures that will allow you to create an HDR photo. Only in this way can we outsmart the limited image information of the sensor and take a picture of every exposure condition, including overexposure and underexposure.
In the two examples above, you can see how a minimal change of the exposure time from 1/40 s to 1/10 seconds in the evening can already affect the lighting mood.
So the simple rule of thumb is: Do you want to make dark areas of the picture brighter in a photo, then focus on them, hold the shutter button halfway and then take the photo with the desired image detail. Attention: This is an overexposure of the brighter picture parts included.
If you want to photograph the bright part of a photo as realistically as possible, focus on it, shutter button half-pressed again, and now pans the camera on your image. However, this is likely to underexpose all darker areas of the picture.
When shooting against the sun, it is usually only possible to use a flash that adjusts the exposure of the dark main subject to the disclosure of the background. Thus, both parts of the picture become almost equally bright. This effect can be used, for example, very well in portrait photography.
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