Peter West Carey Photography

Tag: light

Daylight Through Smoke Or Dust – Photography Experiments
Yesterday’s topic was Shoot Some Shadows.

This is the last part of the light and dark, super contrasty experiment mini-series (not its real name). The other parts were Shooting Some Shadows and Shooting Some Silhouettes.

Today we want to add some pizzazz to sunlight photos. Specifically, when sunlight is coming through an opening, be it a window, another window or maybe a door with a window. Or clouds! The key here is you need stuff for the light to bounce off of so we can see it, otherwise it just passes through the air and we can’t capture it.

This experiment is going to be easy, but you might get dirty in some way.

Examples

Here’s the experiment you can run:

1) Set your camera on Manual mode, ISO 800. Pick a lens of your suiting. Aperture to f/4.5.

2) You’ll need contrast for this to work. Pick a room or space that is mostly dark. If you have a natural light source, such as light through a window, that will work. Otherwise, grab a flashlight and a book of matches. In this case, I used my iPhone with a flashlight app.

3) Meter off the area where the light falls, not where it’s coming from. If this area is very white or black, you’ll need to use the techniques from Making White Tones, White and Making Black Tones, Black.

Here’s what happens when you meter off where the light is coming from:

ISO 800, 22mm, f/4.5, 1/1250

Not good.

But when metered for the area where the light is hitting, I get ISO 800, 22mm, f/4.5, 1/15.

4) Metering is set? Good. Now light a match or two and blow it out in that space where the light falls. Using a tripod might be a good idea.

5) Take your shot!

DONE!

Were you able to capture the smoke in the light? Something like this?

This is the basic concept to taking the picture in the examples.

In the case of these image, I metered off the floor and then threw some dirt into the air. Same thing as with the match (blowing it out caused smoke/particulate/dust to come about).

Any time you have a dark area with a strong beam of light coming in, use this technique.
- Meter off the lit area, compensating depending on its inherent light absorption (black or whiteness).
- Get some particulate into the light beam. Smoke, dust, dirt, etc…
- Snap away!
It really is just that easy to make dramatic images. On a larger scale, you can do this with the sun.

Things To Consider
- Be careful when playing with fire.
- Be careful when playing with dirt as it can mess up your pictures if it is on your lens or sensor.
- Be careful crossing the street.
- Be careful when signing up for online dating.
- Just be careful. Okay?
Next we’ll tackle Changing Focus Changes Exposure.

Questions? Pop ’em like Pez in the comments section below or email me at peter@peterwestcarey.com.

Photography Basics – A 43 Day Adventure, and its companion 40 Photography Experiments, are series written by professional photographer Peter West Carey. The series are designed to unravel the mysteries of photography, helping you can take better pictures. Subscribe here to receive all the updates and bonus material. Your comments are always welcome.

If you enjoy the series, consider learning photography first-hand on a professionally led international photo tour in Nepal or Bhutan!
February 24, 2021
Sun Stars – Photography Experiments
Wandered here from somewhere else? Check out all of the 40 Photography Experiments!

Today we will cover sun stars. This experiment is simple and can be a lot of fun. First, tell me what the main difference is between these two photos of the Treasury at Petra in Jordan:

The answer is: the sun in the second shot has far more ‘rays’ coming out of it.

This is because I used different aperture settings between the two shots. In the first photo, the f-stop is f/10 and in the second photo the f-stop is f/22. When the aperture of a lens is closed down further, the light coming in around those aperture blades shapes differently when it comes from a strong source, like the sun (or light bulbs).

That’s not to say you don’t get any star effect when the aperture is open further, it is simply more pronounced the further you stop down the aperture. You can use this at night to great affect when there are multiple light sources.

In these two examples of the Plaza de Armas in Cusco, Peru, the first is shot at f/5.6 and the second at f/22.

Some stars in the lights. But we can do better.

Simple!

Here’s the experiment you can run:

1) Set your camera to Aperture priority or Manual.

2) Jack up your aperture to the highest number it will accomplish.

3) Find yourself a light source. The sun works, but so do candles.

4) Frame your image (from this point forward, no excuse for boring composition!!).

5) Take a shot!

Done!

This technique can be a lot of fun but it can also become overused. The normal habit for most starting out in photography is to play around excessively with a new technique until they settle in. Eventually they don’t want to use it all the time. That’s normal, so go play!

Things To Consider:
- Your shutter speed will slow down when using this technique. Keep that in mind if shooting at night (the second shot of Cusco was a 2 second exposure with the camera held against a column).
- You might need to increase your ISO to compensate.
- Play around with your exposure as metering can be freaked out by pointing your camera near the sun.
- If there is dust on your sensor, a smaller aperture (higher number) will show it. Be prepared to clean things in the computer if this is the case.
- Increasing Contrast and/or Clarity in your post processing software to make the rays of the light show more.
Questions? Pop ’em like Pez in the comments section below. or email me at peter@peterwestcarey.com.

Photography Basics – A 48 Day Adventure, and its companion 40 Photography Experiments, are series written by professional photographer Peter West Carey. The series are designed to unravel the mysteries of photography, helping you can take better pictures. Subscribe here to receive all the updates and bonus material. Your comments are always welcome.

If you enjoy the series, consider learning photography first-hand on a professionally led international photo tour in Nepal or Bhutan!
March 25, 2019
Fun With Light Trails – Photography Basics

Fun With Light Trails

Light Trails take a bit of imagination to conceptualize and shoot. While not vital, it helps to be able to plot out how you want your image to appear to understand the camera settings for this type of photography.

Here’s the deal; light comes in to your camera and hits your sensor. As mentioned previously, your sensor’s pixels and little scales measuring the amount of light ‘weighing’ on them (‘striking’ them is another way to think of it and is more accurate).

The more light that hits the sensor, the higher the scale reads. Most pixels have a scale from 0-255. 0 is black. 255 is all filled up with that particular pixel’s color (red, green, blue…if you need a diagram, check out the post on ISO).

How Light Trails

All fine and well. What happens to create a light trail? Light from a source moves across the scene in front of the camera and is emitting light (or reflecting it, but let’s stick with an actual light sources here, like a lightbulb, or the glowing eyes of the Yeti which actually emit light. Look it up).

As it moves from left to right, let’s say, it essentially ‘paints’ the pixels in its path with something brighter than what was behind it. Often these shots are taken at night, so the background is really dark, maybe a 20 on that 0-255 scale. Now this bright light comes along and pushes the pixel ‘scales’ up to 240 or even maxes them out to 255.

The pixels can’t go back down the scale and thus they show the bright 240 reading even though the light source has moved on to the pixels next to them.

Confused?

I kinda am, so let’s look at a pretty picture.

In this Fourth Of July shot I had the kids stand completely still. I then took a lit sparkler and traced it around them. It’s one of the few times I could get my daughter to remain still, so I I tried it many times to get the above image.

Because the sparkler (emitting light all over the place) was brighter than the background, and the shutter was open for 30 seconds, I was able to trace and have that brightest light recorded on the sensor.

Another pretty picture.

This shot is from Nepal with its mountains and chances to see stars. The exact same thing is happening here, believe it or not. Well, kinda.

On a simple scale I am holding the camera still on planet Earth and it is rotating. The stars are (perceptively, but not actually) holding still. So when the camera moves and the light source holds still, the light appears to move. Which is cool! In this case, the shutter was left open for 445 seconds.

There are two basic ways to go about recording light trails, be they Earth bound or in the heavens.

Method 1 – Long Exposure

This is the method in the first image above. I left the shutter open for 30 seconds in Shutter Priority mode. If you have a cable release or remote control for your camera, you can hold the shutter open even longer (or just hold down the shutter release when in Bulb mode, which might require switching to Manual mode). The long exposure method has its limits and challenges.

First of all, your subject needs to not move, otherwise it will appear blurred while the light trail is painted. I’m talking here about the subject, not the light that is doing the trailing.

Having kids stand still for 30 seconds is about the limits of this challenge according to the laws of physics. Even a relatively slow shutter speed can create light trails. Take a look at this .8 second long exposure of the Ferris wheel at the Santa Monica pier in California.

.8 seconds might not be long on the back of a bull, but it is long enough to give just the right movement to the lights on the wheel. In this case, it was pretty easy to get the pier to not move (barring earthquakes).

Get a tripod

Or, if no tripod is handy (as in the picture above) use anything that you can that won’t move. In this case I set my backpack down on the sand, positioned the camera on the back of it and used a self timer to ensure I wasn’t moving the camera, blurring the pier.

Another example. This shot is 20 seconds long and is taken in downtown Langley, Washington.

Method 2 – Stacking Multiple Images

The other main method is to stack multiple, shorter shutter length images into one final image. This takes a special program or Photoshop skills. I downloaded a simple program that costs $17 call Image Stacker. And it does just that. The method used to create light trails is called “Brightest”. Opps! Let me take a step back.

First, plan and take the photos

So step one would be to take the images. You set up your camera on a sturdy surface or tripod. Something non-moving (which begs the question of why I attempted this demo in California). Using either your finger to keep pressing the shutter lease, or a handy product called an intervalometer, take a series of images, one after the other, as close together as you can. This can lead to hundreds of images, or maybe just a dozen if you like.

Back at home

In your computer throw these images (in JPEG or TIFF format) at Image Stacker, choosing the ‘Brightest’ option. The program then looks at the same pixel in each image and only uses the brightest one.

It does this for how many ever millions of pixels you have. If you are shooting at a mainly black sky, for instance, it will see black in all of those pixels except for when a start moves across. Then it will just show that bright spot.

In this way you get trails, which may have spaces in them depending on the time between shots and how fast the objects are moving. By way of example, let me show you a test I did.

Example

I shot 150 frames of the view from Santa Monica towards LAX airport to the south. Each frame was .8 seconds long and a shot was taken each second. I then assembled the images using Lightroom and this cool plugin. The video it spit out looked like…

If I take those same images and stack them, I receive the image below:

Kinda cool. If I had taken one second exposures, the spaces in between lines would be less.

Photoshop can even be employed to create this effect. More information here.

Here’s an experiment to try

If you need some more pointers and want to try this yourself, I have a post on my 40 Photography Experiments series.

Fin!

I hope those two methods of creating light trails start you thinking about what you can create. Don’t look to the stars for all your inspiration, grab any type of light and see what you can create!

Photography Basics – A 43 Day Adventure, and its companion 40 Photography Experiments, are series written by professional photographer Peter West Carey. The series are designed to unravel the mysteries of photography, helping you take better pictures. Subscribe here to receive all the updates and bonus material. Your comments are always welcome.

If you enjoy the series, consider learning photography first-hand on a professionally led international photo tour in Nepal or Bhutan. More information can be found at Far Horizon Photo Tours.

January 23, 2019
Light Trails – Photography Experiments
Wandered here from somewhere else? Check out all the 40 Photography Experiments!

Light Trails

Today’s experiment is a fun one and I hope it gets you thinking of light differently, because there are a lot of things that can be done with this one. Just to be clear, Light Trails, as I talk about them here, are different than what most call “light painting”. Light painting, in my mind, is shining a light on something to illuminate it in a particular was to gain a particular effect. Like this:

In this case my friend Michael and I used flashlights to paint in the rocks. Otherwise they would have been very dark, like this:

Light trails are capturing the light directly emitted from the source while light painting is usually concerned with light reflecting off of surfaces. Here’s an example of Light Trails.

My fancy with light trails started with maybe my tenth roll of film about 28 years ago. I worked a swing shift and got home in the wee hours, around 3am. The streets were deserted then (fun fact: There were 5.2 billion people on the planet in 1990. In 2019 there are 7.7 billion. That could be part of the reason, 2.5 billion is a LOT less people driving the streets) and I took to some overpasses to play around with this technique. The idea was to record a set of taillights heading off into the distance. And it’s quite easy with any subject you choose.

Here’s the experiment you can run:
1. Wait until it is dark. Or find a large enough dark space if you’re impatient.
2. Set your camera on a tripod or stead surface. The shutter is going to be open for a while so it has to be rock steady.
3. Switch to Manual mode. Now set your aperture to f/8 as a starting point. ISO should be 200 or so. You can play around with these once you see the effect.
4. You will want some moving lights. I suggest cars as they are predictable. Strapping a glowstick to your cat’s collar can also work (someone please do this and post the results). You can also walk around with sparklers or a small LED light. Or even a candle.
5. “What about the shutter speed?” you say? That is going to depend on what you’re shooting. For starters, let’s go with 15 seconds and you will be able to adjust from there depending on how dark your scene is.
6. Focus on a known element in the frame, like a lamp post or anything not moving. Manual focus works best.
7. Release the hounds!! I suggest using your camera’s self-timer function (either in 2 second or 10 second mode….or better yet, use a remote control) to help you not wiggle the camera at the start.
8. Once the shutter is open, move the light source (give the cat catnip just before this point).
Done!

Your first attempt might be odd. But hopefully this gets you thinking. If you ever used sparklers on the 4th of July (or your country’s firework blowing-up holiday) you know what to do next. You can write words, trace outlines or just go crazy.

Are your lines took dark? What do you think you should change to make them lighter (there is more than one right answer)?

Is the scene too bright and you can’t see the trails? What should change?

For more info on this technique and some examples, check out my post in Photography Basics: A 43 Day Adventure.

Please post your attempts in the comments section below, either directly or as links. I’d love to see them (especially the cat-glowstick ones).

Here’s a sample from a few summers ago.

Questions? Pop ’em like Pez in the comments section below. or email me at peter@peterwestcarey.com.

Photography Basics – A 43 Day Adventure, and its companion 40 Photography Experiments, are series written by professional photographer Peter West Carey. The series are designed to unravel the mysteries of photography, helping you can take better pictures. Subscribe here to receive all the updates and bonus material. Your comments are always welcome.

If you enjoy the series, consider learning photography first-hand on a professionally led international photo tour in Nepal or Bhutan!
January 22, 2019
Different Times Of Day = Different Light = Different Photos – Photography Experiments
Let’s get started early on today’s photography experiment!

Different Times Of Day = Different Light = Different Photos

The purpose of the 40 Photography Experiments series is not to bring up earth shattering concepts, but to start you looking at light, and how you capture it, in a different way.

Today’s experiment will seem obvious, but it will be helpful to run through it, even if you read the title and commented, “Duh!”

Here’s the experiment you can run:

1) This experiment will go slow, so let’s try Manual Mode today. As the light will be changing in this experiment, you will need to think through changes to Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO as appropriate. If you get stuck, leave a comment and I will help out.
2) Choose a subject which is in an area where light will change during the day. Outside will likely be best, but items inside, with ample windows, work just as well.
3) Shoot your subject at three or four different times of the day. Keep the framing and point of view the same in each image so they match up. In other words; same subject, same camera location. Use a tripod if needed.

Done!

Some things to think about while performing this experiment:
- How is the light helping or hindering your shots?
- How does the mood in the image change?
- What would happen if you got obsessive and shot your subject each hour?
- Get crafty and try this experiment with more than one object at a time.
Here are three shots I took yesterday of a tree out front of my house.

The first two were fairly close together, about two hours apart. But I missed the chance for a sunset shot, opting instead to wait until night and catch the accent lights (with a little bit of camera blur from having the shutter open for .5 seconds and no tripod!).

Same tree, totally different feel.

Lighting Matters

Changes in lighting will make a dramatic shift in the mood and content of your photos. Remember, you are taking pictures of light, not just of objects. How that light plays and interacts with your subject is important.

What I hope you learn from this experiment is to not always accept the light that is given to you and take bad pictures because of it. Sometimes you might stumble upon a great subject, but the lighting in horrible. Wait a while, or maybe half a day, until the lighting improves.

Come back on a different day or different time of season. Think long term and visualize how you want the light to appear with a particular subject then take steps to make it happen.

I would love to see your experiments if you want to share them. Just include a link in the comments section below.

Questions? Pop ’em like Pez in the comments section below. or email me at peter@peterwestcarey.com.

Photography Basics – A 43 Day Adventure, and its companion 40 Photography Experiments, are series written by professional photographer Peter West Carey. The series are designed to unravel the mysteries of photography, helping you can take better pictures. Subscribe here to receive all the updates and bonus material. Your comments are always welcome.

If you enjoy the series, consider learning photography first-hand on a professionally led international photo tour in Nepal or Bhutan. More information can be found at Far Horizon Photo Tours.
November 14, 2018
Look At The Light – Photography Experiments

Today’s topic in 40 Photography Experiments has less to do with using a camera and more to do with photography.

Set your camera down for a moment, please. You won’t need it today.

Here’s the experiment you can run:

1) Look some place other than this computer/phone screen (but memorize these easy steps first).

2) Imagine all the power goes out and the sun suddenly goes dark. Ignore the fact that the Earth would turn into an ice ball or that worldwide panic has begun.

3) Everything is pitch black. Not even star light can make it through our atmosphere.

Done!

Can you take a picture of the stuff you saw right before the lights went out?

Here’s the thing: You take pictures of light, not stuff. You may have heard me mention this before.

Let’s me type that again in a bigger font, because it is the root of all photography.

You take pictures of light, not stuff.

Sure, the light bounces off stuff and then you take a picture of that reflected light, but you don’t take pictures of stuff, just light.

It’s a hard concept for some to dial in, myself included. We’ll play around with this more in another experiment later in the series, but for now, take a look at these two images with me:

These are red chilli peppers drying in the afternoon sun in Bhutan (where I lead photo tours, hint ). The shots were taken 9 seconds apart, which was long enough for me to take the first photo, walk 10′ and then take the second.

These peppers are in exactly the same light, but look totally different. In the first one I am looking mostly toward the sun and in the second the sun is behind me. I’m not taking pictures of just chilli peppers, I’m taking pictures of light interacting with the chilli peppers.

Still don’t believe me?

Different guy in each shot, but the same light at different angles.

You’re don’t take pictures of stuff; you take pictures of light.

Here’s another experiment you can run:

1) For the rest of today, walk around without your camera.

2) Look at the difference in light from scene to scene as your day unfolds. Where is it coming from? Is it warm or harsh? Are there shadows? How does it make a subject shine or become obscured? What would happen if your subject moved into new light?

Never Done!

This experiment will continue until the day you die. Light is everywhere and as a photographer (you don’t have to be professional to be a photographer) you can’t help but notice changes. With practice, you will be seeing the subtle differences in light even when you’re camera is not with you.

Questions? Pop ’em like Pez in the comments section below. or email me at peter@peterwestcarey.com.

Photography Basics – A 43 Day Adventure, and its companion 40 Photography Experiments, are series written by professional photographer Peter West Carey. The series are designed to unravel the mysteries of photography, helping you can take better pictures. Subscribe here to receive all the updates and bonus material. Your comments are always welcome.

If you enjoy the series, consider learning photography first-hand on a professionally led international photo tour in Nepal or Bhutan. More information can be found at Far Horizon Photo Tours.

November 9, 2018
Use Your Histogram Info For Better Photos – Photography Basics

What is a Histogram?

Boring Answer (from Wikipedia): An image histogram is a type of histogram that acts as a graphical representation of the tonal distribution in a digital image.^[1] It plots the number of pixels for each tonal value. By looking at the histogram for a specific image a viewer will be able to judge the entire tonal distribution at a glance.

While true, and full of more cross links than I can ever muster, what is it really?

Sexy Answer: A Histogram is your secret key to well balanced exposures sure to blow the minds of duchesses and dukes alike.

Mildly Serious Answer: It shows the tone and intensity of light across your camera’s total dynamic range so you know if things are going horribly, horribly wrong.

Histograms Deconstructed

Total dynamic range, as mentioned before, is the number of stops of light your camera sensor can handle. These days it’s about nine stops of light from the darkest to the lightest, on average. The histogram for that type of image looks like this:

And can be accessed on all DSLRs, mirrorless and a lot of Point and Shoot cameras if you hit display or info. button enough times when viewing an image. What that metering is showing you (this version is actually from Adobe Lightroom and not the back of the camera, so your histogram may show more of less information, especially the color information and the shot information) is how the light is falling and with what intensity.

On the left are the darkest blacks (RGB color of 0,0,0) and on the right are the brightest whites (RGB 255,255,255). If the line that is the histogram does not come back down to zero, the bottom basline of the graph, before it hits one side, that is called clipping.

It’s a lot like clipping in American football; it’s not nice. And that means there was light data beyond what the camera captured. Lost data. Lost quality.

The example above is fairly well balanced. It ends before getting to the extreme sides and thus, has no overexposure and no underexposure. Hooray for our team.

Helpful Histograms

How can histograms help? For one thing, the screen on your camera is small and not able to show the finite detail in exposure you might need. It’s not the same as your computer screen, which has more range.

So the histogram is a way to see a statistical representation of where light falls. Let’s look at an example of a ferry boat in Washington.

This first photo was shot on Auto, so the camera surmised this is the proper exposure, with its accompanying histogram below:

You can notice there is already some clipping. The darks/shadows area of the histogram on the left is not down to the baseline bottom and ends quite high on the left side. This is evident in the photo (which is admittedly harsh, with more dynamic range than my camera can handle) by the fact that there is, to put it simply, some really dark shadows.

Most cameras these day will show you just which areas are too bright and too dark by flashing the over/under-exposed areas or coloring them red like this:

Shifty Histograms

If we were to under expose or over expose the picture on purpose (see yesterday’s Exposure Compensation), the histogram shifts.

The histograms below are examples of the same image above, over exposed by +1, +2 and +3 stops:

Some things to note here. When changing exposure, it’s not like the light is always symmetrical. See how that mound in the middle at first moves right (indicating it’s going towards over exposed) and then it changes to being all bunched up?

Second, take a look where the light falls on the left side, the shadow side. You can see it creeping to the right as the exposure is biased more and more overexposed. This shows you you have room to spare on that side (left side). And that main area close to the right in the ‘proper’ exposure? It quickly went off the deep end of overexposed with major clipping.

Now let’s under expose things one stop at a time.

Things get bunched more and more to dark side and there is a lot of clipping. Below is an example of the image under exposed by 3 stops.

How Histograms Can Help You

How can this help you? It can help you by taking some of the guess work out of exposure. In tricky situations it lets you know how much latitude you will have to adjust the exposure brighter or darker without losing information.

For example, here’s a shot of the moon rising behind some trees in Western Australia, along with its histogram.

And now a “bad” moon overexposed by +2.25 stops and histogram:

See how much clipping there is and how much loss of detail in the moon? And notice that we don’t care about the black clipping in this case because that is all silhouette and the blackness of space?

It’s important to note here that the histogram is just giving you information. It’s a messenger and should not be despised nor shot. In this case, the histogram is not evil, the exposure is. Don’t go hating on histograms when they tell you things are wrong. Fix them!

For this moon, I can also move the exposure -1.25 and underexpose a bit and see what happens to the image and histogram:

While the moon is darker, it is not beyond the range of the sensor and that means we have more room to play with the image in a computer once home. The histogram shifted left but still well within range of acceptable.

Truth be told, both the slightly underexposed version and the first version will come out just fine with modern computer help.

Putting It All Together

Histograms are very helpful when shooting from a drone as there is often glare on the screen, making exposure estimates hard. Trust your Histogram, let go!

If there is clipping on one side, try moving the exposure the other way, via Exposure Compensation. If there is clipping at both ends, you may need to used a graduated neutral density filter to cut down on light in certain areas, otherwise, you simply have to accept that digital cameras do have a finite capability that can be surpassed, currently.

An option here is to use well thought out and executed High Dynamic Range techniques. These use a number of overexposed and underexposed images that are merged, typically in a special program or in-camera on a phone, to increase the overall range of the finished image. But I’m not going to get into that now. That’s for another post.

Right now, I need to find a bunny and my library card.

Next Up: The Rule Of Thirds

Questions? Pop ’em like Pez in the comments section below. or email me at peter@peterwestcarey.com.

Photography Basics – A 43 Day Adventure, and its companion 40 Photography Experiments, are series written by professional photographer Peter West Carey. The series are designed to unravel the mysteries of photography, helping you can take better pictures. Subscribe here to receive all the updates and bonus material. Your comments are always welcome.

If you enjoy the series, consider learning photography first-hand on a professionally led international photo tour in Nepal or Bhutan. More information can be found at Far Horizon Photo Tours.

October 18, 2018
Metering Modes: How Your Camera Sees Light – Photography Basics
Let’s jump right into the guts of your camera and how it makes exposure decisions.

Metering Modes

What are Metering Modes? Your eye and brain are fantastic at figuring out what is the correct exposure for any scene and adjusting to it. You squint without thinking and in dark situations your pupils dilate to bring in more light (they do that at the eye doctor as well but that’s just because of those wicked drops).

Your camera has to try to do the same thing: judge the amount of light in a situation and set the ISO, Shutter Speed and Aperture appropriately to make a proper exposure.

NOTE: Metering Modes come into play when you are shooting in any Camera Mode other than manual.

The problem is, a camera is not nearly half as cool or as complex as your brain and eyes. So the camera manufacturers have come up with some methods for metering light and trying to figure out the best settings.

Different Modes for Different Situations

For most DSLRs and mirrorless cameras there are three different metering modes in common: Matrix or Evaluative, Center Weighted and Spot. In all of these modes (and others, depending on manufacturer) the camera uses a special sensor to evaluate light hitting it, as if it were hitting the main sensor.

As mentioned before, light is measured in a camera in stops. From one stop to the next is either half as much light or twice as much light. The dynamic range of most cameras, that is, the range of stops captured in a single image, is maybe 8 stops. Cameras improve all the time and now top 13 stops.

The dynamic range of the human eye in a single instance is estimated at 14 stops, with an overall dynamic range of around 25 stops.

As the camera is limited in range (we’ll ignore HDR for now), it has to pick what gets favored for exposure. Maybe a scene has a dynamic range of about 15 stops and your camera is limited to 7 stops. What to do? Metering will pick what’s important and select an exposure based on that. Let’s look at the modes.

The Three Main Metering Modes

Matrix/Evaluative Mode is going to attempt to meter 80% of the scene, give or take a bit. This mode works well for a wide range of subjects especially if there is a lot going on and you aren’t sure where you want to meter. It has its limits as it doesn’t cover the corners (usually not a big deal) and may try to balance a scene with a wide range in a manner not to your liking. This mode is the king of compromise.

Center Weighted (sometimes shown without the spot in the very center) starts to narrow things down a bit. In a lot of cameras the light reading is taken from the center 13% of the frame. A number of cameras even have the ability to change this percent to three different values. Anything not in the general center area will be ignored as far a light metering is concerned.

Spot Metering is handy when you know exactly what you want exposed properly and it is relatively small. Spot metering is a circle of about 2-3% of the frame (cameras will often show an actual center spot in the viewfinder to aid in selecting the area to meter). This can be handy when scenes are back-lit or there is a lot of brightness, contrast and other action going on, but maybe only one element is important to the exposur

Metering Modes in Real Life

Now lets take a look at how these metering modes can affect your image. I have set up a likely scene on a chair using my daughter’s friends Lamoin and Hopster.

In all these scenes I set the ISO to 100 and the aperture to f/8 to hold them constant. Only the shutter speed will change and it will only change because the camera is sensing differences in the light.

It will sense differences in the light because it will use different modes and we’ll start at the top with Matrix or Evaluative.

ISO 100, f/8, 2 Seconds

The shutter was open for two seconds. The camera metered for the entire scene and faced with a tough choice (lots of lights and darks) it picked something it thought was middle ground. If it could think. It can’t. Ha ha ha ha. Only Hopster can think. Ok, enough nervous laughter, next is Center Weighted.

ISO 100, f/8, .6 seconds

That superimposed oval is about the area the sensor metered (and a good mathematician will tell me it’s far greater than 13%!). You will notice Hopster is much better exposed with only .6 seconds of a shutter speed, but we’re losing Lamoin’s hooves and the chair is getting dark. Still, I like this better than the first. Spot Metering time.

ISO 100, f/8, .3 Seconds

As the spot is only on Hopster’s white ‘fur’, the camera is attempting to exposure properly for it. The camera did a decent job, but you can notice what happened to the rest of the scene. Dark, dark, dark. What happens, though, if we move the spot to the darkest part of the scene, to the area just below Lamoin?

ISO 100, f/8, 10 Seconds

Zoiks! While that one patch of bison fur is exposed well, the 10 second shutter speed makes everything else overexposed. Can we mitigate this a bit?

ISO 100, f/8, 3.2 Seconds

That’s a bit better as far as Lamoin is concerned. Hopster is still blown out and not the least bit happy.

It is important to note DLSRs are often equipped to favor metering at times. Such as in Matrix Mode. Often the focus points that are locked on a subject will get a slight bump in their overall importance for light metering as the camera knows this is likely the main subject. Others take it a step forward and use face detection software to know where a face is and expose for that, instead of an overall evaluation of the scene.

What About My Phone?

Your phone uses Matrix or Evaluative metering most of the time. It looks at the whole scene and tries to balance the exposure.

Using an iPhone as an example (although most phones work the same), a large rectangle appears to show where the metering and focus are locked, when locked. In this example, the box is closer to center-weighted than true evaluative.

But that makes the leafs a little over exposed. All you have to do to change the area where your phone meters and focus is to tap that spot on the screen. In this case, I want the leafs better exposed, thus I tap them.

That’s better. What happens if I tap the ground to make it better exposed?

Whoa now! The ground is brighter but now the leafs are totally blown out and my Shutter Speed is so slow that things got blurry.

You might also notice how your phone will put a focus and exposure box around someone’s face when it finds one in the scene? That’s because the camera assumes you want the face exposed correctly and 99 times out of 100 that is true.

The point here is you can pick your exposure area in a phone just like you can in a DSLR or mirrorless camera. This “tap on the screen” method is also true for most drones.

The Right Mode for the Right Scene

So which mode is right for which situations? Without being by your side for every shoot you go on, I can make some generalizations:

Matrix/Evaluative Mode
- Good general walk around setting
- The beach
- Midday sun
- Cityscapes
- Lightning
- Bison
- Mountain ranges
- Grand vistas
Center Weighted
- Concert/Band
- Sunsets/Sunrise (to meter and then recompose)
- Group shots
- Waterfalls
- Portraits
- Birds
Spot
- The Moon
- Sports action from afar (where the subject is pretty much filling the center of the lens)
- Back-lit subjects
- Yeti
Wrapping Up Metering Modes

Play around with the modes and get to know them better. You will find times when the main subject is still too bright no mater how much you adjust the exposure compensation (more on that next week).

That is likely because your camera is in Matrix Mode and trying to balance everything. Switch to Center Weighted and chances are you will find things starting to come around. Get more precise with Spot and the control becomes even more finite.

To access the different metering modes, look for a dial or knob with the icons above on it. On some Canons it is a button press then a wheel turn. On Nikons it can be a rotatory dial on the side of the eyepiece.

Next Up: Camera Modes(and how to stop using the green rectangle!!)

Questions? Pop ’em like Pez in the comments section below. or email me at peter@peterwestcarey.com.

Photography Basics – A 43 Day Adventure, and its companion 40 Photography Experiments, are series written by professional photographer Peter West Carey. The series are designed to unravel the mysteries of photography, helping you can take better pictures. Subscribe here to receive all the updates and bonus material. Your comments are always welcome.

If you enjoy the series, consider learning photography first-hand on a professionally led international photo tour in Nepal or Bhutan. More information can be found at Far Horizon Photo Tours.
October 11, 2018
The Number One Law Of All Photography – Photography Basics

Welcome to Day 1!

Let’s jump right in with the fundamental law for all photography; You take pictures of light, not things.

That’s it! Why is it law and not a rule? For one thing, we’ll see tomorrow that all the rules of photography can be broken in one way or another for creative reasons. But laws? Laws have dire consequences if they are broken.

By way of example, let’s see if you can spot the difference in the next two photos for Bhutan.

This is Dochula Pass with 108 Buddhist chortens overlooking the Himalayan mountains. Glorious light from our sun is radiating down on Earth and bouncing off of all the things and scattering in every direction. One of those directions happens to be right down the barrel of your camera.

Now, let’s suppose that glorious sun went out. Poof! Besides all the other horrible consequences involved, there is now no light (let’s also suppose all earthbound light sources are wiped out at the same time). Now what does the scene look like?

The stuff is still there, but the light is all gone.

Your camera has a fundamental need for photons. Fundamental to the light we see, photons bounce off of things and entering your camera’s lens, be it a DLSR, smartphone, drone, etc… This is what interacts with your camera’s sensor to produce an image (more info on photons here). While technically not all light contains photos, almost everything you’ll ever photograph will require them.

That’s the long and the short of it.

Without light, you can’t take photos. And even with light, the subject can look different in different types of light.

A little later on I will be giving you some challenges to try out on your own as a way of reinforcing the ideas. And because practice is essential to improving in photography. For now, let me show you a simple example.

These are the same peppers in the same bin. The only difference is the angle of the light.

In the first image, the light is coming from in front of (and above) the peppers. In the second image, the light is coming from behind (and above) the camera.

Just a matter of taking two steps forward to shoot a different angle, but the result is dramatic. From ugly, almost colorless peppers to wonderfully red-orange delights.

I think it’s important enough of a law of photography to repeat it one more time, but with larger letters.

You take pictures of light, not things.

That’s the lesson for today. Nice and easy, but fundamental to understanding all of what is coming over the next 43 days of this adventure into photography.

Tomorrow we will cover 9 Rules You Should Learn To Break.

Questions? Pop ’em like Pez in the comments section below. or email me at peter@peterwestcarey.com.

Photography Basics – A 43 Day Adventure, and its companion 40 Photography Experiments, are series written by professional photographer Peter West Carey. The series are designed to unravel the mysteries of photography, helping you can take better pictures. Subscribe here to receive all the updates and bonus material. Your comments are always welcome.

If you enjoy the series, consider learning photography first-hand on a professionally led international photo tour in Nepal or Bhutan. More information can be found at Far Horizon Photo Tours.

October 1, 2018