In this section, learn how to improve your pet photography or post-processing skills, and other topics that help you succeed in your pet photography hobby or business!
material to inspire you! click on a title to get started!
Be our guest (writer)!
If you would like to share your knowledge by submitting an article or video related to pet photography, we'd love to hear from you! In addition to educational content that is valuable to our readers, we are currently also accepting articles or videos that preview a written or video course that you are promoting for sale on this site!
wHAT IS "gOOD" eXPOSURE?
By Suzanne Renfrow
A lot of people who are just learning photography will simultaneously learn about editing their images, which will possibly include adjusting exposure, shadows, highlights, among other possible adjustments. They quickly learn that if your image is too dark or too light, there may be consequences associated with corrections made in post, such as the introduction of noise. While the intention of this article is not to discuss every correction that might be necessary for an image and how to achieve it, we will talk about how to determine “good” exposure in the first place.
“Good” exposure means that the tonal range in an image will be where it belongs on the histogram, and therefore need no-to-little adjustment. Why should you care, aside from not having to do so much work in post?
-
Skin tones will look their best when they are captured accurately in-camera.
-
Black and shadow tones will be recorded properly. The importance of that is raising black or shadows will introduce noise or loss of detail, so is to be avoided.
-
You can also experience loss of detail for recording white or highlights at too high of levels.
If you shoot in RAW, you can often correct an image recorded too dark or too light, but proper exposure at the time the image is captured is the very best practice to strive for.
How do you determine proper exposure, then? Note, this discussion will cover exposure using only natural light.
There is a standard tone in photography that we can use as an exposure reference, known as 18% grey. A section of a "grey card" is shown below.
If you pick up your camera, zoom to fill the frame with the grey card, then snap a photo, when you review the image with the camera’s histogram (or if tethered to Lightroom, on the Lightroom histogram), the histogram spike should be dead center. This is represented by the above image, where the grey card fills the frame. The center of the histogram represents 18% grey. If the histogram spike is left or right of center, adjust your camera settings and take more test photos until the histogram spike is dead center. Once it is, congratulations -- your grey card is now perfectly exposed.
That probably doesn’t sound too exciting, but now I’ll tell you why it actually IS! If you lock in your camera settings in manual mode, and
place a subject in the exact same spot your grey card is in, and the ambient light hasn’t changed, now when you take a photo of your subject, the subject will be perfectly exposed!
You may not always have a grey card handy. Instead, substitute a white object, zoom in to fill the frame, take a test shot, and the histogram spike should touch just at the right (highlights) end of the histogram. Similarly, substitute a black object, and the histogram spike should just touch the left (shadows) end of the histogram.
Other methods of setting exposure include "eye-balling it" through trial and error until the exposure looks "good enough" (even though it may not be perfect), or by using a light meter. A light meter is actually calibrated using a $10 grey card, and is much more expensive. It is accurate but it still pays to know what to look for on your histogram, in case you lose your light meter, for example. It happens!
Now you know how to achieve perfect exposure using natural light. Just remember, if the light on your subject changes (whether the subject has moved or the light has changed), you have to take a new test shot, review your histogram, and adjust settings if needed.
This article is meant to be an introduction to exposure. If you have questions, or want to learn more, visit the PAWSIETOGS Forum and check out the topic, “Do you know what defines 'good' exposure?”