Apparently it’s really hard for me to get out of vacation mode. Vacation mode is a happy place though so that’s not so bad! We talked a couple weeks ago about the exposure triangle and how ISO, Exposure, and shutter speed have to be balanced. Today I want to delve into exposure a little bit. I won’t get into the technical aspect a whole lot. There are a million tutorial’s on it. I just want to talk about how it affects your photos.
Exposure tells us, in general, how bright are photo will be. Most cameras have a line of dots, one side being more exposure and one side being less exposure. This is for when you are using your camera in auto mode. Auto mode essentially means that your camera decides for you what the exposure and other settings will be. The way you can have some control is the little hash mark. By moving the hash mark left or right you are essentially changing your exposure up or down stops. Each dot is usually a quarter stop.
For example. You are using your camera in automatic mode. You are taking a picture of your child. They are standing up and you are low to the ground so the sky is in the background. The camera will decide it’s settings based on that bright sky in the background. That will cause your child’s face to be too dark. In order to lighten the face you need to stop your exposure up. Try one or two hash marks at first. That will brighten your child’s face. It will, however, also brighten the sky. You have to balance the two when you are using natural light. If you don’t want your sky blown out (too light in order to brighten your subject’s face) you may want to try a different angle or a darker background.
See your camera’s manual to know how to move the hash mark. If you read your camera manual and it feels like your reading Greek and you don’t know Greek, shoot me an email! I read camera Greek!
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