bright daylight

[Benji]

Originally Posted by chrissyb2411

Ok, thanks so much for your time, got it now. Will try again see how I do.

Sorry if I offended you posting here, and really I got exactly the info I was looking for. The sub heading under this forum says "every aspect of lighting...." and I do understand the settings on my camera, just not always how to fix them to get what I want every single time.

Thanks again Benji, you were very helpful!

Chrissy,

You didn't offend me, someone else apparantly felt that bright daylight was not a photographic term covered under this forum but it wasn't me!

Benji

[chrissyb2411]

Originally Posted by Benji

Chrissy,

You didn't offend me, someone else apparantly felt that bright daylight was not a photographic term covered under this forum but it wasn't me!

Benji

meant to whoever I offended. You were awesomely helpful, exactly what I needed. Unfortunatly we are forcasted rain for the forseeable future, so I will have to wait to practice.

[TheMoons678]

Yes, Thanks benji. Regardless of the folder this was posted in, your insight was extremely helpful. I'm laughing at myself now because the first day i got my 50mm prime i took it to the park and tried to use it at f/1.8 in bright sunlight without adjusting anything else.

[ttosifa]

The sunny f/16 rule really works! Plus, after some practice, you might be able to walk outdoors and estimate proper exposure just be how bright the light is relative to full on sun.

Regarding your picture above: You say it is overexposed. To follow Benji's pedantics, I think it is more accurate to say you have over- or underexposed your subject. That is, to say a picture is overexposed, you must first identify your subject. Your picture above is both overexposed and underexposed depending on your subject. If your subject is the sky or perhaps the green bench or perhaps portions of the walkways, then yes it is overexposed. If your subject is the swingset in the foreground, it is underexposed.

Taking pictures in natural, unmodified sunlight and daylight will often require trade offs in what is the properly exposed subject and, given that, what cannot be properly exposed. So I see the subject in your picture above as the playground. Some parts of it are correctly exposed. Some parts are overexposed, and some underexposed. It is probably impossible to correctly expose, e.g., the sky. But who cares? It's not the subject. When you bring your kids into the pictures, they will be the subjects, and what is or is not properly exposed elsewhere in the picture is not your concern unless you want to consider that in your composition.

Now, if you want to modify the light using reflectors, diffusers, and the such, then you can do so in a way that (hopefully) will allow you to correctly expose all elements of the photo. But that's not as much fun as chasing kids in the park!

[chrissyb2411]

Originally Posted by TheMoons678

Yes, Thanks benji. Regardless of the folder this was posted in, your insight was extremely helpful. I'm laughing at myself now because the first day i got my 50mm prime i took it to the park and tried to use it at f/1.8 in bright sunlight without adjusting anything else.

Bet that worked out great, lol. I was adjusting my shutter speed ans aperature up, I just wasn't sure how high I needed to go, this gives me a good place to start,

Good point as well about differant elements of the photo being exposed differantly, something to keep in mind. And for the record I know the photo I posted is terrible, no composition or focal point etc. It was more just how the lighting looked in that one that I wanted info on. At this point I can bearly keep up with my kids, and every once and awhile I can actually compose a shot. Its good practice though. And loads of fun

[aprillove20]

I agree with the ideas of benji that bright daylight was not a photographic term.

[kencaleno]

We all want “Perfect Exposure”, but how do we achieve this ?

What is “Perfect Exposure?” - Perfect exposure occurs when the lighting of the subject, balances with the Dynamic Range of the camera’s sensor, (Usually 5 EV stops). In other words, there should be detail in highlight areas of a scene, without blown highlights, and detail in shadow areas without clipping.

First of all, let’s take a look at our cameras’ metering methods, just to clear up some
confusion:

The scene is a person, standing on the beach, with a brightly-lit background -

a) Matrix,

(sometimes called evaluative, or multi-segment, depending on make of camera) would take an overall look at the scene and divide it into many segments, take into consideration the distance of the subject, and the lens’s focal length setting. All this data is fed into the meter’s processing unit, in order to determine the best possible exposure. This mode of metering would give the best rendition of the scene, as it would tend to favour the subject, (person)
and modulate the background to suit.

b) Centre-Weighted,

would measure the scene and concentrate on the central part of the image frame, but it would be affected by the bright background, if the person doesn’t fill the central area completely, so the resultant image would be an underexposed person, with a fairly-well exposed background.

c) Spot Metering,

Would take a reading from a very small, (1-3 degree) circle, at centre of the frame, in the viewfinder. This small area of measurement, when placed on the subject in the frame, will not get any reading at all from the background, resulting in a correct exposure for the person, against an over-exposed background.

NOTE: Some cameras, notably Canon’s entry level dslrs are equipped with
“Partial Spot “metering, (5% to 10% of image area) which veers more towards centre-weighted metering.

We are informed that there are just 3 exposure values in our photographic images, Black White and “Middle Grey” This Middle Grey is usually referred to as 18% or 13% grey, (depending on what you believe) or Average reflected tone. The theory being that if you average out all tones in an image, the result will be middle grey. Great, in theory! This only works if an adequate range of tones are present in the scene.

Because all cameras read tones differently, you need to know where Middle grey is on your camera.

With camera on tripod, exposure compensation at 0-0 and a scene with all tones:

set Exposure compensation (+/-) at +1 take a shot

Now in 1/3 (0.3) increments adjust exposure compensation and take a shot, all the way to -1, giving you seven images.

load these into imaging programme and select the image with best detail in shadows and highlights.

This setting will be your standard, set this on your camera, and you will never need to do this again - your camera will be calibrated for optimum exposure.
This is baseline, so if shot looks too dark or light, in certain conditions, just adjust (+/-) to suit.

Manual Exposure Metering


Your camera uses reflected light readings for exposure-light reflected from different subjects, will result in a range of tones, which your camera’s meter will try to average to give an overall exposure. It may not matter sometimes, but because any little deflection of lighting will give a different reading, and if you are photographing a wedding, for instance, it could look as if photos were taken on different days!

Incident light-light falling on the subjects is always constant.

Start using your in-built Incident exposure meter- Your eyes!

This is how us oldies who started in the late 1950’s/60’s learn to read exposure: You will often hear the term “The sunny 16 rule”, or Basic Daylight Exposure” here it is explained:

Basically four apertures are used: F16; F11; F8; and F5.6

Shutter-speed is based on Equivalent ISO#

Watching the shadows, the base settings are: ( for ISO 200)

Hard-edged shadows …………………….1/200 sec @ F16

Soft-edged shadows………………………1/200 sec @ F11

Barely visible Shadows…………………..1.200 sec @ F8

No Shadows……………………………….1/200 sec @ F5.6


Remember, these are the base settings: so variants would be:

1/200 @ F16
1/400 @ F11
1/800 @ F8
1/1600 @ F5.6
These all give the same exposure (But with different depths of field)
The other 3 settings use the same spatial relationship, the settings you choose are based on subject movement and/or depth of field desired. For instance If you want to keep the Aperture at F8:
Hard shadows……………………………1/800 @ F8

Soft shadows…………………………….1/400@ F8

Barely visible shadows…………………1/200 @ F8

No shadows………………………………1/100 @ F8 (As shadows fade, more light is required)
Heavily overcast…………………………..1/125 @ F8

Deep Shade………………………………1/60 @ F8

Pre-thunderstorm…………………………1/30 @ F8

Brightly lit store interior……………………1/15 @ F8

Well-lit stage/sports arena…………………1/8 @ F8

Well-lit house interior……………………….¼ @ F8

(Of course you would vary the F stop and shutter speed combinations to whatever would be most appropriate. )


To get more exact exposure readings, you may want to bracket exposures. As you can’t use exposure compensation button when in manual made, this is what I do on my Nikon, your Dslr will have a similar action:

I set aperture to F16, and shutter-speed to 1/200, ( for Hard shadows) Take a shot, then:

2 clicks of the thumbwheel to the left-take a shot- this gives me a + 2/3 exposure
1 click to the right now, gives me + 1/3 exposure

1 more click to the right brings me back to the basic (meter as read) setting, then:

1 more click to the right gives me -1/3 exposure, and finally ,
1 more click to the right gives me - 2/3 exposure-so I have 5 exposures from 2/3rds over, to 2/3rds under exposure.

Looking at these, I choose the one that gives the most detail in the shadows and also in the highlights, without blowing the highlights-and after a while you will find you are able to guess just about right with your exposures-It is all very simple, and I hope I have explained in words that make it easy to understand.

Part two follows....

[kencaleno]

I believe a basic understanding of The “Zone System” will be of benefit here, so I have included my intro to this:

Edward Weston/Ansel Adams developed the “Zone System”
To control exposure and contrast for black and white film photography
And To pre-visualize finished image after post processing in the darkroom,

There are11 zones black to white-each zone represent 1 EV (exposure value) stop:

0 Total black

I Almost black-no detail

II Dark grey-black -very dark detail in shadows

III Very dark grey-shadow detail-dark animal fur

IV Medium dark grey-dark green foliage, shadow side of Caucasian face
Dark stone-landscape shadow-dark skin-details plainly visible

V Medium grey-green grass-grey stone-dry tarmac-excellent detail

VI Rich mid-tone grey-Caucasian skin in sunlight-light stone and sand

VII Bright light grey-white with texture-silver hair

VIII Almost white-Delicate texture-no detail-reflected highlights on Caucasian skin

IX Nearly pure white

X Absolute white


Each zone is a tone between black and white

Each zone is either half or twice the exposure of it’s neighbour, depending on whether you are going up or down, For example Zone III is 2 stops darker than zone V, and zone VII is 2 stops lighter than zone V-As you move your exposure one stop (ev) say, from f 8 to f 11,or from 1/60sec to 1/125sec, you will have moved the exposure one zone

Although developed for black and white film, it can still be useful for digital imaging, and once you get used to using it, your resulting images will be superior to anything you have done before..

It can be difficult to understand that when working in color, that black and white and tones of grey can apply. Your camera’s meter sees in black, white and tones of grey in between.

So to help you understand:

Your camera’s built-in meter will average everything it sees as mid-grey (18% or 13%-whichever you believe to be correct) > ZONE V!

To prove that this is so, try this experiment:

Get a piece of white paper and a piece of black paper ( A4 sheets) take separate photo of each sheet, filling the frame, in the same lighting conditions, using the camera’s meter - Surprise, Surprise! They both came out mid-grey. This is because the camera’s meter averages out the scene, giving an average exposure for the scene at ZONE V.

The camera’s light meter will measure and average everything it’s pointed at

So it becomes necessary to switch to spot metering-a spot meter will measure only a very small angle (1-2 Degrees)-spot metering will let the camera know the most important part of the scene in front of it.

Ok. Let’s assume you have a Caucasian model against a relatively dark background-So you assess the scene before you, and decide that the model’s face is the most important part of the scene.

Usually Caucasian skin registers at Zone VI or Zone VII, (Even though we are looking at a color scene, the camera only sees light and dark.) When we spot meter for model’s face, this will register on camera as Zone V

We have decided to rate the model’s skin at Zone VII, and this means we must open up 2 EV stops to achieve this:

If we are in manual shooting mode, this will require us to either a) Decrease the shutter speed from, say 1/250th sec to 1/60th sec, or b) 0pen up aperture from, say F8 to F4.

If you are in auto mode/scene exposure mode, set exposure compensation to +1 or+2

Always do a final check using your histogram: In some situations, by placing the subject at a certain zone, could result in other areas of the image being under or over exposed.

From this you can see that the camera’s Dynamic range is from zone III to zone, VII with Zone V being middle grey.

(For more information on the Zone System just “Google” it.)


If you have a scene with tones outside this 5-stop range, you will need to either use Graduated Neutral Density filters or blend two images (one metered for highlights and one metered for shadows) and blend them in Photoshop thus:

With camera on tripod: meter for highlight, take a shot-then meter for shadows, take another shot. In Photoshop, add lighter image to darker as a new layer, then: Select> Color Range-click highlights ,check “invert”, click “OK”. Add layer mask. Filter> Blur> Gaussian Blur 250 pixels. Flatten and save. You will get detail in highlights and shadows.

I know this is a bit long in the tooth, but you may want to copy this to print out for later reference.

Regards, Ken