April 2008
Intermediate to advanced
176 pages
5h 45m
English
Content preview from Practical Artistry: Light & Exposure for Digital Photographers
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19
Understanding Exposure
I lit this Iris as evenly as I could using tungsten lights. I wanted to make sure the finished image would have moder-
ate tonal qualities, without deep shadows or blown-out highlights.
Even with my supplemental lighting, the flower showed some variations in dynamic range (the contrast between
the lightest and darkest tonal values in a scene). I wanted to make sure that I was right in the middle of the exposure
range, so I checked the camera’s histogram before capturing the image. (Some cameras will only display an expo-
sure histogram after a photo has been captured, in which case you can adjust your exposure on the next capture.)
A histogram is a bar graph that shows the distribution of values. If the bars are clumped over to the left side in
an exposure histogram, then a great deal of the photo will be dark; if the bars are grouped on the right side of a
histogram it indicates the possibility of a overexposure. With this image, I adjusted the exposure to let in less light
when I saw the heavy clumps of bars on the right side of the graph.
105mm f/2.8 macro lens, 36mm extension tube, 10 seconds at f/40 and ISO 200, tripod mounted.
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I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.