exposure metering – let your background blow out!

Too often there’s the desire for us to bring the detail in our backgrounds back in by adding flash. But there are times when the image will be stronger if we just allow the background to completely blow out. It especially works in our favor if the background is cluttered, because then by letting the background completely over-expose, we can simplify our composition.

The photo at the top is of Randa, whose wedding I photographed the past weekend. While finishing her preparation in the bedroom, I noticed a gesture she made as she tried to control the veil … but I also knew that if I exposed correctly for her as my subject, the background would melt away.  So we played with the idea for a minute.

Here is another photo in the sequence, but with the exposure pulled down by 3 stops with the RAW file. That will give you an idea of what the background would look like. Not bad … but not as simple as I like.

Then by exposing correctly for her, the background disappeared. I also lose some detail in the veil, but I can live with that, since this image is more about the mood and the gesture than it is about exact retention of detail in the veil.

Here is the image without any post-processing. (Aside from a slight tweak of the white balance of the RAW file.)

camera settings: 1/80 @f/2.8 @ 1600 ISO
Nikon D3S  (B&H);  Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 AF-S VR II  (B&H)

Then for the final image, shown at the start of the article, I used the Totally Rad action set, with a mixture of presets that I named ‘Vintage‘, that I’ve used before with some images. It gives the image a warm muted look that works well in this context.

The technique is so simple, but it relies on us recognizing the potential while actually shooting.

This is exactly the technique I used when I photographed Anelisa in the shopping mall when working on the review of the Fuji X100. By exposing for my subject, I let my background blow out, giving an ethereal looking photograph.

You can order the RadLab or the Totally Rad action sets, via this affiliate link:
the discount code 1086NEILVN will save you 15%

more articles on available light photography
more articles about wedding photography

If you find these articles interesting and of value, then you can help by using
these affiliate links to order equipment & other goodies.   Thank you!

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off-camera flash photography tip – find your background, then your settings

With flash photography on location, we nearly always start off by figuring out what we want to do in relation to our available light. We might just need fill-flash, or or flash might need to do the “heavy lifting” and expose correctly for our subject in relation to the available light.

When we have our subject in (relative) shade, and need to figure out our flash exposure, we also need to decide exactly what our background is. It usually works best to be specific about our background … and how we position ourselves and our subject in relation to that.

So let’s run through that thought-process, using the image at the top.  Alex was our delightful model today during an individual workshop in Manhattan.

A point that I often underline here, is that we can’t expose correctly for all the areas in our background. We have to choose which part of our background is important, and base our exposure on that.

For example, here is a street scene in Manhattan. Exposing for the sky, the street goes completely dark.

1/250 @ f11 @ 200 ISO

This is to illustrate that I can’t expose correctly for the sky and the street scene. I have to decide.

Adding flash to this to expose correctly for Alex, still leaves us with an image that doesn’t make sense. She’s lost in a pool of black surroundings.

Positioning myself so that I can shoot up and use the sky as my background, makes much more sense.

At this point, I had changed my exposure to 1/250 @ f16 @ 200 ISO to really saturate the sky.  There is no specific correct exposure here for the sky. I can choose how I want to have the background / the sky appear.

Adding manual off-camera flash to this mix, immediately gives a dramatic look.

The vertical shot looks good, but half the frame is dark. It would need additional flashes, or something there to help delineate her legs against the background.

The composition just makes more sense as a horizontal photo, with Alex placed against the sky.

The final image again …

.. but with the image sweetened a bit using Topaz Adjust in an Adjustment Layer in Photoshop to give the photograph a bit more snap, as described in that article.

Here is the pull-back shot:

To get any kind of detail in the surrounding areas, and not have it appear black, I dragged my shutter to 1/15 of a second. Not a sensible shutter speed here when hand-holding the camera. It was just to illustrate where we were.

Since we were shooting with manual flash here, I couldn’t as easily change my aperture and ISO as I might have if TTL flash was an option with our setup. Therefore my shutter speed was the easiest to change and affect my ambient light only.  (It’s my independent control for available light when shooting with manual flash.)

FInally, here is the image as I preferred it to be cropped. It was sweetened a bit in Photoshop with using Topaz Adjust, but the sky was not dodged and burnt or manipulated. It appears that saturated and dramatic because that is how we exposed for it.

1/250 @ f16 @ 200 ISO … 24-70mm lens zoomed to 35mm (but image cropped square)

the metering technique used here for the manual flash:

- we decided on the aperture and ISO we want to use, based on what we wanted to do with our background.
- since we’re shooting in bright light, our lowest ISO is our best option.
- we’re shooting at maximum sync speed, since that is the most sensible shutter speed choice now.
- since manual flash was used, that means aperture and ISO has now been fixed for us.
- that leaves distance and power of our flash, as the other two controls.
- knowing we need to dump f16 @ 200 ISO worth of light from the Q-flash in a softbox with a single baffle, the flash was set to full manual output.  Everything the flash could give.
- that means our power was decided for us.  (Due to bright sky)
- then we  just had to use a lightmeter to measure our output (in f-stop readings). Holding the monopod and softbox up, I moved forward until the other photographer read f/16 on the lightmeter. Remember, the distance here is the distance from the light-source to the subject, not the photographer’s distance to the subject.
- now all our settings for flash is correct … in relation to our chosen background.

related articles:
- so, what are your camera settings?
- flash photography essentials
- effective on-location portraits
- off camera flash articles
 - balancing flash with ambient light – where do we even start?

Dec 21 – Jan 11 - online workshop: off-camera flash essentials

equipment used during this photo session:

Nikon D3S  (B&H);  Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 AF-S (B&H)

Quantum Q-flash T5D-R   (B&H)
medium Photoflex Litedome Q39 (24×32) softbox  (B&H)
Westcott Magic Slipper  (B&H),  Sekonic L-358 (B&H)
(2x) Pocket-Wizard Plus II Tranceiver (B&H)

description of the softbox setup used during this photo session

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exposure metering & observing the available light

As a photographer you’ll often hear instruction to just “look at the available light”. Great. But this advice is also often given without clear examples of what we’re actually supposed to be looking at. So let’s explore that a little bit using a sequence of images of our model, Aleona, photographed during a recent individual photography workshop.

This is also keeping with the loose theme over the past few weeks, that for a photographer “using the available light” is not a random thing or just a meaningless catch-phrase.

As an example, here is the pull-back shot of the image above. (I did some editing and image sweetening to it, but more about that later.) The light on Aleona is all available light.

Two things to take note of here:

1. we need to be aware of how the available light changes with our position … or not

The wall behind her is painted black, but doesn’t necessarily appear as black. At our angle that we’re viewing it at here, it becomes reflective and blows out to a golden bright color. Or, as we change position, it becomes more grey.  And finally, a head-on shot shows that the wall is indeed black.

It is the same light. All that changed was *our* position. So in that sense, this relates directly again to the article where I described my lighting setup in photographing a model, Ulorin Vex. By changing *my* position, I entirely changed the way the light appears in the images. A change in *my* position changed the resulting images.

Changing my position didn’t change my exposure metering settings for my subject, since the light was coming from a 180 degree sweep around her. But it did change how my background appeared. And this is something we can actually see while on location by actually *looking* at the light, and realizing that the black wall isn’t black anymore from certain angles.

2. exposure metering

The second thing to be aware of here, is that since it is the same light falling on Aleona, my exposure settings don’t change. My camera’s meter will show wildly different readings … but that doesn’t affect me, since I am metering for my subject.

And this comes right around again to a previous article where I photographed Anelisa with the Fuji X100. In that instance as well, by exposing for my subject, I let my background blow out. It gives a specific (and perhaps unexpected) look. But the central idea is that we need to expose for our subjects. Or, decide *how* we want to expose for our subjects.

So, with these three images of Aleona, I can’t let my background affect my exposure metering. I have to shoot in manual exposure mode to keep things simple, and keep my background (which varies from deep-black to super-bright) from affecting my exposures.

Here is the final image where I cloned out the extraneous distracting elements like the pulley system in the ceiling there. (Aleona is too tall for me to get the angle of view that I wanted, so I had to do some tweaking in Photoshop to get the image I wanted – a simpler image.

Then I used the RadLab filters / actions palette  to spice up the image. I used this Photoshop plugin recently with the vintage photo session as well.

You can order the RadLab or the Totally Rad action sets via this affiliate link:
the discount code 1086NEILVN will save you 15%

camera settings: 1/250 @ f3.5 @ 400 ISO
Nikon D3;  Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 AF-S VR II (B&H) … hand-held

related articles:
- “using the available light” is not random
- direction of the light … any light (model – Shawna)
- tips on posing people / working with a model
- photographic composition – look at your background!
- direction of light & choice of background (part 1)

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photography exposure metering – expose for your subject

In preparation for my upcoming review of the Fuji X-100 camera, I met up with Anelisa to see how this little camera performed during an actual photo shoot. The image above was one of the photographs we ended up with. Now, there is something specific about it that I wanted to explain in a separate article, instead of it being glossed over deeper inside a camera review.

The composition is simple – I do like my compositions fairly central, it seems. Similarly, the lighting is simplicity itself – all available light. There were two main sources of light – the light inside the shopping mall entrance; and some very strong back-lighting flooding the place.

While the technique here hinged on specific exposure for the available light, there are a few crucial ideas here that I’d like to underline:

1. Expose for your subject, not the scene. I had to decide on my camera settings, and couldn’t just leave this to the camera. Therefore it was imperative that I shoot in manual exposure mode.

Since I was only using available light, I didn’t have the option of exposing for my background and then using flash to lift my subject to the correct exposure.

2. With ambient light only, you have to consider the ambient light carefully, and decide how you want to position your subject in relation to the available light. (For a related article on this topic: direction of the light; any light)

3. You have to recognize the tonal values of the entire scene – this will allow you to pre-vizualise the image.

Here is a reference image, where I brought the exposure down so that the background showed more.

It will also give you an idea of the truly bland setting we were working in. But there was distinct potential here!

In this instance, I knew that if I had Anelisa turned with her back to the bright background – then the light on her face and body would be quite even. I saw that the light coming in from the back was so bright in comparison, that I immediately knew it would blow out, creating that halo effect around her. A first test shot showed that I was on my way to  what I wanted.

Two or three images later, I had what I wanted in terms of exposure – now it was just a matter of directing Anelisa in how I wanted her to pose. The video clip on how I work with LED video light, will give you some insight in how I would normally direct a model in a studio setting. In this case though, we were trying to shoot surreptitiously in a shopping mall, so we shot just a few images before we moved on.

Back to the image that I wanted  - here is the un-edited image, straight out of the RAW converter. I only adjusted the WB a bit, and also straightened the image a touch. I wanted the image that warm.

To sweeten the final image a bit more, I did a quick edit and removed the part of the door frames that were still visible. Just for comparison, here is the final image again. It should be clear just how little part Photoshop played in the final image. I just erased a few spots in the background. The halo effect existed because of the available light, and how I posed Anelisa in relation to the available light.

Finally, this photograph hinges entirely on recognizing the potential in a place, and pre-visualizing what the light would do, depending on your exposure metering and camera settings.

related articles on available light photography:
- photographic composition – look at your background!
- available light vs fill-flash
- looking at the available light- direction of the light … any light (using found light)
- direction of light & choice of background (part 1)

If you find these articles interesting and of value, then you can help by using
these affiliate links to order equipment & other goodies.   Thank you!

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off-camera TTL flash

This image of Amy, one of our models at the Treehaven workshops, came up for discussion with the group of attendees. As a straight-forward on location portrait using off-camera flash, it is ideal for an overview again of how easy the ambient & flash exposure metering is.

The basic approach with this portrait was to expose for the ambient light in the background, making sure our subject is somewhat under-exposed … and then to add off-camera flash with a softbox. The first question that came up was – how did I meter for the ambient light?

metering for the ambient light

With this scenario, one has to grasp that there are broadly two main areas in the background that we could expose for. There is the brighter sky area, and then the less bright trees in the background. We can not expose for both of those ‘correctly’. You have to decide what your background is, and then decide how you want to expose for it.

I chose to expose for the trees in the background. This would then let our model be under-exposed to an extent … and then we bring up the exposure on her with off-camera flash. In choosing the trees as my background, I allow the brighter sky area to blow out. But in the composition of the image in the camera’s viewfinder, I made sure the blown-out sky area is a relatively small portion of the background. My main background area is the patch of out-of-focus trees.

This is an approach that I have emphasized over a number of articles on this site – you have to be specific in how you choose the background in the composition of your photos.

Metering was simply done by looking through the viewfinder, eliminating the bright sky areas in the frame, and getting my settings in manual exposure mode. I purposely over-exposed a bit with this image, taking the exposure 2/3 of a stop up from the zero of my camera’s built-in meter.  Why 2/3rds of a stop? Because I chose it that way.

In a sense, there is a no ‘correct’ exposure for the background in this specific scenario. You can choose to make it bright and airy with pastel tones … or under-expose and make it moodier and darker. Your choice.

So that’s how I metered for the background areas. I fix these settings in my camera by using manual exposure mode. Then my composition won’t affect my camera settings.

The next question that came up was – how did I meter for the flash?

metering for TTL flash

The surprising answer was … I didn’t meter for the TTL flash. You can’t really. You have to rely on the technology. That’s the beauty of using TTL flash though – largely you can rely on the technology to get you there. The camera and flash will (via the pre-flash) figure out how much flash to add to the final exposure.

Then you can check on your camera’s preview whether you like the flash exposure, and then dial it down or up, via the flash exposure compensation (FEC) button.

That then is also the limitation of TTL flash exposure metering – you have to rely on the technology to give you results that you would like and need. And you can only really figure this out by checking the camera preview, and then adjusting the FEC to taste.

For a situation where you need to work fast, TTL flash is fantastically easy to use. But for a situation where you need numerous photographs consistently exposed, you will have a much slower post-production workflow than if you had shot with manual flash that you metered for.

manual flash vs TTL flash

With manual flash, you have to balance those 4 controls to give you correct flash exposure.
two of the controls are on the camera – ISO, aperture
two of the controls  are via your flash – power, distance

So you’d use a lightmeter to calculate the manual flash exposure. Or perhaps you could use the histogram to determine correct manual flash exposure. Once you have your flash exposure fixed for that specific distance, and camera settings, then every exposure will be nailed. Constant. But if you change one of those four parameters (ISO, aperture, power, distance), then you have to juggle something else to get correct exposure again.

But where TTL flash shines in comparison, is in the flexibility in changing your settings. TTL flash will follow your settings, and give you (what it deems to be) correct exposure.

Here are two examples where I changed my settings between shots, also showing the ambient-only exposure. This shows how the TTL flash will just follow my settings, and give me correct flash exposure. Simplicity itself.

1st image group: 1/320 @ f2.8 @ 200 ISO
2nd image group: 1/500 @ f2.8 @ 200 ISO

Not a large jump in ambient exposure – just 2/3rd of a stop, but it still shows the TTL flash exposure picking up the slack and giving me correct overall exposure for our model.

With this article I wanted to emphasize again how easy it is to use off-camera flash, especially when TTL flash is used. There’s a certain latitude we have in choosing our settings (while keeping our subject under-exposed to an extent), and then relying on the TTL flash technology to give us correct flash exposure.

So now we have to be less concerned about specific settings, and can concentrate on other essential elements of the final photograph:
- directing our model;
- composition;
- direction of light.

Equipment used with this photo session:

Nikon D3;  Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 AF-S II (B&H)
Nikon SB-900 (B&H);  Nikon SD-9 battery pack (B&H)
(2x) PocketWizard FlexTT5 transceiver (B&H)
Lastolite EZYBOX Softbox Kit (24″x24″) (B&H)

If you find these articles interesting and of value, then you can help by using
these affiliate links to order equipment & other goodies.   Thank you!

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which metering mode to use -
Matrix / Evaluative, or Center-weighted, or Spot-metering?

I noticed that search engine query come up in my web-stats – ‘which metering mode for outdoor photos’. So it might be a good idea to answer it specifically. Which metering mode should you use for outdoor photography?  Or for that matter any kind of photography?

My approach is quite simple: Since I’m using manual exposure mode nearly exclusively, no matter which route I take to get to a specific shutter speed / aperture / ISO combination … I would be getting the exact same exposure regardless of which metering mode was used.

In this way, the metering technique is the essential factor, not the metering mode …

As mentioned on the page on metering techniques ..

For me, exposure metering has become an iterative process of:
- checking my camera’s meter,
- checking the histogram
- and blinking highlights display,
- checking the image on the LCD, (although this isn’t an accurate assessment of exposure),
- experience.

There is no fixed recipe in approaching metering in all kinds of situations. It’s a mix-n-match of different techniques – all used to make sure I get optimum exposure for my images.

With that iterative method, it doesn’t really matter which metering mode was used – I end up at the same place – the same aperture / shutter speed / ISO combination.

So which metering mode do I actually use ? I mostly keep the camera set to matrix /evaluative metering, but I occasionally switch to spot metering. When I do use spot metering, I am specific about the tonality of the area which I am metering off. That is a very important consideration when you use spot-metering.

That’s the process in a nutshell, but let’s consider this in terms of an actual photograph:

With this image, shot at 1/125 @ f8 @ 800 ISO, I metered off the large area in front of me. I held my camera horizontally, and zero’d my meter. I did make sure that I had more or less equal amounts of darker and brighter areas. I then zero’d my needle. Quite simple. Metering like this, is in effect the same as metering off an equivalent neutral tone, as described on this linked page.

I deliberately didn’t include the brighter areas as the top. Let’s compare this photo with another that has a slightly different composition:

While it is useful to break a scene up into various zones when we analyze exposure, such as this …

… I feel it is essential to also see that we have two broad areas of lighting here. The shadowed areas to the front of the image, and the sunlit area in the back. With the traditional approach to the Zone System and Black & White printing, we’d try to get everything to register in the final print. We’d want detail in the shadow areas, and still retain detail in the sunlit areas. Carefully working with the Zone System’s entire process, we’d be able to do that.

However, with a single digital exposure (and not going to HDR technique), we have to make our minds up here which region we want to expose correctly for. With a single in-camera exposure, we can’t expose correctly for both the shadow areas AND the sunlit areas. Even then, within those two differently lit areas, we will have brighter tones and darker tones. So it really becomes easier for us to get to correct exposure if we decide which of those areas is the most important, and expose for that.

And that is what I did here – expose correctly for the areas in shade.

I could have spot-metered off darker tones and brighter tones and averaged them out. But I chose a simpler method – find a neutral tone, or point my camera at an area which contains equal amounts of the various tonal values, and zero my camera’s meter. Dark and medium and lighter tones. By pointing my camera at those, I get an average. It worked.

I could’ve used Center-Weighted metering, or just Matrix / Evaluative. Or I could’ve spot-metered off a neutral tone. It doesn’t really matter in the end. As long as I got to 1/125 @ f8 @ 800 ISO.

I want to highlight this important point again – you can’t simply point your camera at a scene and zero your needle. You first need to decide what you want to expose correctly for, even if it is just a general area. In the example of the photo of this taxi, the general area was the shaded area. I had to exclude the sunlit areas from my exposure metering … and my final composition.

All of which is the long way of saying – the metering technique is more important than the specific metering mode.

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adding bounce flash to ambient light

Using images from a past workshop, I want to explain a simple concept with flash photography on location. In workshops and seminars I quite often describe the flash as ‘riding on top of’ the available light exposure. It’s just another way of describing the usual technique of under-exposing the ambient light somewhat, and then using flash to give correct exposure. We can thereby control the final look of the image by controlling the direction of light from our flash.

By using flash like this, we can use the flash to ‘clean up’ the light in the photograph.

This photograph of Crystal, our model at this workshop, was taken during the early evening. We were working outside, using some of the found surfaces to bounce flash off.  The trick here is to find that combination of bounceable surface, a good background, and then to position your model so that the additional light from the flash adds to the final image. What I like about this specific image is how the sign (and the reflection of the sign) outside the hotel creates a halo around Crystal.

Here is the image without flash, and also a pull-back image to see what surface I bounced the flash off ..

I bounced the flash off the wall here to my left.   I bounced the flash ‘towards’ Crystal, and then of course had to use the black foamie thing to flag the flash so that there is no direct flash on her.

camera settings for the image at the top:
1/100 @ f3.2 @ 800 ISO

Nikon D3;   Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 AF-S (B&H);
Nikon SB-900 (B&H); Nikon SD-9 battery pack (B&H)

Back to the idea of using flash ‘on top of’ the available light:

The approach here is a less rigid one. We don’t necessarily have to meter with great precision. As long as our subject is somewhat under-exposed – in this case about a stop under – then we can just add some TTL flash to the mix. The camera will control the TTL flash to give us correct exposure. Or close enough to correct flash exposure, that a mild adjustment of the flash exposure compensation (FEC), will get us there.

While I am a firm believer that a sound knowledge of exposure metering techniques are essential, it is just as necessary at times for us not to get lost in the details. There are many times where we just need to get the shot and rely on the technology to get us there.

In this example, I wanted the ambient light under-exposed a little bit.  How much exactly?  Doesn’t really matter to the extent that we need an exact numerical figure. I just to under-expose a little bit.  Checking the camera’s exposure meter to show that the metering needle is below zero when pointed at my subject (and ignoring the brighter background), I know that I now have my ambient exposure where I need it to be.  A little under-exposed.  Perfect for adding a bit of flash and controlling the direction and quality of light on my subject. And in this case, it was added with on-camera bounce flash.

The other point here is that we get to correct exposure in the final image, NOT by virtue of the flash doing all the work … but exactly because the flash is ‘riding on top of’ the available light exposure.

This is exactly the case in a previous post where I showed an example of what appears to be extreme bounce flash – flash bounced off to the large interior of a museum. In that example, the on-camera flash appears to miraculously light up the entire museum, when really it is just adding a stop or so of light in addition to the available light. And that’s the reason why it worked. It wasn’t because the flash “did all the work” … it was flash riding on top of the ambient light.

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‘Hyper-Manual’ mode for Nikon and Canon

(subtitled: the episode where I finally learn now to use the Auto modes elegantly)

In my discussion of what would be the best camera in the world, I mentioned (at length) the clear advantage that Pentax cameras have because of their Hyper-Program and Hyper-Manual modes. I explain these two modes in more detail in that linked article, but in essence, the modes work as such:

Hyper-Program – is a program exposure mode, but by dialing the shutter speed dial it becomes Shutter Priority / Tv. By dialing the aperture dial, you instantly have Aperture Priority / Av. Very simple implementation. And very elegant.

Hyper-Manual – is manual exposure mode like we’re used to. But you can hit the Exposure Lock button, and then when you change the aperture, the shutter speed setting follows. If you change the shutter speed then, the aperture follows. Absolutely wonderful for when you have correct exposure. You can now get a different working aperture or shutter speed, and still have the same exposure value. Less twisting of dials.

Since I don’t shoot much outside of Manual exposure mode, I don’t have experience with finessing the automatic modes. Then Eric Schwab wrote in to tell me how he implements Aperture Priority with his Nikon cameras, to get something akin to Hyper-Manual mode with his Nikon cameras. I checked on my Canon 5D, and it works the same way.

I’m sure it might take a short while for finger-memory to kick in, but I can easily see how this could be a standard way of shooting.

This might not be news to most photographers who regularly use Aperture Priority / Av, but I’d like to put the information out here anyway …

Here is what Eric Schwab wrote:

I just happened upon your website and found out that it is filled with loads of useful info instead of the usual internet garbage. However I read your post about Hyper Program and Hyper Manual. There is a feature that is VERY close to this with the Nikon’s. After I discovered this it really changed the way I shoot in difficult lighting situations. Sadly Nikon doesn’t say anything about it so it remains a mystery to most people. Try this:

I set my camera to Aperture Priority and spot metering. For this to work well I think you should set “easy exposure compensation” on and change the meter timer so it lasts for at least 30s.

Now lets say you’re inside, and you set your camera aperture at 2.8. You point your camera at someone and hit the exposure lock. You get a reading of 2.8 and 1/250s and it is locked on your camera. You take some pictures and they are a little dark.

Use the wheel that normally changes exposure compensation to adjust. It keeps the aperture at 2.8 and only changes the shutter speed. Now you’re shooting at 2.8 and 1/100s and getting a good exposure.

Now you decide that you want a little less DOF. Use the other wheel to adjust the aperture. As you change this, it adjusts the shutter speed to keep the exposure the same. Now you’re shooting at F1.4 and 1/400s. You can even drop the ISO and it keeps the exposure the same and only adjusts the shutter speed.
Walk outside and hit exposure lock again and it resets everything and now your in the ballpark for a good exposure outside without having to spin the dials a hundred times. This rules for weddings where the lighting is always changing. Pretty cool huh? I no longer use Manual for weddings except for the formals.

Let me know if this helps.

Eric Schwab

With my Nikon D3 bodies, I had to change the following custom settings:
b4 – Easy Exposure Compensation … enabled
f6 – Assign AE-L / AF-L button … AE- lock (Hold)

This last one would interfere with my way of using the AE-L / AF-L button as my Flash Disable button. So another alternative would be to to assign my Preview Button to: AE – lock (Hold)

For the Canon 5D, it is even simpler:
Custom function 04 has to be set to 0 : AF/AE Lock
This does mess with someone though who would want to use the (*) button as the back-button focus (BBF) button.

Alternately, custom function can be set to 1, so that the shutter button is the AE Lock, and the (*) still operates as the BBF button. have the shutter button be the AF-lock.

Ultimately though, the Pentax engineers still have the rest of them beat on this! :^)

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photographic composition – finding and framing your best shot

Strolling through Green Park in London, I saw these rows of winter-barren trees. The way the snow clung to the trees and branches from the morning’s snow storm, white against dark brown, gave a posterized effect already – the crazy patterns of the branches starkly etched against the white snow.

I took several photographs, finally liking this photo above the most of all. Aside from resizing, it is straight out of camera … my iPhone 4. And therein was a lesson for me that I mulled over the rest of the day, while further exploring the urban landscapes of London …

When I first saw the rows of trees, I pulled out my Nikon D3 and 24-70mm f2.8 lens. I tried to encompass as much of the landscape as I could at first, shooting horizontally and vertically, and changing my viewpoint. But keeping to 24mm focal length, in an attempt to “get it all in”.

Here is a straight-out-of-camera version from the Nikon D3:

… and juiced up a bit with Nik’s latest HDR software they just released. I like this version:

After several frames with the D3, I decided to take a shot with my iPhone to upload to Facebook to show family and friends. However, the iPhone has a fixed little lens, and not as wide as the 24-70 lens is capable of portraying. So I had to more carefully frame my shot to make it meaningful. I couldn’t just rely on the expansive landscape to look impressive. My composition had to be more precise now. I then took the photo at the top with the iPhone, and liked it most of all.

And there-in was the lesson I relearned on this day. Not to let visual laziness and entropy over-take me. I shouldn’t just revert to the widest or tightest focal length that a zoom lens is capable of. Instead, I should *look* at the scene – the landscape – and *see* what it is that I want to portray. What are the essential elements that will hang together with a visual coherency?

Using the fixed focal length of the phone’s camera, forced me back into this mode of thinking. A little shocked at realizing how easy it is to slip into a lazier way of taking photographs, I undertook to approach photography during the rest of my trip with the same sparseness I was accustomed to when I shot slide film years ago. Barely being able to afford film and processing, I had to make every shot count. I would meter carefully, and frame carefully. I put thought into it. The 9 frames a second pro digital bodies have gradually changed how I shoot. Digital allows you to shoot multiple frames “for free”, so there is no apparent cost to taking many more photographs. (We tend to ignore the ‘cost’ of the extra time in front of the computer.)

So that was the lesson relearned – make every shot count by putting thought into the composition and timing. Look and consider. Breathe.

Exposure metering for snow scenes:

Exposure metering when you have a snowy landscape that is evenly lit with soft light, is dead easy.  It is a simple study of tonal placement. As such, the metering technique is closely aligned to how I use the histogram to get correct exposure for the brightest relevant tone.  In this case, I push the histogram to the very edge for the snowy landscape.  Sunshine with this snow landscape would be a touch more complicated, but on this overcast day, it is really a simple matter to get correct exposure.  There is also this earlier article where I explained how to achieve correct exposure, photographing a dog frolicking in the snow.

Even on the iPhone, you shouldn’t have to bear under-exposed images with a snow landscape.  If you touch the screen of the iPhone, you can tell the camera where to focus … but also what it should meter off. So you could pick a mid-tone … or as in this case, I touched the screen where there was a big snow-covered tree trunk in the foreground.  The dark and light tones averaged out, and I got pretty close to correct exposure for the iPhone photograph, in camera already.

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photography questions & answers

Continuing with the regular theme where I look at search engine queries that point to this site, and answer a selection of 10 questions more directly…

01)  how do I take an exposure reading with my camera?

Taking an exposure reading with your camera is at one level as simple as pointing your camera at the scene, and zero-ing the needle, by using the shutter speed & aperture & ISO controls. But, it also gets more complex and interesting than that. The crucial factor to remember is that your camera’s meter reads the light reflected from the scene you are pointing it at.

Looking at the image at the top – my favorite model, Anelisa, again – you will see she is wearing a white top, and she is placed against a dark background. With the composition as above, the chanced are great that most modern cameras with evaluative metering / matrix metering, will get to an exposure reading that is pretty close. The white areas and darker areas will most likely balance each other out.

But the moment that you change the composition by including a lot more white or a lot more of the dark areas, then the exposure your camera sets, will be off. You need to control your exposure settings …

You can most easily do this by shooting in manual exposure mode on your camera.
To get to correct (ambient) exposure, you can do either of several things:
- meter selectively with your camera’s built-in meter.
- if your subject is wearing white, use the camera’s histogram.
- use a hand-held meter. This is near infallible.

So there are several techniques to get to correct exposure. But when you rely on your camera’s built-in meter, then you have to familiarize yourself with the concept of various tonalities of the scene / subject … and how to meter selectively. And you also need to realize that simply zero-ing your camera’s meter needle, will not necessarily give you correct exposure. Similarly, simply pointing your camera at the subject while using spot-metering, will not necessarily solve your metering problems. You need to meter for selected tones.

02)  wedding photography flash compensation for white dress

Here is a recent article on exposure metering for the bride’s white dress. While that linked article deals mainly with ambient light metering, the concept is directly applicable to flash exposure compensation. It also relates directly to the first section in today’s post on exposure metering. It always comes together in some way.

03)  focusing assistance with flash off the camera

I use an on-camera speedlight with its output disabled, but with the AF assist still working for me. This is especially useful in the dark. I often do this even when I use PocketWizards to fire the off-camera flashes set to manual output. Or you could use a Canon ST-E2 / Nikon SU-800 wireless controller just for the AF assist.

04)  how to shoot with flash and control the aperture?

TTL flash. You’re going to like it.

05)  flash exposure compensation not working with manual flash

With manual flash, the flashgun emits a fixed amount of light every time. The ways to control the exposure you get from the manual flash is through controlling the distance (and power) of the flash from your subject, and the aperture and ISO you select on your camera. Flash exposure compensation is how you control TTL flash. So if you are using manual flash, then the flash exposure compensation button on your camera will have no effect.

06)  Nikon (some camera model) / Canon (some camera model) give soft images

It is a near guarantee that if someone complains of soft images, their chosen shutter speeds are too slow. First remedy, take your shutter speed higher! Of course, there could be a number of other reasons … but a too-slow shutter speed is usually the culprit. Take control!

07)  what lenses to use for full body group shots

A flippant answer would be that you could use anything from a fish-eye lens to a 400mm lens … but you have to check how far you stand from the group. A real answer though would be that, depending on the group, you would ideally not use anything wider than around 50mm. As soon as you go to a wide-angle lens, you risk getting wide-angle distortion to the edges of the frame … or worse, if you step too close to a small group of people with a wide-angle lens, you will get that bobble-head effect. Shooting down on someone with a wide-angle lens will create a distorted effect where their heads are much larger than their feet.

So the answer would be, depending on the size of your group, and depending on your working distance available … you want to use a lens that is longer than say 50mm.

08)  which camera for wedding photography?

Whenever I see these questions via my website analytics, I am soooo tempted to reply that the only cameras that should be considered for wedding photography, are either the Nikon D3x or Canon 1Ds mkIII, and that nothing else would suffice. Oh, and to buy it through those affiliate links. And by the way, you’re going to need two of those bad boys. Actually, make it three of those.

09)  overpower the sun with PocketWizards

um .. you’re going to need flash to overpower the sun.
More than anything else, you’re going to need flash.

the final one for today, is another one that I thought was amusing:

Neil van Tangents

If you can’t spell ‘van Niekerk’, then ‘van Tangents’ will get you there as well. Easy!

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