Greetings Artists,
As I look at the date stamp of the file from my last newsletter I may have to reconsider calling my monthly newsletter something like a six week newsletter.
In Exposing Yourself I mention in the section dealing with exposure that I often rely on the camera's exposure meter recommendation. Like I said most of the time I get a file that is usable. However, there are times the meter can be fooled. Recently a colleague of mine was having a challenge photographing a painting that contained a lot of dark shadows and black tones. He asked me to look at the file to see if he had done something wrong. As I compared the file to the original it was apparent that the original file was overexposed. I asked him what the shutter speed was set at and he said the meter recommendation was 8 seconds. From my experience with the equipment and environment I knew this was too long. I reshot the painting with a 4 second exposure and it came out much better. The reason a painting with a lot of deep shadows and blacks can fool the meter is because exposure settings are based on average reflectance. The meter reads the scene to make everything the same tonal value as 18 percent gray. This is fine if your painting contains mostly mid-tones with average shadows and highlights. However, if your painting is very dark or very bright you may need to make an adjustment accordingly.
It is just a personal preference of mine that I lean to underexposing than overexposing. If the image is overexposed you risk blowing out the highlights and it is next to impossible to recover them once they're gone. However, you can always adjust the levels to increase the highlights on an image that is slightly underexposed. Another thing to keep in mind is your meter settings are recommendations and not always hard and fast rules. If you are shooting your work yourself, don't be afraid to experiment with the exposure. In the photographic trade this is also called bracketing your exposure. For example if the meter has your exposure set at f11 and two seconds you may also want to shoot one at one second and four seconds and then compare the outcomes. This was a very common practice with film photography. I don't recommend doing it all the time with digital photography mainly because as you become more experienced you can reasonably tell from the lcd preview if your setting is correct or if it needs to be adjusted. Once again the key is practice and repetition with good procedures. This will lead to confidence which in turn will free up time in the long run because you aren't constantly second guessing yourself.
In closing I would like to share that I recently had the opportunity to visit with an artist who had purchased Exposing Yourself. She did her undergraduate degree in photography so I was very flattered as she relayed how helpful the book has been. If you have comments you are always welcome to reply to the email or I post each newsletter on the Exposing Yourself website. Just go to www.exposingyourself.net and click Blog in the navigation bar, click the appropriate thread and submit your comments there. As always I am grateful for your interest and hope you have a great day!
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