Category: Camera & Capture

This week, we learned about exposure and metering. I found the activities quite enlightening and enjoyed playing around with the exposure compensation feature on my camera.

For the first activity, I used my Nikon D3500 cropped sensor DSLR and tripod to capture the following series of images using a range of exposure compensation settings.

Camera was set to program mode with a fixed ISO of 400. Wide angle focal length was used to capture as much of the scene as possible. The lens was set to 18mm focal length which converts to 27mm once the 1.5x crop factor is applied.

In the above images we can clearly see the results of dialing the exposure up or down several stops resulting in either extreme highlights blown out to white or the entire shot being drowned in blacks and shadows. The +1 stop image is the image that I prefer out of all of these. That one extra shot allows just enough extra light in to lift the image without losing definition in any of the detailed areas.

Next we experimented with exposure compensation with a white and a black static subject. I found it interesting how far I had to adjust the exposure to get a true indication of the black and white colours as the correct exposure for each was very inaccurate. We learned about metering and 18% grey during this exercise.

The images were all taken in aperture priority mode instead of program mode as I had forgotten to change the mode back after taking another image. The same scale of exposure compensation was used for both the black and white images: +3 stops, +2 stops, +1 stops, correct exposure, -1 stops, -2 stops and -3 stops.

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Top from left to right: -1 stop, -2 stops, -3 stops.

Center: correct exposure.

Bottom from left to right: +1 stop, +2 stops, +3 stops.

I think in this instance, 2+ stops gives the more accurate representation of the white paper, with + 3 stops being much too white and greatly over exposed. If there were any details on the paper they would be lost in the blown out highlight of the +3 stop image.

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Top from left to right: -1 stop, -2 stops, -3 stops.

Center: correct exposure.

Bottom from left to right: +1 stop, +2 stops, +3 stops.

In this series of images, the image that is -2 stops under exposed is probably the most accurate representation of the black colour however the back ground is also darkened quite significantly and there is a loss of detail on the white text on the cover. The -1 stop under exposed image seems to have a bit more balance of the darker black cover without drowning out the background and highlights in shadow.

All in all, it was an interesting an enlightening module which I found to be profoundly useful when getting out and about taking shots.

For this weeks activity, we tested different focal lengths. First, I took a series of three images of a person. The subject stayed in the same position for all three images. I moved my position backwards with each shot to ensure that the composition of the shots remained the same.

The shots were taken on a Nikon D3500 DSLR using a wide angle to normal zoom lens ranging from 18mm to 55mm and another zoom lens that was telephoto from 70mm to 300mm. All shots were taken using aperture priority mode, f9 with an ISO of 100.

Due to my camera having a cropped sensor, I did not take the crop factor of 1.5x into account at the time of shooting but will add these details and adjustments as a footnote to each image.

For our second activity, we tested focal length with a static landscape shot using a tripod and the same three focal lengths as the pictures above. The tree in the center of the frame is the focal point for all three shots.

In this activity, by remaining in the exact same place as each shot was taken, we can clearly see the different results in each photo as the field of view becomes narrower with each shot.

To finish the activities, all files were imported into Adobe Bridge, opened with Adobe Camera RAW and lightly edited to compensate for less than ideal lighting conditions before being saved as JPEG files.