Today’s Post by Joe Farace
When teaching workshops, the number one question I hear from students and one that usually permeates the entire event is their quest to obtain perfect exposures. Back in the 1970’s I used to tell my Basic Photography students at Howard Community College that the perfect exposure was the one that they liked. And I still believe that today.
I strongly believe there is no one right way to accomplish all off your photographic goals. Some Internet gurus may disagree with that assumption and argue that only their approach is the one, true perfect road to correct exposure or whatever but I disagree. There is no “my way or the highway” in photography; You get to choose the method or methods that works for you. Even a road less traveled is OK if it produces the results you want. If it doesn’t create the desired results then maybe its time to look at alternative techniques and then fine-tune them using your favored subject matter and preferred way of working.
How I made this shot: Streaky car lights produced by long exposures are always fun to shoot but I’ve never tried getting a sharp image with this technique while hand holding a camera. A tripod was always a necessity until I shot this image with an Olympus E-M1X that has world class IBIS. This view of a street scene in downtown Orlando shot with Oly’s 12-100mm f/4 IS Pro lens (at 21mm) had a hand held exposure of four seconds at f/11 and ISO 200. Much like my quest to buy an Olympus Pen F, I’ve always wanted to own one of these cameras and have been watching the refurbished prices on the (now) OM Systems refrub page. But unlike when the company was Olympus, the prices there are no longer the good deals they once were. For instance, OM Systems sells a refurbished E-M1X body for $2,399.99, while B&H will happily sell you a brand new one for $1,899.99 as will Amazon. What’s up with that?
Unfortunately, the road to correct exposure is littered with buzzwords. Sometimes you’ll see the term exposure value (EV) being tossed around: It denotes all of the combinations of camera shutter speed and aperture that produce the same exposure. This term originated in Germany during the 1950s and persists to this day with purists who are more comfortable with it than the more vernacular “stop.”
For example, when shooting in Manual mode, if you have a meter reading of 1/500 sec at f/11 and ISO 200 and want to use a slower shutter speed you’ll need to adjust the aperture (make it smaller) so that the same (equivalent) amount of light will hit the sensor. Or you could select aperture (Av) or shutter priority mode (Sv), and your camera calculates the equivalent exposure for you, eliminating the guesswork. Then there’s exposure compensation, one of my favorite camera controls, that’s available to tweak exposure settings to get the exact look you want. Even latter-day film SLRs, like my Contax 167MT have this feature.
So what’s the perfect exposure? It’s always going to be the one that you like. Go make a few tests, shoot a bracket and find out for yourself. Two of the most important things you can do to improve the exposure of your photographs is to make these kinds of test shoots and be sure to practice. And one of the biggest advantages of using digital capture is that it won’t even cost you a whole lot of money to find out hot to obtain that ultimate image.
Tip: Roll your mouse over the above image to see the exposure setting and drop by our sister blog, JoeFaraceShootsCars.com for other posts on exposure and car photography.
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Along with photographer Barry Staver, Joe is co-author of Better Available Light Digital Photography with new copies are available from Amazon for $21.450 and used copies starting around six bucks.