Just shuffle this way a tiddly bit please Lorna,
just only the tiniest bit, that's it. Head up a little,
that's cool, turn your face this way a titch, that's it.
Got it, and it's a bit too dark.
I'm trying to shoot, a white on white
image here with Lorna we got the white hood against the white wall
but the cameras making it grey, it's making it a bit dark.
because it's seeing all the white and thinking that can't be right and it's
darkening the picture.
so how do I get around that? I'm shooting
in a semi auto mode I'm using aperture priority
that's aperture value AV if you're using a Canon
on the top of my camera
i've got this little button here it's called the exposure compensation button
when you press a I get these numbers come up
now when I dial to the left i've got
+1, -1, -1.3
etcetra, what it's doing is it's telling the camera
to make the picture lighter or darker because Lorna is against the white backdrop
wearing white the camera is getting it dark so I want the picture to be
brighter
so I'm gonna press the exposure compensation button
I'm gonna dial in +1, that's +1 of a stop,
that's twice as much light. Let's see what it manages to do this
time.
here we go, can you rotate to your right just a little Lorna,
perfect that's it, a nice bit of profile going on there
and that's much better.
Its brightened up the image however I think it could do with a little bit more,
so I'm gonna dial in +1.7 that's just under 4 times as much light.
Can you rotate to the right again just, Ah that's plenty.
Perfect, thanks Lorna. Perfect. This time we've got nice bright white.
The histogram is off the the right where it should be.
So at +1.7 it's making that bright white of Lorna's clothes and the background white,
isn't that brilliant.
if you wanna shoot at night you've got the opposite problem.
you could probably just about make out
out there in the gloom there is a cottage on the side of the shore
by the sea,
now the reason you can't see it terribly well in the video camera is because the video
camera has to use a fast shutter speed
so it can record my movements, your stills camera doesn't have to do that.
You can have long slow exposures
provided you're on a tripod and nothing's moving it'll be ncie and sharp.
Now because your camera has been told that the world is mid grey
that's halfway between black and white and mid grey equates to daylight in
average conditions
your camera will try and make all the pictures you take look like that.
whenever it's in control of the exposure. It'sn why the pictures of Lorna
against the white wall with the white hood looked grey they looked dark
because the camera is trying to convert that white into grey which is what it's
been told the world is.
Out here at night it's gonna try and make
night time into day time because it's gonna try and brighten everything up.
Let me show you what I mean. If I take a shot
of the keepers cottage which I set up earlier, you'll notice i'm using the self timer
and this is gonna be a very very slow exposure, I don't want to touch the camera
when I press the shutter because if I do I may just move the camera a little bit
and I'll get a blurry picture. The shutter is still open,
listen to how long that exposure is, it's probably gonna be 30 seconds
or more, there it goes. Did you hear it click?
It's just closed the shutter, the reason it was such a long slow exposure
is the camera is holding the shutter open for ages and ages to
hoover up every last little bit of light that there is laying around here
to try and make that nighttime shot into daytime.
The camera's still processing it, Yeah there we go.
You see how it's brightened it up? it's made it much much brighter than I
actually want it.
Now we need to make it darker, so by using the
exposure compensation switch I can dial that down to -1
thathat's -1 stop, halving or doubling is a stop
so therefore it's gonna be twice as dark as it was.
so let's press the button and see what happens you notice that this shutter
speed is gonna be half as long.
I'ts gonna be a shorter shutter speed because we don't want so much light coming in,
so therefore the pitch will be a little bit darker it's still old time though.
Oh what a wait.
There it goes, it's processing out
yeah that's much much better, looks far more night-ish
but I wanted to be a bit darker a bit more moody you wanna get that cottage
almost silhouettey.
I'm just gonna dial in a little bit more, let's go to -1.7,
and see what it does with that.
Again it's going to shorten the shutter speed that little bit
to let that little bit less light in, because it's dark, it's still
quite loa long old wait.
There we go, yeah that's bang on. That's exactly what we want the picyure to look like.
Now your exposure compensation button will work with any automatic mode
but it won't work in manual whenever you have your camera in a manual mode
you're telling the camera I'm in control I'm doing the exposures
so therefore the automated features such as the exposure compensation will no
longer work
you gonna do it yourself. There you go exposure compensation button is a great
little tool
to help you get the pictures as bright or as dark as you want them
because you are the creative force behind your camera
not the camera itself