Setting your exposures manually
isn't rocket science once you understand it and no longer are afraid of it, it's
really simple.
Exposure is simply how bright or how dark your pictures are
and they are two main controls to help you achieve that, you've got
your aperture
that's a bit like the pupil of your eye
a big aperture let's in more light and a small aperture let's in less light.
Then there's the shutter speed, that's how long the shutter is open for,
a very long slow shutter speed obviously let's in tonnes of light and a short shutter speed
very little light.
and by balancing these two you get it to control your exposure.
There's also a
third element to this and that's
your iso settings,
that's how sensitive your camera is to light now i'm not gonna go in depth
about any of these three because in the camera control section
there are videos about each of them individually to explain what they do.
The first thing you need to do
is to get your camera and take it out of an auto mode and set it
onto fully manual.
It's very beautiful isn't it,
i think the best way to explain how to set up a manual exposure
is to take a photograph of it, and i'll talk you through what I'm doing as I do it.
Over here i have a composition that i prepared earlier
in true blue peter fashion.
Notice I'm using a tripod, the great thing with a tripod
is that you can set up a composition you can lock it off on the tripod
and never have to think about it again,
now all i have to do
is concentrate on my camera settings.
I will however have to change my focal length because
I did
just fiddle
with the lens as i walking then steps. Right
let's have a look and see what's going on,
the first thing i want to point out to you are these numbers at the top,
this whole number here
it's forty five at the moment
that's the shutter speed
and it's a fraction
it's one
forward slash
then the number so that's one forty-fifth of a second it's set to at
the moment.
You could set it to almost anything you like.
If you see two little speech marks after that number it means it's whole
seconds,
so it could be one two speech marks and it'd be a whole second
if you still twenty into the space marks, if you saw twenty and the two little speech marks that'll
be twenty seconds.
The number next to it
with an f in front of it
that's the size of your aperture,
again i don't wanna go into long winded explanations about apertures
all i will say is that the numbers go back to front,
if you have a big f number you have a very small aperture,
if you have a small f number
you have a big aperture, go down and watch the apertures film and it will explain that
to you.
Right now
as you can see the exposure is set to a forty fifth of a second,
at f eleven,
now beneath here
we've got the light meter, that's this little line of dot's, this sort of bar chart.
To the right there's a plus symbol that's the bright end of the light meter
and to the left is a minus sign that's the dark end of the light meter.
In the middle is the zero,
underneath the zero is a little line of dot's going off towards the plus
is telling me that in a forty fifth of a
second at f eleven
that shot is going to be very overexposed, it'll be much too bright
and to prove it, i'm going to take it.
It's hopeless isn't it.
So what are we going to do about that,
well we're going to set our exposure manually,
it's too bright
so we need to remove some light,
we need to make the shot a bit darker.
The easiest way to do that
is with the shutter speed is with the shutter speed,
so let's say we're gonna speed up the shutter speed
so that it's only open for a tiny tiny fraction
therefore less light can hit the sensor.
As i change the shutter speed control you'll see this number here the
forty five is starting to rise we've gone to sixty as this numbers rising
so the line of dots is creeping along on the bottom and
at three hundred and fiftieth
it's on the zero smack in the middle,
that is telling me
that that is the correct exposure for this shot,
now all i have to do is
take it.
Great it's with a tripod ay, you don't even
have to look through the camera.
Perfect, a lovely exposure.
That is all there is to it,
now could you change that exposure well yes of course you could,
let's just go back a bit let me just mess this up
because you can also change the exposure
by using your aperture.
I've just said it so it says it's overexposed a but,
it's now on a ninetieth of a second.
suppose i want to cut some light down, well what i can do is make that aperture
a little bit smaller so less light comes in, it will have the same effect as
the shutter speed lasts for less time,
here we go
let's make that aperture smaller , it's so hard to see on a sunny day isn't it?
Remember the f number get's bigger as the aperture get's smaller, I've gone from eleven to
nineteen, now
my row of dots are in the middle,
take the picture
and as you can see
it's exactly the same exposure as we had before.
To set up a manual exposure that's all we have to do,
you juggle these two, the shutter speed and the aperture together
until you get the little line of dots on your light meter
smack in the middle
once it's in the middle
you have the correct exposure and you can take the picture
now obviously have two exposure controls they're a little things that come into
play here with things like camera shake there's a movements of the camera
you might want to use a faster shutter speed for certain circumstances
therefore you need to use a bigger aperture
and that's why
you have two different controls because if you want to use a fast shutter speed
you need a big aperture
to let more light in, to compensate
for the short amount of time the shutter is open.
I don't wanna go on too much about that because i don't wanna fry your brain at the moment
what i would say is go and practice.
so that they want to tell you about that is the light nato just very briefly
no camera doesn't know how bright or dark the subject is
organizes what he's programmers have told it
and that is that if you convert a scene into black and white
and then makes all those different black-and-white times together
you end up with something called
need gripe
that is
this color batteries made gray that is amid great photographic card
that is what your camera thinks the world looks like
and the picture are just taken does that nicely
but it will be occasions when you go to take a shot in the dark areas and the
brighter areas
assembly extremely far apart you can recall record detail in both of them
that's when you're going to have to step in
and choose which part of the picture you want to make the exposure for
and you know how to do that
this is a classic case of rediff record tricky lighting
the sun's coming straight towards me
back lighting these houses
which is a great look
but it means that the house is around one sort of like plus the background in
the other side of the writer in a different an out of light
let me talk you through it. If i come and stand
over here
soon as i turn my back
to these cottages i'm in the same light as them and I've gone really really dark
haven't i?
whereas the sky in the background is not too bad even though
the sky is a little bit misty,
Jayne could you just brighten that up for me please,
what Jayne's doing is
changing the exposure
from what's going on in the sun to what's going on in the shade and that's
what's brightening up now if you can see the cottages look about right
but the sky and beyond has pretty much burnt out.
so how do you do that, how do you control that on your camera?
Let's go and give it a go.
There are various options open for you.
You could go out and get yourself a grey card, you could
fill the viewfinder of your camera with with grey over there in the shade,
and manually set that exposure
that will give you an exposure for the cottages but it doesn't help much with
the distance, you could go and get an ambient hand-held light meter
they're brilliant tools but again there is a quicker and easier way.
and is definitely in the realms of digital that makes it so easy.
so I've set up my composition, I've already manually set up the exposure
let's just take a quick picture
and see what the cameras light meter is
going to tell us.
Because there's a lot of sky in the shot
it's confused it and it's made the shot a little bit dark.
The houses are a bit dark and the skies a bit washed out, it's a bit
neither one thing nor the other.
So let's say we're going to expose for the cottages,
well we know that we need to brighten the picture up
if we're going to expose for the cottages, that means the whole picture will get brighter
not just the cottages. You have to choose
which area of the picture you want brighter and which you want dark,
let's put this into practice.
Right now I've got a hundred and sixtieth of a second shutter speed at f sixteen
i don't want to change the
aperture because i want lots of depth of field so i'm gonna change the shutter
speed
i wanna brighten the picture, so i'm gonna make the shutter stay open longer, so we're gonna go
from a hundred and sixtieth
we're gonna slow it down, we're gonna go to an eightieth, the light meter says it's over exposed ignore it because
that's what we're trying to do because we're exposing for the cottages
and take the picture can't.
As you flick between the two you can see
there's a big difference between the cottages in one and the other look, but
they'res also a difference in the sky,
the skies kind of whited out a bit,
but the cottages the cottages look great.
Suppose you wanted to do it,
let's put this back to where it was,
a hundred and sixtieth at f sixteen.
suppose we wanted space for the sky and not the cottages, just let the cottages
go dark
then what you'd have to do
is to darken the picture because the sky was too bright.
To darken the picture
we're gonna make the shutter speed last for less time, we're gonna speed it up and
we're gonna go to a three hundred and twentieth of a second.
This time it says it's underexposed and again ignore it because
we wanna darken the whole sky thing down,
take the picture.
Straight away you can see the cottages have gone really dark,
but the skies about right
so you have to choose what it is you want to have in the exposure for, is it
the sky or
is it for the cottages,
you're the one who's in control.
The reason digital is so great is it's so much easier to just try an exposure, check it
and if it doesn't work throw it away and brighten it a bit more, or darken it
a bit more accordingly
rather than running around with light meters and grey cards .
Now if you're out shooting a landscape like this i strongly recommend you use
fully manual mode
because it's great practice and it will give you experience,
if you're shooting something a bit more lively like say a family event or
a wedding
the semi auto and auto modes are obviously really really great help
because you can move quickly,
and if you've been practicing with manual mode, you'll know how to control it
if your camera gets it wrong