Exposure Techniques
When you take your photographs, good lighting should be a priority. No matter how good is your composition, if the lighting is not good, then the whole photo will not be good either. Good lighting, on the other hand, defines the form of your subjects and show them in vivid colors. That’s why the camera should be set to collect the correct amount of light.
During the capture of a single photograph, the photographic medium (film or digital sensor) is allowed to gather a certain amount of light indicated by its exposure. Correct exposure is not fixed value, as it depends on many variable including the photographer’s taste and the photograph’s elements. But there is a range of accepted exposures that, while produce different results, cannot be seen as mistakes. Unaccepted exposures are, in general, due to a mistake rather than a photographer’s intention.
Low lighting conditions require high exposures to allow more light into the sensor, brightening up the final photograph. Otherwise, the photograph will be underexposed, having too many dark areas, the dark objects loosing their details, and the bright objects becoming dull. As for bright light conditions, low exposure will be enough to gather sufficient amount of light to produce a photo with good lighting. If more exposure is used, the photograph will become too bright with many blown highlights.
The camera controls the exposure through shutter speed and aperture. Shutter speed determines how long the sensor will be exposed to light. The faster the shutter speed is, the less light will get to the sensor. On the other hand, aperture controls the degree of openness of the lens. Logically, a wide aperture is used to get more exposure, while a narrow one is used for less exposure. Another component that affects exposure is the ISO speed, which indicates the light sensitivity of the sensor. Higher ISO speeds will make the sensor more sensitive to light, reducing exposure, but it will add undesired noise to the photos.
When manually setting the exposure, the photographer usually sets the aperture and the shutter speed independently. When automatic exposure is used instead, the camera will calculate the optimum exposure based on the light meter used. Because of the lack of manual controls over exposure in many low-end cameras (including most digital compact cameras), exposure compensation (if available) should be used to fine tune the automatic exposure suggested.
Photographs with very dark and very bright spots will not show correct exposure on all their parts using any type of cameras. Usually, photographers take the same photograph at different exposures, and combine them together using software programs.
To understand exposure better, try to study your photographs through viewing them and the settings you used when you took them. Look for the exposure time (shutter speed), the aperture, the ISO speed, and the exposure compensation in the data that is stored in your image files. As a result, you will get a clearer idea on how exposure can impact your photos.
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