Exposure Techniques

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Lighting plays the major role in the photographing process. This is because bad lighting will obscure the photo’s subjects and composition, leaving little to be appreciated. It has this power to ruin a good image and make it useless, but it also has the power to make an ordinary photo, a great work of art. 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. There is no fixed value of a correct amount of light, because it depends on the available lights, the objects, and the photographer’s judgment. However, it is safe to say that there’s an acceptable exposure and an unacceptable exposure. 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. If less exposure is used, the photograph will become darker as a result of the underexposure. Alternatively, a bright scene will need short exposures, limiting the amount of light collected by the sensor, yielding a well exposed photograph. Otherwise, the photograph will be overexposed, having too many bright areas, the bright subjects loosing their details, and the dark subjects looking too bright..

Exposure relies on two factors: shutter speed (exposure time) and aperture. Shutter speed controls the time for which the shutter will stay open. The faster the shutter speed is, the less light will get to the sensor. As for aperture, it determines how wide the lens is opened. Logically, a wide aperture is used to get more exposure, while a narrow one is used for less exposure. ISO speeds also affect the degree of exposure. At high speeds, the camera will collect light faster and will amplify the sensitivity of the sensor, but will add noise to the photo.

In manual exposure mode, aperture and shutter speed are usually set 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.

A good approach to learn more about exposure is to look at the exposure settings of your previous photographs, and compare them Look especially at photographs that you feel are not well exposed, and try to figure out what went wrong. As a result, you will get a clearer idea on how exposure can impact your photos.

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