Exercise: Measuring exposure - Part 1.

For this exercise produce between four and six photographs which are deliberately lighter or darker than average, and say why in your written notes.

1/800 f4.5 ISO 200 30mm -2.7 E.V

This picture of beach huts was taken in Southwold. Even though it was shot in February on quite a chilly day, the sun was particularly bright. I deliberately made the image darker than average as the beach huts were looking quite washed out. The exposure is still not quite right and the focus is also not spot on but I wanted a slightly hazy feel to the image ( I am re decorating my bathroom and have developed a beach hut obsession so this will be my theme).

1/800 f4.5 ISO 320 30mm +1.3

For this similar shot the direction of the sun had changed and it had moved behind a cloud. As well as increasing the ISO slightly I had to lighten then image more as the scene appeared rather dull and dreary. I have to say that I prefer this shot to the one above as the first one is still too washed out.

1/800 f4.5 ISO 320 40mm -1.0

Here the camera had metered for the sky and the overall image was washed out. By altering the exposure by one stop more detail is shown.

1/750 f4.8 ISO 400 24mm -1.5

My camera had a mind of its own for this shot and for some reason it would only set the ISO to 400 which was raising the sensitivity too much. To try to counteract this the exposure is then darker than average. This is not ideal at all but I think that I have now realised what went wrong and have now fixed the problem.

1/750 f5.3 ISO 400 75mm +1.0

The day was looking slightly overcast again and the daffodil had lost its vibrancy. By making the photo lighter than average it gave the shot the look of a bright Spring day rather than the gloomy appearance it had taken on.

This exercise has made me realise that whilst cameras now tend to have hi-tech metering abilities they often only balance out the amount of light and dark to create an average result. This will often make the image appear overall too light or too dark and details will be lost. When I shoot an image now I have often started to take several photos and slightly different exposures to see the effect this has and then select which I feel looks best. I am hoping that with practice I will find myself improving as I sometimes end up with an image that is slightly over or under exposed.