Exposure Practice

I learned how to use the light meter, and out on a sunny day in downtown Mobile, Alabama, I didn’t get a whole lot of use out of it, but there were some differences I saw. Take a look at these, and I’ll tell you what they were made up of.

These were all taken from the same place, obviously, with different exposure settings. Just for fun, I set the ISO at 800, shutter speed at 1/160, and f/4.  Seriously overexposed, with not much chance for rehabilitation, but I did play with it a little in Photoshop.  The center image used a much lower ISO, at 100, and I sped up the shutter to 1/4000, and the depth of field I took down a little to f/4.5. The depth of field really didn’t make as much of a difference as the ISO did. I just don’t need nearly that much sensitivity on a bright, sunny day.

I turned around the corner of the building and saw three hanging lamps like the red lamp at the end of the building. The power lines and the cars and other buildings keep it from being a really great shot, but I liked the red against the white building and the repetition of the lamps.

The image on the left is just too dark to be of any use, but this was an experiment, so in a way, it was of some use. ISO 100, f/4.5 depth of field (pretty much standard for this lens), 1/4000 shutter speed.  The center image got a little lighter, I slowed the shutter down to 1/2500. The only thing that changed in the rightmost image was a bump down of the shutter to 1/2000, but it made a visible difference.

These last two are my favorites out of the bunch, a little better contrast.

I increased the sensitivity to ISO 200, and kept the shutter speed at 1/2000 for the left shot, and for the one on the right, sped up the shutter to 1/4000.

If the subjects had been more interesting I’d have paid more attention to getting good focus on something, and I still like those red lamps against that white wall. I may have to get a shot of just one.

Now, for the shot that was waaaaaaaay overexposed, I took the raw image and pulled it into my Camera Raw editor before opening it up in Photoshop, and adjusted the exposure digitally, and this is what I came up with:

I added a little saturation to make some of the elements stand out a bit, and it could be kind of an artsy print for some purpose, but it would take a lot of creative work. It almost looks at this point like film negative.