Correct exposure

[joel222]

After getting into photography a few months ago I've been shooting in manual near enough from the start, and getting some decent (in my opinion) pics. I thought I was doing quite well until I read on another thread on here that to expose a shot properly "you don't just line the exposure meter's needle with the centre". Could anyone give me a quick explanaition on this?

 

[ernesto]

If you just match the exposure meter all you are doing is manually doing what the camera would do anyway. Manual can be used when you don't want to follow what the camera suggests or you want to fix and hold the settings.

 

[TCR4x4]

After getting into photography a few months ago I've been shooting in manual near enough from the start, and getting some decent (in my opinion) pics. I thought I was doing quite well until I read on another thread on here that to expose a shot properly "you don't just line the exposure meter's needle with the centre". Could anyone give me a quick explanaition on this?

The camera isn't the be all and end all. It gives you what it thinks is a good all round exposure, but often this can be wrong. By lining the needle up to the middle in manual, well you might as well just switch the camera to auto or P mode and save yourself a few seconds.

In manual, you should be ignoring the exposure meter, as you should already know what settings you want, or at the very least you should know that the meter is going to under or overexpose a certain scene and you should be able to adjust a setting to gain the correct exposure.

A good example is if you try and shoot a black dog on a bright day. Depending what metering mode you are in, The camera will see the dog, but if the rest of the scene is brighter, it will expose for the brighter areas and underexpose the dog.
As a human, you know the subject is the black dog, not the bright background, so you can tell the camera by setting the correct aperture and shutter that you want the dog exposed correctly as his is the main subject.

 

[Al Brum]

Why don't you try letting the camera do the initial exposure and then use exposure compensation to get the effect you want? That will give you a good insight for what to do when you expose manually and will help you set the right exposure when attempting the trickier shots.

 

[modchild]

It depends on how I want my shot to turn out, but I generally get the setting somewhere near the middle and use EC to finish it off. Depending on what you're taking you might find spot metering easier than evaluative too. I only tend to use evaluative when there's a lot of sky in the photo.

 

[HoppyUK]

After getting into photography a few months ago I've been shooting in manual near enough from the start, and getting some decent (in my opinion) pics. I thought I was doing quite well until I read on another thread on here that to expose a shot properly "you don't just line the exposure meter's needle with the centre". Could anyone give me a quick explanaition on this?

Current thread on this here http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=396251

The basic problem is this: correct exposure depends on the brightness of light falling on the subject, but all cameras work by measuring the light reflected back from the subject and this obviously varies depending on whether the subject is light or dark toned.

Different metering patterns do their best to find a way around this, and mostly they work pretty well, but they are not infallible.

Shooting in manual is not a magic bullet to correct exposure, not at all. If all you do is line up the needle in the viewfinder, it's no different to letting the camera do that for you in one of the auto modes. You need to understand exposure, light and shade, how the meter works, the histogram, and how to adjust things when necessary.

There's a lot of helpful stuff on that thread.

 

[shaylou]

Why don't you try letting the camera do the initial exposure and then use exposure compensation to get the effect you want? That will give you a good insight for what to do when you expose manually and will help you set the right exposure when attempting the trickier shots.

That's good advise Al. I'm a beginner in full manuel mode. I find from time to time I can't figure out the correct exposure so I simply take a shot in auto to narrow it down for me. Ohhh the learning curve.....