Exposure Exposure is one of the most mangy of digital photography. Exposure meters of the machines are constructed so that the brightest spot (white) of the photo is brought to a 18% gray . The result? For example, in photos taken with the snow, you'll see the snow and gray not white. Now, we could talk for hours of exposure, but for now I will base any advice. Your camera should have, in addition to various methods of measuring exposure, although the function of exposure lock (AEL function is sometimes called, auto exposure lock). This is a very useful feature. For example: if your camera allows, set the exposure reading on the spot. This means that the machine measures the amount of light only in the central area of \u200b\u200bthe frame. Now, suppose you have to shoot a subject too bright, like a landscape with the snow. What you do in these cases is to point the camera at the snow and press the shutter button halfway: here the machine calculates the aperture and to get a proper exposure. In fact it is not correct: we have seen that in this way, the machine tends to bring Snow White to neutral gray. So, you have to do is: keeping half-pressed the shutter button, exposure lock and exposure compensation of +1 E / V or more. Now ricomponente the shot and press the shutter button all. You should have a picture with the white snow and exposed correctly. One way to see if the picture is exposed properly is to check the histogram a. Virtually all digital cameras allow this type of display and the photo is well exposed if the histogram occupies the entire tonal range. If it is moved to the left, it means that there are too many dark tones, or that the photo is underexposed. The opposite if it is to the right. In digital photography, unlike analog what is good and right click "exposing to the right", or overexpose slightly, so as to retrieve information from the dark parts. (This is due to the fact that the film with the saying "Expose for the highlights and shadows to spread" (practically dodging during shooting and over-developed in the darkroom), but there is the digital development - not least that of the film!)
White Balance (WB)
The auto-WB (AWB) in most cases gives results pretty faithful, except for night shots and photos taken in low light details. In any case, Help yourself of how pre-set for the WB : if there is sun set on the WB Daylight, Cloudy and so on if it is cloudy. If you want more control, some cameras allow for fine tuning the WB, which allow you to act on the individual RGB channels and change the amount of R, G and B individually. But if you really want to have a perfect WB, you have to supply a neutral white paper (A4's generally going well, but I'm not 100% neutral) and manually set the WB. To do so, the method should be this: take a photo to the paper, taking care only to frame the paper and set the WB to "Custom". The machine will ask you to tell which photo to use for the WB and you say to use than the paper! Needless to say, this procedure must be done each time the light changes. One trick that works most of the time and that saved me in many situations is to use as a reference for the WB ... the asphalt! In fact the car enough to have a neutral reference, which is white does not matter. Very often the track has a color that is very close to neutral gray, and then you can use it as a WB reference, especially for night photos!
Take always M!
Finally, always taken - or more often as possible - in the manual. You will have full control of features and customizations. Again, the complete mastery of the machine is made after a thorough read of the manual, various tests and a lot of pictures on the field. Every time I started to shoot, remember to check the machine settings , such as the ISO sensitivity, exposure compensation, and the WB. Otherwise it ends up that you are with pictures noise (high ISO), overexposed (compensation to +1, 2 E / V) and blue (WB to tungsten)! It seems too trivial, but recently I've had to discard an entire session because I had forgotten the ISO to 400!
and post-production?
Well, even on post production (PP) could be discussed endlessly. There are those who make it, who does not want to know, who does but only to correct the defects of the photos or who makes it and upsets the whole picture (eg HDR pushed or who knows what other gadgets). For my part, I consider that a minimum of PP takes. In analog development was in the darkroom, with digital there is "room clear", which is essential for those who shoot RAW using RAW format - the compact, in theory, should not have this possibility. In any case, my concept of PP is to correct those errors that inevitably the machine (or photographer) commits. Here are some examples of adjustments that you can do once your home with JPEGs and photo-processing programs such as free GIMP:
- raise the contrast (which can be done by adjusting the levels or curves, creating a curve "S");
- adjust the hue, and eliminate annoying dominant (the most common are blue in the picture with the sun in summer and red in the picture at night);
- adjust the saturation, or saturate a bit 'colors without overdoing it, of course;
- sharpen with tools provided by the software, in particular, if any, apply an unsharp mask;
- straighten the horizon or, failing that, look at the vertical lines and make sure they are actually vertical. To do this during shooting, many tripods have a spirit level, or sale of spirit levels to put the flash on the slide - of course must have your compact flash slide!
- adjust the exposure, or bring the histogram so that it fills the entire tonal range, and then act on those levels and cut shades that are not affected by the histogram.
Here are just a few tips that came to my mind and I hope you have been useful. Post are not under the pretense of "teaching" will be missed. These are just some observations arising from my small experience that I wanted to share with you! So if I missed something - very likely - do this well. In any case, have fun but also ... good light!
° ° °
As the title suggests, this will be the last post. This blog shuts down. I do not know if I will miss, but it is a choice that I feel I must take. Perhaps I will return, do not know when I do not know how, but certainly not here. I thank all those who participated in these (almost) three years with comments, ideas, reflections and so on and helped make a good blog. I hope not to have too bored and I also hope that some things I've written it may be useful.
Goodbye my friends, Mark
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