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Exposure Values

It's time to get down to exposure values. Now, if you've ever been to an event where a photographer is showing you photos and people are asking questions, it is undoubtable that somebody is gonna raise their hand, and they're gonna ask the photographer, what were your settings on your camera for that picture? They wanna know what the shutter speed and the aperture and the ISO settings were for that particular picture. And knowing those particular numbers is almost meaningless. What you really want to know is you wanna know, why did you choose those settings? And this whole section is about why do you make those particular settings on your camera. So, in deciding how we set our shutter speeds and our apertures and our ISOs, we need to really think about what we're doing and what we're trying to accomplish in this particular photograph. So, in these three settings, we have gone through and we've dedicated an entire section to understanding each one of these individually. And if you remem...

ber the camera itself, how do we gather light through the lens? Well, light comes through the aperture, which we have set to a particular size opening. We leave the shutter open for a particular amount of time, and then the light goes to our sensor, which we have set to a particular sensitivity. And so I visually still conceptualize aperture to the shutter to the ISO. They're all related. They're all important. And so now, what numbers should we choose? Because there's a lot of different numbers. We can choose our favorite numbers, our lottery numbers. We can just randomly choose birthdays and other dates and figure out what sort of numbers do we need to get the perfect exposure, and it's not guessing, and it's not having favorite numbers. It's about really thinking about what we're trying to do and setting some priorities for what's important for any particular photograph. So, in general, what is the most important is knowing what your subject is in a particular photograph, and what's critical when it come to exposure is understanding, is the subject moving, or is it stationary, because that changes everything. From that, we can say, yes, our subject is moving. And if it is yes, we have the option of freezing the motion. Now, if the subject is moving, we can choose to do something a little different, and we can blur the motion then, all right? So those are two different options for a subject who's moving. But what about if the subject is not moving? Well, we could maximize the depth of field, or we could go with shallow depth of field. And the fifth and final option is that we could maximize the sharpness. And that's pretty much, right here, these five items, is everything that you can do in photography. Pretty much every photograph you look at is going to fall into one of these options right here. So let's take a closer look at these five options. So, what do we mean by freezing motion? Well, in very general terms, it's faster shutter speeds. Blurring motion is slower shutter speeds. The exact settings we'll worry about when we get to know what that is. Maximizing depth of field is that f/11 to 22 in many cases. Maximizing sharpness, those middle apertures, and shallow depth of field are those wide open aperture settings. So let's do our first example here. We wanna freeze the motion, right? We've got an eagle coming in. It's going to grab a fish out of the river, and we want to have it nice and sharp so that we can see every bit of detail that's going on. So, what are our settings on this? Let's lay it all out. We've got our shutter speeds, our apertures, and our ISOs, and let's start thinking. And so this is gonna be a little bit of a game, and so I'm gonna want a fair bit of feedback from you guys as we go through this. So first off, let's just assume that I'm trying to get the highest quality photograph possible. So we're at ISO 100. Can I have some input from you guys as to what should set next if I'm trying to get this shot? Somebody pick up a microphone and make a suggestion of what I should, the next setting I should adjust on the camera. I'm going to gather that you need to set the shutter speed to freeze the motion. Okay. How fast a shutter speed do you think we might need to take this type of photo? I'm gonna gather 4000. 4000. So we need something up in that high range. You've already volunteered yourself, so just stay standing up right right now. Okay. So 4000's a pretty good call. In this particular case, I think 2000 works quite well, and so you're real close. That's great, great answer. Okay, now with the aperture, we're going to need to set the aperture, and aesthetically, just looking at the photograph, do we want that background in focus, or out of focus? Out of focus, 'cause you want it on the eagle. Yeah, we want it on the eagle, and we don't really care about the background. We really want it focused on the eagle. So where would we set the aperture if we want it out of focus? I'd say five, 5.6. Okay, so you're setting it low on the scale to get the shallow depth of field, and in this case, I really want the shallowest depth of field, I'm gonna go with that four. So you're close again, so that's great. And so this is ideally where I would like it. You can go ahead and sit down, thank you. So, we're not done yet. This is still where I would like to be to set this photograph, to take this photograph. I still need to check with the light meter to see how well I'm doing. In this case, the light meter says I am two stops, and the red arrow indicates I am more than two stops off. Your camera's light meter may read it slightly differently, but be aware of what that means, to be two stops and more than two stops off. So this is where I want it to be, but I look at the light meter, and I can't be there. I'm gonna need to make some adjustments here. I need to let in more light. Now, in order to lighten up this image, can I do it with the aperture? No, there's nothing left to go to. I don't have an option for 2.8. Can I lighten it up with the shutter speed? Yeah, but I'm ruining my shutter speed, which is stopping the action, and that ruins the whole concept of the photograph. So the only place to work is with ISO, and so I need a higher ISO. How high? I just keep moving it until I get this centered off right here. And so now I have an even exposure. And if you're wondering how I did this, all in the timeframe that it takes an eagle to grab a fish out of the water, there was like seven eagles, and they were coming in every two minutes. And so, you set this up ahead of time. You get your exposure set, and then you're waiting for the right moment. But when it comes to the exposure, does it make sense? We set what was really important to us, and we compromised on things that were a little less important. Okay? Let's go to the next one. We want to blue the motion here. So we're in Cuba. They've got the beautiful cars. We're gonna do the slow shutter speed on the car driving down the street now so that we can get the buildings and the background blurry but the car itself is quite clear. Once again, we're just gonna start off at ISO 100. And so here, somebody else have a feeling they'd know possibly what shutter speed this was shot at or what type of shutter speed? Anybody wanna volunteer here? Do we see any hands? Anybody wanna guess as to what shutter speed this picture was taken at, or what you would need to get this type of blurry car shot? Maybe 1/15? 1/15 of a second? 1/15, yeah, 1/15. 1/15 of a second is a great shutter speed for doing panning shots. This one was done at 1/8 of a second, so that's really close. That's kind of hard to guess, so getting close, in the ballpark, is great here. So, in this case, 1/8 of a second is gonna get us a nice, blurry shot. All right, let's continue to have you standing, 'cause I wanna have you answer another question. So, just in theory, in theory, if I was to set f/22, would those buildings in the background be in focus? They would be if you're not panning. If I'm not panning, but I am panning. Would they be in focus in this panning motion? No. Why are the buildings blurry? What's causing the blur? 'Cause you're moving. 'Cause I'm moving, and even if I set it at f/22, that doesn't change the fact that I'm moving. And so f/22 does not help that background at all. So the only thing in focus is really the side of the car. So we don't need much depth of field in this picture at all. We're not worried about the buildings. We're not worried about anything in front. If we're only thinking about the side of this car, what would be the best aperture to set, and why? I would say four. Why four? Because you need a lot of light. Forget about the light for the moment. Just think about depth of field, sharpness. Remember, this is a flat subject here. The side of the car is flat. Oh, okay. So with flat, the aperture doesn't matter. Right, right. You guys remember that? With flat subjects, the aperture, the depth of field, doesn't matter. So what would be the sharpest setting that we could set with the aperture? In the middle. In the middle of the range, that's right. And so if we move the aperture up to f/8 or f/11, we're gonna get the maximum amount of sharpness that we can get out of a particular lens. And so, the background's blurry 'cause it's moving. The road is blurry 'cause it's moving, and that's going to be blurry no matter what, and there's going to be only a slight difference in different apertures. And so that's where we're kind of maximizing the setting in its entirety. All right, let's take a look at the light meter. Light meter says, we are more than two stops off. What would I do in this case? Well, I would probably try to let in more light in at four. So your original thinking was correct in there. And so I'm still two stops off, and this is there I would probably go in with the ISO up to 400 and get this set. That way, I get the exact shutter speed that I wanted. I get an aperture that's not perfect, but it's gonna work out just fine for this type of shot, and a little bit higher ISO, and that's what I need for that type of lighting. Thank you very much. And so, hopefully, that process makes sense. All right. We saw this photograph earlier. We were talking about maximizing the depth of field. And so here, I'm trying to get everything in focus. So, we're going to have the ISO set. So just think at home for the moment, those of you at home, what are you gonna set first? Why are you gonna set it there? Well, let's see, maximized depth of field. That has to do with aperture. Where are we going to get the most depth of field? Well, that's going to be in the f/11, 16, 22 range, so let's go ahead and set it at 22, all right. Now, does shutter speed matter in a situation like this? Well, is there anything moving? Well, I hope not, because I'm gonna get in big trouble if these walls are moving on me, all right? And so, nothing's moving in there. Now, do you think I'm using a tripod? If you know me, I like to you use a tripod. And so the camera is nice and steady, and so, I'm not going to be too worried about the tripod. If I was handholding it, it would probably be convenient to have something around 1/60 of a second, and I like to have one extra for safety. And so, it'd be really convenient if I could shoot at 1/25 of a second. I'd just handhold it, I'd get the shot, and I'd be great. I don't have to use a tripod. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to look at the light meter, and the light meter is going to say, hey, John, you are well underexposed. This picture's gonna be way too dark. You need to let in more light. And I'm thinking, well, I want the ISO at 100, 'cause that's best image quality. I want it at 22. I don't wanna let in more light here, because I want that depth of field. The answer to this problem is to put the camera on a tripod and use whatever shutter speed is necessary in order to get this picture. So I move the shutter speed until my light meter zeroes out at zero, and if it's one second, so be it. The camera can sit steady on a tripod for a second without a problem. And that's how I take that photo. So hopefully, that process makes sense. If you have questions, raise your hand quickly, 'cause we're gonna move on to the next one. Okay. Let's do another scenario here. So we've got portrait photography. A lot of people like doing portrait photography. So here, I really wanna focus on the face, all right? And I don't care about the background. I mean, I care enough that it looks decent, but I'm no worried about sharpness in the background. I want that shallow depth of field look. So we'll continue to keep ISO 100. Does anyone wanna volunteer what they think I should set for the next setting? Somebody in the front row wanna volunteer and answer? Where should I set the aperture? For the shallow depth of field, you'd wanna have the four, wouldn't you? Right. And you'll notice that I'm actually putting the settings that I had on that lens. I don't have a 1.4 lens. And so when your lens maxes out at four, and you want shallow depth of field, you are probably gonna be at four. Now, for shooting a photo of a person, what sort of shutter speed would you want to have to make sure that you're not going to get any blurriness? Do you remember what shutter speed was necessary for casual human movement or handholding the camera? Well, no lower than 30, so around 30 or 60? Well, 60's kind of that safe general number, but just like in the last photo, I'd be nice to be at 125. And so this is where I would like to be to shoot this photo. But before I just shoot it here, I'm gonna have to check with the light meter, and the light meter says that I am overexposed by one stop. This is a rare problem, folks. This is a really nice problem. This is the same... This is a similar problem to having too much money, okay? It's very easily dealt with, okay, having too much light. We have too much light. It is too bright. Now, do you have a suggestion on how we can make this picture one stop darker and still get all the effects that we want? What do you think we should do? You'd just increase the shutter speed by one stop. Increase the shutter speed to 1/250th, makes it one stop darker. That is correct. Nice job. It makes it one stop darker and gets our meter back at zero. We've got that ISO we want. We've got the aperture we want. Not only did we get the shutter speed we want. We got one better than that. And so this is a very convenient, easy situation to set our camera up at. Very good, thank you. All right. Maximizing sharpness. Now, this is the Coliseum in Rome, and if you've been there, you know that it's not flat. But for all intents and purposes, it's flat in this photo. It is so far away and the difference between what is closest and the furthest away from us, it is essentially a flat subject at this point. All right. So we're going to maximize the sharpness on this. ISO 100. And so, if we don't have a lot of depth, we're not really concerned about the depth here. Where do we get the sharpest aperture settings? We're not looking for the most depth of field. The sharpest setting of the lens is in the middle of the range. And so eight or 11 would be a good call in here. And so f/11 is where we're at. Now, as far as shutter speed, we once again have a subject that is not moving. And so this doesn't care about shutter speed. It doesn't really matter. It would, of course, be convenient to be using 1/125 of a second or something up in there so you could handhold the camera. Let's take a look at the light meter. Light meter says we are woefully underexposed. We need to let in a lot of light. If you want to keep ISO 100 and you want to keep that really sharp aperture of f/11, you put your camera on a tripod, and you change your shutter speed as necessary, as low as it needs to go, because your camera can sit on a tripod perfectly still for four seconds, and it will not complain. And that's how you get the sharpest possible shot in that situation. Now, some people, when they're traveling, or when they're shooting just at any time, they don't like to use a tripod, all right? Anybody here ever not like to take a tripod? Kenneth likes to leave the tripod at home, right? Okay, so let's imagine you wanted to shoot this exact same photo, but you didn't bring your tripod with you. How do we make that change? Well, what do we need to change? Well, we're going to need a faster shutter speed, right? How fast? Well, let's remember where we are, and let's adjust our shutter speed into something that we can handhold. Well, we should be up at around 1/60 of a second, probably, for handholding. I'm not too concerned about what exact lens are we using here, just kind of general lens. So we're gonna say you need 1/60 of a second. Now, let's imagine this lens had two stops of stabilization. We could come all the way to 1/15 of a second, because we can hold it two stops steadier with our stabilize system. All right. Now, we were at four seconds, and now we're at 1/15 of a second. How many stops of light have we lost? How do you figure that out? You just count. One, two, three, four, five, six stops of light. So it is gonna be six stops darker. Our light meter in most cameras will only tell us two stops. Some cameras will tell us three stops, but they'll usually have some sort of indicator that you are more than the maximum amount listed. And so that's my indicator, is the red arrow. And so I have lost six stops of light. It's gonna be six stops too dark, and I need to get that back with something else. Now, the way that I would probably do that is I would go over to the aperture and open up to f/4. That gets me three stops closer. I've traded six. I got three. I need to get three back. I'm going to come over to the ISO and bump it up to 800. And so the difference is is that I went from 100 to 800. A little bit more gray. Not horrendous, but a little bit more gray. I went from 1/15 of a second handheld, which, if I shoot several photos, I'll probably get a sharp shot, but not as sure as a four-second tripod shot. And I've gone from f/11, sharpest point on my lens, to f/4, the least sharp position, but not terrible. And so we've compromised our photograph by handholding it, and I guess what I wanna get to is that you don't have to take your tripod with you everywhere to get good shots. If you wanna get the best shots, it's necessary for some types of situations. And so there are certain scenarios where a tripod is really a must if you wanna get great shots, and there's other situations, either you don't need it or it's not appropriate. For a lot of people photography, tripods just don't work out very well. Sports and action. Portrait photography. I would not use a tripod in almost any of those cases, except very special circumstances. But for something like this, I wanted to get the sharpest shot, and I was willing to carry my tripod around that morning. And so there are options for you to use or not use. All right. Let's try some more shots. All right. This is one of my favorite shots from Turkey this last year. Let's think about what we're trying to do here. So we're going to be setting ISO 100, and in this case, I need a shutter speed fast enough to handhold it 'cause I'm not allowed to use tripods in here. I've gotta be careful, 'cause now it's handheld. I do have stabilization systems in my lens, so I'm able to hold it a little bit steadier at slower shutter speeds, but it would be nice to be up there. A common phrase in photography that we've had around for a long time is how do you take a great photo? F/8 and be there. It's kind of one of those old National Geographic standards. And so f/8 is gonna be a real sharp place on the aperture. It's gonna give you a little bit of depth of field. and in this case, I'm using a very wide angle lens, and I wanted a depth of field so I could have the subject in the foreground in focus, and with the wide angle lens, we're going to keep the background in focus pretty well along with that, because it's a wide angle with a bit of depth of field. Now, in this case, I am well underexposed, and I'm going to need to make some compromises from what I ideally had set here. So what am I gonna change? I'm going to go down to f/4. I'm gonna give up on the depth of field. The subject is most important, and I don't really care if this background is a little out of focus, because it's not as important as my main subject. From there, I'm gonna probably need to bump up the ISO. And if I have stabilization on the lens, well then, I can work with that, if I can get down to 1/8 of a second, and I think I was shooting with about a 20 to 24 millimeter lens, and that lens had about three stops stabilization. And I was able to shoot several photos. And any time that you're able to shoot several photos, that gives you an opportunity to get one right out of a group that might might be kind of blurry. And so, that's how I got that particular shot. And so it's not just knowing the settings that are important. It's knowing, why did you do things in a particular manner. All right, this is outside of one of those mosques in Turkey, and this is what I would call a tricky exposure. All right, so let's talk about how this one was taken. You'll see a common theme, ISO 100 as much as possible, especially to start with. All right, so in this one, I want the fountains to be a little bit in focus. Now, they're moving, so it's hard to hold perfect focus there, but I definitely need the background in focus, and it's dark, and I'm not going to be able to set f/22. I know that right now. And so, I'm gonna go with kind of a middle aperture. I don't have a big need for depth of field in this particular case. Next up, come on. I'm going to just set the shutter speed by watching the light meter up here. What do I need for my particular picture here? In this case, it needs about one second, and I'm like, that's pretty nice, because I'm gonna have one second for water moving, and it's gonna have that nice, flowy look to it. That's kind of nice to have in some photos. Now, when I take the photo, keep your eye on the photo here, 'cause watch what happens. When I take the photo, it comes out a little too light. And at first, you'll be like, yeah, that isn't the way it looked... It didn't look like that to my eyes. Well, what's happening is that your camera thinks everything is middle-tone gray. And in this picture, it's kind of taken at dust, and it's kind of dark. This picture is supposed to be dark. And so what we wanna do is we wanna make this picture a little bit darker by changing one of our settings. And what we can do is we can go to f/11. That makes it one stop darker and makes it a little bit darker on the image. And so, different thinking there. Okay, so this is the same thing on the reverse side. We did this in exposure compensation. But let's do it more manually now. So we have a subject that is very, very light in nature. Let's go ahead and dial in a little bit right here. So we'll start it off with ISO 100, and then from here, well, there's nothing moving. We want a little bit of depth of field. We don't need tons of depth of field, but that 5.6 might be able to hold this enough. We mainly want these little trees on the side in focus. Take a look at our light meter, and then what we're going to do is just start changing our shutter speed until this evens out at zero, and this happens to get me to 1/250 of a second. Okay, that sounds pretty good. Let's take the photo, and the camera's gonna give you a dark photo, because all of this reflected light, this camera is suggesting, oh, nothing's this bright. We wanna make it darker. And so what you need to do is you need to make this brighter. We need to lighten this up, and we can do that by changing our shutter speed down one stop to 125. That lets an extra stop of light. Our light meter's gonna be over here on the plus side. So now we've lightened this up, because it's a very, very light scene. Hopefully, that process and that thought process, the thinking, makes sense. Now, every once in a while, something will fall outside the bounds of the normal scenarios. And this is definitely one of those. This is one of my favorite photos from my trip and time in Morocco. So let's talk about how this photo was made. Ideally, of course, I'd like to be at ISO 100. That's gonna change here in a moment. Now, with this, it's tricky, because at first, I was wanting depth of field. I wanted the foreground wall, whoever might be walking down the street, and the paintings in the background to be in focus, which means I needed depth of field. But because I knew the main subject was gonna be moving down the street, I knew I needed a fast shutter speed to stop their action. And I didn't know who was coming down the street or how fast they would be coming down the street, so I thought, I'd better have a fairly fast shutter speed. 1/500 of a second stops fast human action. That would be really, really nice to have. For depth of field, f/22 would be a little bit greedy in this case. I think I could be totally fine with f/16. When I take a look at the light meter, I'm woefully off. I am terribly off, as you will find in a moment here. And so you now you need to start making some compromises. Well, can I do without this, can I do without that? And so the first thing I think of is, okay, I'm probably not going to shoot someone running down the street. They might be walking quickly. 1/250 of a second should do the job. F/16 is really more depth of field than I probably need to have, and so I can back off on my depth of field all the way down to f/4. As long as I focus on the person, at least they will be in focus, just on the middle of the street. From there, the only thing left to adjust is the ISO, and I just have to keep adjusting the ISO up, and we're up at 800 in order to get the shot. When I do my test shots, they come out a little bit lighter than average. And in this town, which, the name of the town is Chefchaouen, it's all painted this kind of dark, deep, beautiful blue. And this photo is supposed to be dark by about one stop. And so now, I have too much light coming into the camera. So, I need to let in less light. So we could do that with the aperture, and we could get more depth of field. Okay, well, that would be kind of nice, right? And if we went over to shutter speed, we could get a faster shutter speed. Now, that's not such a bad thing after all. It'd be kind of nice to have a little bit faster shutter speed. And with our ISO, well, it'd be kind of nice to go down to 400 ISO. So, any option that I chose would improve the quality of the photographs. And so now I need to make a decisions as to which one will have the most benefit for that photograph. And in this case, I chose to go down to ISO 400. And so, here's the final shot again. This is a darker-than-average scene. So once you understand kind of the parameters and what's important, you can start making these decisions yourself.