2011 Week 5 DLS Exercise: Metering Madness!

So, I was going to post the scavenger hunt this week but figured I wanted to get the metering thing hammered into your heads first, THEN get all creative. As I mentioned, I will no longer be telling you what lens or aperture to use - you get to decide that.  As this is a metered exercise that coincides with what we learned today, I will be telling you what mode to use to practice using aperture lock and the AE +/- function to be smarter than your camera.


You need to find 4 items for this exercise. You need one white and one black backdrop, and one white and one black object. The backdrops and objects should all have different textures. For example your 4 items might be: an egg, a shiny black button, a piece of black fun fur, and a white piece of paper or; a white feather, a black computer cable, a piece of shiny white fabric, and a piece of black cotton (bedsheet or shirt will be fine!)

Set up beside a light source (window or other) and remember how your light is going to behave (it's predictable, remember?) With your camera set to Aperture Priority (Av or A) you will need to make some creative choices about how to accomplish the 4 pictures below.

Light object on dark background

Dark object on light background

Light object on light background

Dark object on dark background

The challenging part is taking a picture that you like AND being able to explain in pseudo techno photography garbledy-gook jargon how and what you metered for, and why you like the image you post over any that didn't make the cut.

If you're feeling chatty, include a brief description of any challenges you encountered, how you chose to solve them (did you have to employ ae+/- to get your image? Did you need to relocate? Did you change what angle you were shooting from?) and one or two sentences about the lighting (you liked the details in the black and didn't care about the white being blown out, you learned to love the blur, you think the grain adds texture, you decided to shoot from further away and straight on instead of the side because you wanted to preserve details in the light and shadow instead of having high contrast...)  Lastly, you may want to make a note about any conscious decisions you made about the light you used - did you pay attention to your light and shadows?  Were you shooting with the light on the side or from ahead?

For fun, I've posted a few pics of Sasha the Creepy Dolly with bounce flash for your viewing pleasure... followed by my sample exercise images :)

camera's own little flash

bounced off ceiling

bounced off wall

bounced off floor

dead-on flash

bounced off silver reflector 

bounced off gold reflector

 SAMPLE EXERCISE IMAGES

metered for 50mm f1.4 with a 2x macro filter attached

White on white.  I loved this image right off.  The only thing I didn't like was that I shot these just at the very end of the sunlight today with light from a north-facing window so it isn't very "warm."

White on black, both above and below.  I really love the composition of both of these but couldn't decide if I liked metering for the white (as above) to keep the detail and contours or for the black (as below) to show the quilting detail in my new hat.  (It's quilted in hearts, of course...)

 Even though leaving detail in the blacks blew out most of the detail in my whites, I still think it looks pretty funky :)  BUT it was impossible to use the metering function on this one without using my AE +/- to get the detail I wanted.  It was easiest to meter for the black and use the AE (slider to the left) to under-expose it from what the meter suggested.

It was easier to decide how I wanted to expose the black on black - I really wanted the detail on the quilting to show.  Period.  If I had exposed the previous q-tip picture at the same settings, there would have been absolutely NO detail in the whites, but it worked brilliantly for the blacks.

I took this shot and instantly knew I wanted to get the shadow to be darker.

Unfortunately, to get a strong enough shadow, the blacks were WAY under-exposed and you couldn't even tell what this was. (this is the lens cap/hood for my 40mm pancake lens...)

So, after much debate, I ended up picking the over-exposed version and giving up on a bold shadow.  I could have gotten the flash or a reflector out to force a better shadow... but I didn't... so there it is.

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with - happy shooting!!!