Some thoughts on photography

[doftya]

Another thought, which has helped me make sure that my images are exposing properly, is to follow the 18% grey rule. The light meters in cameras are set to expose eithr the spot under the crosshairs, or a blend of many spots, so that those spots appear to be 18% grey. This goes back to good old black and white photography. The thing is that when you aim your camera at something white, and you want it to look white, the camera wants to make it look grey and setting the exposure accordingly. As well when you want to take a picture of something black, if you aim right at the black, it'll want to make it look grey. This will either overexpose everything else in the picture, or underexpose it. With multimetering, the problem is mostly dealt with as the overall picture will appear right, but the problem comes with trying to get a picture of something other than someone standing outside in front of some sightseeing thing. That's why most scenic sunset pictures never really look like what you remember.

Another problem comes with colors, because colors converted to greyscale can surprise us. I put together the following pic to illustrate:



The red boxed grey is very close to 18% grey. As you can see, some bold colors are lighter or darker, good keep in mind when focusing on a person, because their shirt color can affect how the picture will expose. That's why some people carry a "grey card" for someone to hold and the photographer will meter that card to set the exposure.
For further info, take a look at the following thread in another forum: Here. A google search of grey card will also find a lot of info.

On thing I have done is take a piece of paper that is approximately 18% grey and I keep that behind my vise when I'm tying flies, seems they are much easier to see. Good for when you want to take pics of them as well. Just a thought.