Well, here she is - smudge on her face, hair a rat's nest, and still . . . looking cute as ever. This is my dear sweet Ellie being a goofball. I was trying to play with my camera in the light of that morning and asked her to hold still. This is what I got. She is a hoot. I love how she just gets so much joy out of making others laugh. She literally will giggle at just about anything. She truly has a spirit of joyfulness. I have been reading a book on photography (thank you Kelly) that is about exposure. I love it. However one thing I don't understand is when it says to adjust exp. until your display shows a correct one. What? I don't know what that means. Does that mean that my exp. meter would be in the middle rather than way up high or down low? That's the only thing I can think of. Otherwise, how would I know what the numbers would render other than the light/dark display? Hmmmm.... Anyhow, that is what I am currently working on. Trying to achieve good creative exposure in the manual mode. It has been fun. Thanks Kelly for your patience in answering any questions.
Enjoy the many faces of Ellie. She did.
8 comments:
Sweet Ellie. These are adorable shots of her silly side. THanks for sharing them with us.
Good luck figuring out all that photography stuff. Books tend to confuse me...so I tend to just play around with things till I figure them out. haha
Have a wonderful week.
Hey there, the exposure thing - I think it means to turn the histogram on and make sure that it has an even reading, adjusting exposure until it is even. All cameras have a histogram. These adorable photos of Ellie are over-exposed (too bright). You needed to speed up the shutter in manual mode so that it didn't let in as much light by the door... then the side of her face wouldn't be so bright. The faster shutter would also help with any blurriness. I like to play in manual mode, but then switch it to auto (But no flash) in the same location to see what the camera thinks the exposure should be. Make sense? Everything you learn will help you get better and better!!! Hope this wasn't confusing!
She is such a cutie! What fun to be able to "help" her Mommy. :)
TOO CUTE! She is so adorable!
A "correct" exposure is when your meter (the thing that looks like a bunch of dashes and numbers from -2 to 2) is at 0. Looks something like -2---1---0---1---2 with a hash mark on a location somewhere along that meter representing where your exposure will be. Typically a correctly exposed picture will read 0 however depending on what you are metering off of (what the camera is reading the light on) you may adjust a stop or partial stop higher or lower. Your friend Jenny is kind of right about the histogram and you can actually determine if your exposure is correct more accurately off of a histogram but you have to know how to read it. It tends to be slightly more complicated than your meter. It isn't about having an even histogram as much as it is about exposing properly for the lighting of your subject. For example, if you are outside on a sunny day and you are taking a picture of one of the kids, if you meter off the sky near the sun you will have a beautiful sky and a dark face on your child. That's because you have more light near the sun than you do on your child's face. In the same situation if you meter for your child's face the sun will be "blownout" meaning over exposed in (histogram would look like huge peak on the right side that goes off the edge of the graph on the right side representing your highlights in your picture...another lesson in itself! :)) So say you have your settings adjusted for exposing for your child at 0 exposure compensation and you then aim your camera at towards the sun (NOT AT IT!!!) your meter will now be at 2 meaning if you took the picture the sun would be a total blowout which is to be expected because it is really bright and you had metered for your child. Am I making any sense here? Ok, so basically you want to try and have that meter at 0 when you take a picture to have it properly exposed. But take a picture, you may see that you need to let in more light or less light and your meter may read in between -1, and 1 when you get a proper exposure depending on the situation. There's no hard fast rule which is probably why photographers start to rely on the histogram because it paints a better picture. Real quick, the histogram (graph you see) represents the shadows, midtones and highlights of your picture. To the left side is shadows, the middle is the midtones and the right is highlights. If you keep the graph starting and finishing within the limits of the right and left side you won't have any underexposures (details lost in shadow or black) or overexposures (details lost in highlights/blowouts or whites). But an "even" graph isn't always ideal. Consider the picture of your child outside in the sun. IF you don't have any overexposures in that picture the whole picture will be underexposed because the sun should blowout...does that make sense? Or what if you actually photograph something that is true black, you will definitely have a peak towards the left side of your histogram representing that black in your image. So you aren't always aiming for an even histogram rather a histogram that correctly depicts the environment or creatively captures what it is you are attempting to capture. So, are you now more confused???
By the way, these pictures are probably bothering you most because of the white balance issue with them. Do you see how they are blueish? That's probably because you have your white balance improperly set. Check on it. I'm guessing you have it set for indoors(tungsten lighting) and were using natural light. That's going to make your subjects appear blue. And the blur from slow shutter can be helped by opening up your aperture (make sure it is on the smallest number (f-stop) to allow for the largest opening) and then if you still can't get a fast enough shutter start increasing your ISO until you can get that shutter high enough to overcome subject motion and camera shake.
WOW!!! Thank you Jenny for your input and thank you Kelly for your input. Yes, they do make sense. Little by little I am understanding the concept of correct exposure. I appreciate all the advice and instruction. What a hard thing to grasp. I truly admire both of you for having a handle on what seems to be greek to me.
She is looking more like Phil everyday! What a lil sweetheart! Been thinking about you!
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