Constant Lighting Situation

Good evening,

Tonight we are going to talk about indoor lighting or constant light. Quite a few people this holiday season are going to be in a situation where the light is constant, however this can trick our sensors. Let's say we are indoors at a dinner with the family and decide to take some candid shots. The lighting at the table is relatively constant. Now our cousin is wearing a dark red sweater and our uncle is wearing a light salmon colored shirt. If we focus on our cousin the exposure is too bright and if we focus on our uncle the exposure is too dark. So what is a photographer to do in this situation. Turn it to manual mode then set the shutter and aperture to were it exposes everyone one the way we want.

In this example we have my Wife's Christmas Village. The metering spot was changed by a few inches for each image which resulted in 1 stop of exposure difference. The difference between an uncle and a cousin would probably be greater and so would the small light changes. These were shot in Av mode the first was metering from the snow 1/160s, second was on the reindeer 1/125s, and third was on the pine trees 1/80s. In this example the difference could be made up easily in post. With holiday photos most people want them sooner rather than later so the less editing that needs to be done the better. If possible adjust the settings before hand, if not use your preferred setting to get an idea of where you want to be then lock those settings in using manual. Those split second moments don't wait for a cameras metering system. So switch it to manual this holiday season and go out and shoot.

~Scott

Shutter Priority

Good Evening,

Shutter priority is not one that I use often. There is nothing wrong with it I just never really used it. After taking this series of photos I will make an effort to use it. I have seen the times that it could be useful. Such as when being more worried about stopping motion in the image as opposed to having a certain amount of the photo in focus. You control the shutter speed and ISO then the camera sets the aperture (or tries to within the lens limits) to what would make a "perfect" aperture using the exposure triangle.

If you are taking pictures of cars in motion, people running or playing sports, you have an artistic idea that has some motion blur and you want to control how much is blurred, you are trying to make a busy place look empty, taking pictures of fans, etc, then this would probably be the way to go. It can be used for all of those and more.

These images were taken at 800 iso with a tripod mounted camera. The first was and last images had a blinking aperture which means each was outside of the "perfect" exposure. 1/640 sec was a stop below what the aperture could adjust for and 1/2 second was a stop above. If you notice the first one is dark compared to the others and the last is brighter. Again we can see the triangle at work in these captures. For each stop (keep in mind these are full stops) the the shutter speed changes the aperture changes one stop too. I know that Sony and Canon have the option, not sure about Nikon I haven't used them enough, to change the stop adjustment to either 1/3 stop or 1/2 stop when changing the shutter speed or aperture. I hope this collage provides a good example of shutter speed adjustments. Now go out and shoot.

~Scott