riceowl
Leading Member
Howdy,
I finally picked up UNderstanding Exposure this week and have read through about 2/3's of it. its a great book! I didn't think it would offer much more since I've done a ton of reading on the net (but of course, by no means very good yet), but this book was definitely worth it and gave me some new perspectives. Anyway, I was kind of confused by a few things he said.
One is how he focuses. He seems to like to manual focus much of the time. He talks about using the distance scale, esp for the landscape type shots, to focus to infinity. He says to set focus to 2 feet on the distance scale and warns that it will look blurry in the viewfinder b/c the lens is wide opened at that point, but once you snap the pic, the lens stops down and it'll come into focus. That really kind of threw me. Does that mean you can't really trust manual focus then? If its blurry, but will come out focuses, how could you ever manual focus? Or does this only apply to focus'ing to infinity, but he does mention the 2 ft scale if I remember correctly. It kind of confused me. Is it b/c of DOF with the wide opened aperture and when it stops down it'll all come into focus, thus implying that you can still manual focus no problem but not everything will be in focus, however there will be something in focus.
Another question has to do with white balance. I guess I've misunderstood what WB is this whole time. I always thought WB didn't affect metering, that it just told the processor HOW to process the neutrals in the photo. BUt he seems to imply that it does affect metering. Is that right? Generally, I don't even worry about WB, I just set it to AWB and if I need to change it, I do so in post processing. But if it affects metering, then it is important to get it right from the start.
He gives the particular example of snow - which I understood. The camera, by itself, will make a snowy field gray. Makes sense, I understand that and how the meter works. So you set some EC to correct this and good to go. Understand so far. But he did talk about setting the white balance correctly and this to me seemed to imply it would affect the metering. I could be wrong, I may need to re-read.
ANyway, its a great read. Thanks to all on here who strongly recommended this book. I need to go out and try his techniques. I'm a little skeptical on some of his metering suggestions when it comes to the sky. BUt of course, I'm not the expert, so I'll give it a whirl. He says to meter off the blue sky, but for me, this usually tended to severly underexpose everything else. But in his photos in the book, they came out perfect. For instance, if I were taking a picture of some building, currently, I would meter the building and sometimes this would blow the sky. But when I was practicing before, there were times, where I believe I metered the sky, and the building would come out as a silhouette. And this is not from "backlit sun", its from "frontlit sun" Anyway, a bit counterintuitive for me, but I'm going to give it a whirl.
--
Just trying to learn
Blog: http://novicephotog.blogspot.com/
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/9778447@N07/
I finally picked up UNderstanding Exposure this week and have read through about 2/3's of it. its a great book! I didn't think it would offer much more since I've done a ton of reading on the net (but of course, by no means very good yet), but this book was definitely worth it and gave me some new perspectives. Anyway, I was kind of confused by a few things he said.
One is how he focuses. He seems to like to manual focus much of the time. He talks about using the distance scale, esp for the landscape type shots, to focus to infinity. He says to set focus to 2 feet on the distance scale and warns that it will look blurry in the viewfinder b/c the lens is wide opened at that point, but once you snap the pic, the lens stops down and it'll come into focus. That really kind of threw me. Does that mean you can't really trust manual focus then? If its blurry, but will come out focuses, how could you ever manual focus? Or does this only apply to focus'ing to infinity, but he does mention the 2 ft scale if I remember correctly. It kind of confused me. Is it b/c of DOF with the wide opened aperture and when it stops down it'll all come into focus, thus implying that you can still manual focus no problem but not everything will be in focus, however there will be something in focus.
Another question has to do with white balance. I guess I've misunderstood what WB is this whole time. I always thought WB didn't affect metering, that it just told the processor HOW to process the neutrals in the photo. BUt he seems to imply that it does affect metering. Is that right? Generally, I don't even worry about WB, I just set it to AWB and if I need to change it, I do so in post processing. But if it affects metering, then it is important to get it right from the start.
He gives the particular example of snow - which I understood. The camera, by itself, will make a snowy field gray. Makes sense, I understand that and how the meter works. So you set some EC to correct this and good to go. Understand so far. But he did talk about setting the white balance correctly and this to me seemed to imply it would affect the metering. I could be wrong, I may need to re-read.
ANyway, its a great read. Thanks to all on here who strongly recommended this book. I need to go out and try his techniques. I'm a little skeptical on some of his metering suggestions when it comes to the sky. BUt of course, I'm not the expert, so I'll give it a whirl. He says to meter off the blue sky, but for me, this usually tended to severly underexpose everything else. But in his photos in the book, they came out perfect. For instance, if I were taking a picture of some building, currently, I would meter the building and sometimes this would blow the sky. But when I was practicing before, there were times, where I believe I metered the sky, and the building would come out as a silhouette. And this is not from "backlit sun", its from "frontlit sun" Anyway, a bit counterintuitive for me, but I'm going to give it a whirl.
--
Just trying to learn
Blog: http://novicephotog.blogspot.com/
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/9778447@N07/
