Thanks! I was told to learn exposure I had to first learn in AV, understand aperture, learn in TV for shutter and then learn in P...
What you said made a lot of sense and I'll definitely look up your suggestions!
Thank you for the kind words. Yes, the people who told you that don't seem to understand exposure either or at least didn't explain it.
In a nut shell, you've got full stops in aperture, shutter speed, ISO and scene zones. That's why you have to understand the scene zones or the Zone System because they have stops as well. Regardless of these four things, a stop is either doubling or halving light. If you move from f/5.6 to f/4, you're letting in double the light. If you move from 60th of a second to 125th of a second, you're halving the light allowed in. Notice, these aren't even numbers. That's why you have to memorize the full stops.
For example, if a good exposure is f/8 at 125th of a second but you want a narrow depth of field and the lens is capable of f/2.8, how do you do it? You'd move the aperture to f/2.8, but what shutter speed is that? Let's see. f/8 --> f/5.6 --> f/4 --> f/2.8. That's three full stops. So, that's 8 times more light. You doubled, doubled again and doubled again. You need to pick a shutter speed 3 stops less light. So, 125 --> 250 --> 500 --> 1000. The final exposure is f/2.8 at a 1000th of a second.
See how it works. If you stop down on one, you must open up on the other. Both of the above exposures are the same, but one has more depth of field and the other has less. Pick the one best for your scene. A portrait might want less and a landscape more. So you see how related aperture and shutter speed are. You also see why you have to memorize full stops. If you don't, how would you know where 3 stops took you?
Your sensor's ISO is also in stops, but they're simple even numbers.
Here's the part many don't understand. Your scene items are also in stops. That's the key to really understanding photography. There's 10 zones and they are doubling or halving luminence. Zone 6 is twice as bright as zone 5 to make it simple. Your camera only understands zone 5 really and there in is the issue. Modern cameras use fancy algorithms to look at the scene and average it all together weighing various parts and hoping to get an average if 18% neutral gray or Zone 5. If the scene is average, you might get a good exposure, but if it is not, you won't. That's where understanding the Zone System is important.
You could look at your scene and realize it's averaging a zone 6. The camera's thinking it's a Zone 5 as usual. You can then open a stop and get it right. See? I'm over simplifying, but that is really all there is to it. You'll know while everyone else will be guessing and fiddling with their compensation dials or whining about their camera over or underexposing.
Let me explain a slightly more complex scene and how you'd do it. Let's say there's a woodland scene with bright clouds poking between the leaves. Let's say there a dark shadowy stone wall at the forest floor. You try it in P mode and everything is over exposed. It was mostly dark so the camera opened up too much. If you aim with some of that bright sky, the opposite happens and the scene is under exposed.
You meter off that stone wall. You have placed it on Zone 3 because that means it is so dark, but still have visible texture. The camera places it on Zone 5 because that's all it knows how to do. Now, you look at that exposure setting and then move the wall back to zone 3 by stopping down two stops from 5 to 3. The exposure is now perfect for that scene if the wall is an important part of it.
Now you might want some balance, so you meter off one of those clouds and do the same thing in the other direction. If the exposure is the same as with the stone wall, you're done. If not, you have some compromising and choosing to do, but you have the control and that's the point. You know exposure.
excuse spelling issues.
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Cheers, Craig
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