WHAT DOES EXPOSURE MEAN IN PHOTOGRAPHY ?
Photography 101 — Understanding Exposure
Photography Life — What Is Exposure ?
Here in this article you are going to learn about Exposure. And we will understand How the different aspects of photography come together to form an Exposure. And How the different different settings have an distinct impact on the outcomes. The goal is to understand what we actually do while taking the pictures.
This is a Photography Learning Series, where I have shared the knowledge based on my own experiences, my learnings from other professional photographers. So, to make you understand about the photography, we will make use of lots of examples which will open your eyes. If you are ready so enjoy the article. If you do not understand something — Do not hesitate to leave a comment with the question.
TIP — Repeating is key to understanding.
What is Exposure?
Exposure is actually the amount of light that we allow to reach the light sensitive photographic medium — either film or digital sensor. OR the amount of light allowed to hit the image sensor of the camera while taking a photo or video.
Correctly exposing an image is capturing the right amount of light in our scenes. The more light we allow more brighter the image will look, vide-versa, the less light we allow the more darker the image will be.
In Photos — We deal with one exposure.
In Videos — We deal with a constant stream of exposures (we also call them Frame Rate — Explained in further series of articles)
This image is too bright, and in photography terms we say it Over Exposed Image.
This image on the other hand is too dark, and in photography terms we say it Under Exposed Image.
This is what we want to capture — Our goal is to capture Well Exposed Image i.e. with good balance of light.
How Does Exposure Work ?
Exposure is controlled by 3 main things in your camera — there are 3 factors of exposure, this is what we are going to learn here. So there are actually three things which we need to control to make an image dark or bright.
- Aperture — controls how much light hits camera sensor
- Shutter Speed — controls how long the light hits the camera sensor
- ISO — controls the sensitivity of your sensor to light
I will beg 10–15 minutes of yours and request to go throught next three articles (linked below) and I promise you will perfectly understand the factors of exposure as all these three factors are talked in more details.
How Do We Know If Exposure Is Set Properly ?
For this we will have a look the Exposure Meter inside the camera. By looking at the meter scale you should see a zero in the middle, with a one and two on each side of the zero.
Each of the numbers on the meter scale represents a stop of light, which is doubling or halving of the amount of light which we let in while taking a photo. So these are the stops of lights.
So if we hear in Photography that a person has increased the exposure by one stop, that simply means to capture twice as much light as on the previous shot or half as much by decreasing a stop.
Over Exposed — Moving to the right side of the zero results in overexposed image.
Under Exposed — Moving to the left side of the zero results in underexposed image.
We have different types of metering modes in the camera which will affect the way your camera senses the light and displays on your metering scale.
Goal — Proper Exposure Image
So the goal is to proper expose the image. But sometimes little underexposed works very well because as soon as we overexpose anything, especially skin, we cannot get that information back. But on the flip side, if the footage is too underexposed, when we brighten it during editing, it will start getting grainy very quickly.
So getting correct exposure is very very crucial to the shots to look good.
Conclusion -
Understanding exposure we came to know that our goal should always be to capture the images with good balance of lights. Exposure actually varies with each scene so we can say that there is no such thing like “correct” exposure. So when exposure is set properly any change in one of its factors/settings require an equivalent change in one or more of the other settings and in order to be control all of these settings we need to be shooting in Manual mode.
Another thing we must be aware is that Longer Exposure Time results in more brighter image and more motion blur. While Shorter Exposure Time results in darker image and less blur.
Hope you like it, Thanks
If you enjoy reading articles like this one and wish to support me as a writer, please consider becoming a Medium member. For a monthly fee of $5, you will receive unlimited access to Medium’s content. If you sign up through my link, I will receive a small commission.
Next Post — Photography 102 — Understanding Aperture [Part-1]
