Tutorial Details
- Difficulty: Beginner
- Requirements: SLR with a viewfinder
You’d be surprised how much information is available through your camera’s viewfinder. In today’s tutorial, we’re looking again at one of the most important elements of photography – exposure – and how you can expose a perfect photo using just the information shown in your camera viewfinder!
Perfect Exposure
When I first began learning photography, mastering exposure settings seemed to be one of the trickiest things to grasp. To get a decent exposure, my workflow usually consisted of snapping a picture, viewing the result, fiddling with the settings nearly at random, and then trying again only to repeat the cycle over and over while hoping to stumble onto a decent result. As a beginner, this can be immensely frustrating. It wasn’t until I had a strong grasp of how the exposure settings affected the end result that I really began taking nice photographs fairly easily.
Armed with this knowledge, I could at least figure out how to interpret my test picture and adjust the camera settings accordingly a few times until I was happy with the result. Then one day someone showed me a simple trick that changed everything. Since I lacked any sort of formal training I had completely missed the fact that my camera would actually tell me how far off my exposure was and guide me to the “sweet spot” without ever pulling my eye from the viewfinder!
This brief tutorial is for complete beginners who, like me when I first started, have no clue how to make your fancy camera take a picture that isn’t either too dark or too bright. As such, I’ll keep everything really basic and as non-technical as possible. It’s also important to note that while the principals outlined here apply to all digital SLRs, the functionality discussed below applies specifically to Canons and may require some interpretation to be applied to cameras from other manufacturers.
Exposure: The Basic Idea
Our recent Beginner’s Guide to Exposure explained in great detail everything you need to know about exposure. For those of you who haven’t read this, I’ll very briefly explain what you need to know for the purposes of this tutorial.
Exposure loosely refers to the amount of light that is let into the sensor on your camera. The more light you let in, the brighter the resulting picture. Conversely, the less light you let in, the darker the picture.
How much light is let in is a function of your shutter speed and aperture. The shutter speed is commonly expressed in fractions of a second. For example, if you see a setting that says 1/125, 1/50, etc. this is your shutter speed. Shutter speed is exactly what it sounds like: the amount of time the shutter opens to let light in.
Since the number is a fraction, the smaller the denominator (the number on the bottom), the longer the exposure. For example, 1/200th of a second is a much shorter amount of time than 1/10th of a second. Consequently, a shutter speed of 1/200th of a second will let in much less light and produce a much darker image than a shutter speed of 1/10th of a second. Also note that the longer the exposure, the blurrier any action in the photo will become.
The aperture setting controls how much light is let in by varying the size of the opening through which the light must enter and is expressed in terms of focal length (f/x). The smaller the number associated with the denominator of the focal length, the greater the size of the hole, which means more light entering the camera and consequently a brighter picture.
Also remember that the lower the denominator is on the focal length, the shallower the depth of field. This means that the area of the picture that is in focus is fairly large at f/11 and higher, and fairly small at f/3 and lower.
Don’t Forget ISO!
Your ISO setting will also affect the brightness of the picture in conjunction with the quality. Without getting into the complexities of your camera’s electronic sensor, suffice to say that the higher the ISO, the brighter the resulting picture. Unfortunately, as ISO increases so does color noise, which really brings down the quality of the photo.
Metering in the Camera
Hopefully that’s all pretty straightforward. If you’re confused by all the explanation, the three images above tell you everything you need to know. If you need your image to be brighter, decrease the denominator in both the aperture and shutter speed and increase the ISO. If you need your image to be darker, increase the denominator in both the aperture and shutter speed and decrease the ISO (you’ll quickly learn to feel out all three together).
As you know, when you’re shooting in full auto, your camera attempts to make all these judgement calls for you. However, as a photographer, you should be comfortable shooting on full manual as you’ll have much more control over the results when you can fine tune the settings.
The nice thing about all this is that even in manual mode, your camera is giving you hints as to what it thinks your exposure should be. Try pointing your camera at a subject and pressing the shoot button half way. You should hear a beep from the autofocus as the camera attempts to interpret what you want to focus on.
This beep signifies more than the autofocus however, as much more is going on automatically behind the scenes. To see what I mean, look into your viewfinder. You should see lots of numbers and settings that will vary from camera to camera, but they should at least resemble the simplified graphic below.
As you can see, all of the settings we discussed above are represented right here in the viewfinder. When you perform that half-press on the shoot button and hear the beep, these indicators will light up and show you the settings you’ve selected as well as how the camera interprets the available light.
Here the camera is telling us that we’ve set our shutter speed to 1/125, our focal length to 4.0 and our ISO to 200. The real magic however is happening with the Exposure Level Indicator (ELI). This is telling us that we aren’t letting enough light into the camera. We know this because the little light on the bottom is lit up to the left of center. If it were lit up to the right of center, we would know that we are letting too much light in. The goal then is to get this little guy lined up right down the middle.
Theoretically, this should help you achieve a picture that is neither too bright, nor too dark. Admittedly, some exposure bias is sometimes necessary but this method should work just fine a great deal of the time. To put this into practice, let’s imagine a shooting scenario.
Getting the Perfect Shot
Let’s say you’re indoors shooting a birthday party during the day. As is often the case, the light is decent, but not great. Using the information above, you know that since there’s not a lot of light available, you’ll probably want to bump your ISO up to 800. Sure you’d love to shoot down at 100 but it simply won’t be possible given the conditions.
You also know that the poor lighting means you’ll want your aperture wide open. Let’s say your lens will only go down to f/4, so that’s where you’ll set the aperture. You’re fine with the shallower depth of field because it produces that nice blurry background and crisp subject that you see often in professional photography.
Since you’re shooting moving people, you want your shutter speed to be fast enough to have crisp photos devoid of blur where someone was moving. Consequently, you’ll start with a shutter speed of 1/200.
Next, you look into your viewfinder, focus on your subject, and see the following:
You can instantly tell, even before you take a single picture, that the image is going to be too dark. Your aperture is as open as you can get it and you don’t want to sacrifice any more quality, so your only option is to decrease the speed of your shutter to allow more light in.
The brilliant part is that you can accomplish this without even removing your eye from the viewfinder. With the camera up to your eye, there should be a little wheel next to your right index finger. Turn this wheel to adjust your shutter speed. Oddly enough, turning the wheel left will make the ELI go right and turing the wheel right will make it go left (it might be the opposite on a Nikon). You can actually change all of the settings above without leaving the viewfinder, consult your camera’s manual for how to do this on your specific model.
So to fix the problem shown in the picture above, simply move the wheel left until the indicator is centered.
A shutter speed of 1/100 should be quick enough to shoot handheld without too much blurring. Keep in mind that if you go any longer, you’ll want to shoot stiller subjects and/or implement a tripod to keep things steady.
If you’re shooting handheld and centering the ELI means dropping your shutter speed too low (say 1/50), try upping your ISO or lowering your focal length (if your lens will allow). Note that if you’re using a flash, you can shoot at much slower shutter speeds as the flash captures the motion in place.
Using AV and Auto Modes
If you’re really lost on where to set all of your settings to start things off, try switching to auto mode and metering there. This should get you in the right neighborhood to start playing with your own settings in manual mode.
Sometimes you’ll find yourself shooting a scene that is changing so quickly that using manual mode becomes cumbersome and annoying. I recently shot an outside hockey game at night where this was the case. The lighting in different areas of the rink varied dramatically, the players were of course constantly moving and I was experimenting with different zoom levels. Consequently, shooting in full manual would’ve required a lot more settings adjustments and a lot less shooting than I would’ve liked.
In these circumstances, it’s a good idea to shoot in AV. This mode allows you to set your own ISO and aperture so you have control over your depth of field and color noise. However, it automatically takes care of your shutter speed for you. If you look into the viewfinder in this mode, you’ll see that you camera dynamically adjusts the settings so that the ELI is in the center no matter where you’re shooting.
When shooting in AV, you still have to keep an eye on your shutter speed to make sure your camera isn’t putting it too slow. Again, any time it starts dipping too much below 1/100, try adjusting your other settings to allow more light in. Even if your pictures are looking decent on the small screen, you’ll be disappointed to see how blurry they are when you import them into your computer and view them at full size.
Try to resist shooting in either AV or auto mode when you don’t have to. The more practice you get in on full manual, the more you’ll become comfortable with every setting on your camera. This will enable you to confidently approach setting your own exposure in nearly every situation and will help you become a much better photographer.
Conclusion
To sum up, if your pictures are too bright, try increasing your shutter speed, upping your aperture (higher number, smaller hole), and/or reducing your ISO. Conversely, if your pictures are too dark, decrease your shutter speed, reduce the aperture, and/or increase your ISO.
Watch the Exposure Level Indicator in your camera’s viewfinder closely and try to adjust your settings so that it lines up perfectly in the center. If for some reason this produces a picture that is still too dark or too bright, apply exposure bias accordingly.
Finally, if you have trouble shooting in manual, start off in auto to get a feel for the proper settings or switch to AV so the camera will automatically control only your shutter speed while you take care of the rest.
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By Josh Johnson
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Fantastic post.
I already knew this technique but i wasn’t sure that it was going to work.
Now i’m sure!
Thank you so much!
Second paragraph of ‘Getting the Perfect Shot’ where you say ‘so that’s where you’ll set the focal length’ you probably want to say ‘so that’s where you’ll set the aperture’.
I second this. If you are trying to teach elementary camera techniques, you should check to make sure your terminology is not misleading. It will make the rest of what you have to say more believable.
i think he may have meant focal ratio, def not focal length. also in the conclusion, “upping your aperture (higher number, bigger hole),” smaller hole, not bigger. Sloppy writing/editing.
Thanks for pointing these out. Duly updated.
I think he was right when he said focal length. The wider the lens, the slower the shutter speed can be with out blur. He also did say it was for beginners, so if you already knew this, then pat yourself on the back and move on.
i expected a more accurate description, such for spot metering, silhouettes and stuff like that. not that interesting
this isn’t perfect exposure. the perfect exposure is a frame by frame determination. this is how to get a generic exposure (just avoiding under and over exposure overall). this will not get you a subject accurate exposure it will just give you an overall gray tone exposure as will every in viewfinder metering not taken off of a gray card.
this title and factual errors are a bit misleading. this could be improved by discussing techniques by subject matter rather than a user manual explanation.
a description of manual exposure and desired results with how to would have seemed more appropriate.
but thank you for putting in the effort to write material, we need to have regular articles and i think many will find it a useful introduction to exposure.
To reinforce the above post, indeed this isn’t perfect exposure. Even beginners need to know and understand how the camera actually *works*.. not just the buttons and dials and gizmos and what settings they change (that is also very important) but how the meter determines the exposure and what that little meter reading in the viewfinder actually means…
“The goal then is to get this little guy lined up right down the middle.” If one were to understand what the meter is doing and what the indicator actually means, then one would know that to ‘line it up down the middle’ is very rarely ever correct. A “perfect” centered reading is actually telling you that the meter thinks your scene / metered tone is as close as possible to a mid-level flat grey color. Do you really want your images to be as possible to grey as they can be? Probably not. A centered meter reading is only “perfect” in a given circumstance when metering off of a grey card to determine correct exposure settings in a given lighting condition. In any other circumstance you’re best served by placing your tones (whether dark or light depends on what you want to accomplish) correctly on the meter.
For instance: you’re shooting a portrait, and the subject happens to be wearing a white or very light colored shirt. What you DON’T do is just center the meter. Your subject’s shirt and thus the subject will be under exposed. Maybe not by alot, but by enough to take the snap and vibrance out of the image.
What you should do is place the most relevant tone correctly when metering. You want your highlights to be as light as possible and still correct without losing any detail. This usually occurs around 1.7 – 2 stops over the authors “perfect” middle-of-the-road meter reading. (For those beginners who get confused about “stops”, each mark on the meter is 1/3rd stop, so each numbered line is 1 stop, one click of the wheel is often about 1/3rd stop)
So: center your meter, then click your wheel a few times in the proper direction to put the reading at about 1.7 or so. Once your most relevant tone is placed properly, all other tones will generally fall into place as they should. This works equally well if your most relevant tones are dark instead of light, just go the other direction.
For myself and my relatively limited Nikon D40, I find that either spot metering mode or center-weighted metering modes work best for this. It takes a bit longer in practice, since you have to point your center focus indicator at the tone you wish to meter on, but if you’re a “focus and recompose” shooter like myself, then it won’t bother you (too much).
There is no magic bullet.
“Here the camera is telling us that we’ve set our shutter speed to 1/125, our focal length to 4.0 and our ISO to 200.”
“focal lengh to 4.0″ should be “aperture to 4.0″
Pretty interesting read.
I usually like to shoot on the darker end and bump up the exposure during post processing to preserve colors and avoid whiteouts.
The author of this post seems to have a very difficult time grasping aperture settings. I’ve read other articles by him “notably (Beginners guide to shooting high key’) where the same errors come up.
I’ve been recently teaching much of my family about basic exposure – we’ve come up with some ways of thinking about these tricky to remember terminology that I’d like to share – how would I sign up to write a basics guide for tuts+?
Just sent you an email!
Thanks David – I’ve read and responded. I just wanted to put a quick note here that this article may not be the be-all end-all for exposure – but it is a good beginners guide to good exposure and will help many people to learn to use their light meters and get their mode dials to “M” instead of “Auto” – especially now that it’s been edited.
This seems like a repeat of several articles on here recently about exposure (aperture, shutter speed and ISO). they have been good articles, but repetitive, just worded differently and with different titles. Can we have more lens reviews and more stuff about finding interesting shots? Please?
Call me old-fashioned but… close your eyes and feel the warmth of the sun; you’ll find the perfect exposure.. May the force be with you
i dont get what all the fuss is about. i think its a very good read especially for those just starting out in photography.
some might find this repetitive but this is a site for “beginner to advanced”, and beginners need stuff like this
Please do not let the critics (certainly not from beginners) stop you from publishing this kind of tutorials!
After the “Ultimate Beginner’s Introduction to Exposure” another great tutorial for beginners like me. Now I think I understand the “M”-mode on my DSLR.
Nice article.
Form myself I like reading the article on my iPhone and make notes right in iBooks
If somebody is interested in the ePub go ahead and load it.
http://cl.ly/c914dada7696f87b2a09
Cassian
‘Guide’ always tells me that this is gonna give you the key facts and then you can go away and try it out for yourself. I think it achieves this and covers what you’ll need.
Thank you, Josh! Great one.
I never even really thought about using that meter to judge the exposure, it seems rather simple now! Here’s my result from last night: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nouveller/4743773006/
It was taken in low light with a bit of wind so I had consider pretty much everything. Thanks for pointing this out, my memory card will be grateful!
Awesome! thanks!
As a beginner, I have been looking for a simple explanation on exposure and metering. This post is the easiest to understand so far. The professionals are good at telling us what can be done but they never tell us how to do it step by step, something that most beignners need and appreciate. I have viewed lots of tutorials that have been too technical with very little explanation on the “how to do it” side.
I found this post very informative and simply written, as it should be for beginners. Nice of the critics to point out a couple of mistakes, but it could have been said in a nicer way.
Keep up the good work Josh, I’m sure the beginners appreciate the simple explanations.
very informative….thank you so much
the way u have explained the concept is really wonderful. I have read loads of tutorials on exposure settings, but this is the only one which sticks to my mind.
Great work
thanks for the great article…really enjoiied reading
Thank you for the article. Even more so some of the comments explaining the gray level. I had to figure out how to read this meter myself with trial and error. A few notes that inspired me to wtite this comment. The +/- are reveresed on my Nikon. It may be woth noting that shifting the meter to the positive side (rather than the “right”) will make a photobrighter.
Secondly, when in aperature mode you can adjust the meter to off center to compensate for the situations mentioned above in the comments.
Thirdly, the article gives the impression that center is desired. If you take a picture outside of blue skies you’ll quickly realize center will wash out the sky. A few click towards negative (1/3 to 1 stop) will help bring the blue back.
I would be very interested in an article covering spot/center/matrix metering.
I actually found this very useful. it’s not about whether it’s the right exposure for you, but I have only had my camera for a few months and was confused about how to use the meter. it is a lot more complex than on my old film SLR that had a wavering needle in the view finder and now I understand how to get it to work.
Hi Josh. I just wanted to let you that I enjoyed this article. When I read through the comments I was surprised to see such long winded opinionated responses. You are doing a great service by breaking down the basics for beginners. Everyone starts somewhere. It is very easy for someone to come along and critique your article. I think you did a great job in keeping it short and simple. It’s not uncommon for someone to feel embarrassed or awkward when learning something new/ foreign. The simplicity is refreshing. After all, we can only eat one piece of cake at a time. Keep working on the good stuff, ignore the haters
Whitney
Nice one Josh…..don’t let these pedantic pains in the **** stop you from passing on your tips. If they are so good, then why don’t they contribute something that would assist beginners instead of nit-picking? Ok, you may have been a bit off with some of your terminology, but who cares? Beginners will still learn from this article. As far as I am concerned, photography should be fun. We really can do without all these pompous snipers. Keep up the good work Josh!