The best camera lens is the one behind the camera, our eyes, it sees all.

When you take a shot ,even the most expensive camera does not do justice and then one wonders what did I do wrong??

…..the camera was set right, it was automatic, on a program mode on some other mode, but still I missed something.

Basically, Your Camera is Dumb!!

The camera only sees light and tones. Accordingly, it automatically selects Aperture, Shutter and ISO values and tries to give an as even a tone as much as possible.

While the eye behind the camera saw a perfect scene with fantastic colors, say a sunrise, the camera meter though its bright and set the exposure accordingly ….and you got all muddy colors. or if it was a dark day (maybe late evening) your cameras meter ‘thinks’ it is a dark scene and it then exposed the scene to make mid toned and one lands up with overexposed shots.

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photo 1- A out-of-Camera RAW shot, exposed for the highlights

Its therefore, very important to understand the relationship of the three elements for exposure (aperture, Shutter and ISO) and then use exposure compensation (in the camera) to correct these tones .

Try increasing or decreasing the shutter speed-aperture-ISO to adjust the amount of light that enter the camera. One has the liberty of digital camera and can decide on taking many picture to get the right one. Dark environment requires more light, while Bright scenes might need less light entering the camera.

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Photo 2- The same image post processed thru an out of Camera photo editing program

As you see from photo 1, the camera clicked an overall mid toned shot. I, had on purpose exposed it for the highlights (the sky). If I had exposed for the hutment (shadows) below, then the sky would have been totally blown out(overexposed) and the sun rays could not have been captured and would have lost the overall feel of the morning first light.

No wonder a lot of serious amatuers/ professions shoot RAW and then post-process the photographs manually thru a program instead of the camera processing it. Post processing is akin to the dark-room of the past. While these are basic elements, the more you shoot, the more one learns, the learning process becomes faster and is never ending.

One finally realizes that it not only  about taking good exposures, colors, correctly balanced mid tones, but finally, a lot to do with the “Composition” of the whole frame.

And that what differentiates a top notch photographer from the crowd…..

More in Next.

 

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