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dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/2cpfc8E:sugarspiceandcursewords
replied to your post “sugarspiceandcursewords
replied to your post…”
You may have just changed my life by explaining the exposure comp button. Holy shit, THANK you.
It is seriously the most important button. All it does is tell your camera to adjust settings. On the D7100 you hold the button down and turn the thumb wheel. I think you can do that on the 5300. I always forget which way is which. I just take a picture and look. Every time.
Your camera has different light meter settings that you can mess with if you want, but on a basic level, the thing just wants your entire frame to be an even 15% gray, so if you have a lot of stuff that’s brighter or darker than that, it’s going to throw it off. I’ve experimented with adjusting the metering settings– you can have it put more priority on the center of the composition, or if you’re in an autofocus mode where you select one point, it’ll prioritize that point, etc.– but I’ve just never found it to be as useful as just making a mental note and screwing around with the exposure compensation. ESPECIALLY if there’s a light source anywhere in the picture. Your light meter is gonna get that wrong. (Bear in mind the whole sky can be considered a light source in the right lighting conditions.)
(The above, I deliberately overexposed to blow out the sky and get detail in the chore truck. I wanted the reflection on the side panels. I think I lightened it in post too. That’s one more thing– you can fix a lot of stuff with minimal editing. I’ve learned almost all my editing techniques by moving sliders and seeing what happens. Modern digital sensors capture so much detail you can bring a lot back from an under- or over-exposed image. Especially if you’re willing to apply filters and fix color and maybe make it black and white or something to cover up the artifacts.)
A classic photography technique is “bracketing”, where you take one photo according to the light meter setting, and then one a stop brighter and one a stop darker. This is hedging your bets. My old D300 had a setting whereby it would do TEN SHOTS like this (and it could do six frames per second so it sounded like an adding machine or something) starting off way under and winding up way over, and it was awesome for sunsets and things like that. I could digitally combine them and get a perfect image with a few tweaks in Photoshop. Nowadays, I don’t bother, but I do a lot of bracketing if it’s something I really want to come out. I think the 7100 has automated settings for it but I don’t know, I never looked them up, I just turn the thumb wheel.
like this:
vs this:
Same time, different exposure compensation. (Neither one came out how I wanted. I gave up, I think.)
torrilin said: This is giving me ideas for my fisheye. Which I have no idea how to use.
Fisheyes are great but they’re special effects lenses. (And I realize you may mean, technically how to use; I have no advice, as mine is a fully automatic lens. I mean, it’s AF, but my camera has a focus motor, so.)
The thing to keep in mind is that when you take a fisheye picture, you’ve now already taken a picture of everything in the room, LOL. So you don’t need to take any more. It’s easy to overuse them in a portfolio of images, if you know what I mean; the eye kind of glazes over and moves on.
So I use it when there’d be no other way for me to get all the context I want to capture. Mostly, tight interiors. Anything where I want to force a weird perspective on things and juxtapose objects. No matter how wide open your aperture is, basically everything will be in focus. Lines won’t be straight, objects won’t be their proper size, stuff will kind of loom, people will look wacky. It’s great but you gotta use it wisely.
I have found it behooves me to really think about where the distorted lines are going to converge, and take that into account as I compose; also, don’t put someone’s face either in the dead center or extreme edge, unless you want them to look like a total wacko.
(Note: I exposure-compensated because that blue roof and those yellow walls threw my light meter off, and I still didn’t brighten it enough for my sister’s face!)
(also note, that house is tiny and Farmbaby is almost touching my sister’s leg, but they look far apart like it’s roomy or something.)
Compare it to the other wide-angle lens I use frequently: this is my 10-24mm, which has some distortion but not as much. It’s actually wider than the fish, but since it’s not a fisheye, you see less of the picture. It’s math I don’t really understand. (EXIF says this photo was taken at 11mm.)
There’s still distortion, but it’s not as marked.
unicornduke said: I adore all the photos you post!
*blushes* thanks, and good, because I’ve kind of been on a tear lately. This is without plugging in my external hard drive, containing my Comprehensive Works From Before 2013, so.
replied to your post “sugarspiceandcursewords
replied to your post…”
You may have just changed my life by explaining the exposure comp button. Holy shit, THANK you.
It is seriously the most important button. All it does is tell your camera to adjust settings. On the D7100 you hold the button down and turn the thumb wheel. I think you can do that on the 5300. I always forget which way is which. I just take a picture and look. Every time.
Your camera has different light meter settings that you can mess with if you want, but on a basic level, the thing just wants your entire frame to be an even 15% gray, so if you have a lot of stuff that’s brighter or darker than that, it’s going to throw it off. I’ve experimented with adjusting the metering settings– you can have it put more priority on the center of the composition, or if you’re in an autofocus mode where you select one point, it’ll prioritize that point, etc.– but I’ve just never found it to be as useful as just making a mental note and screwing around with the exposure compensation. ESPECIALLY if there’s a light source anywhere in the picture. Your light meter is gonna get that wrong. (Bear in mind the whole sky can be considered a light source in the right lighting conditions.)
(The above, I deliberately overexposed to blow out the sky and get detail in the chore truck. I wanted the reflection on the side panels. I think I lightened it in post too. That’s one more thing– you can fix a lot of stuff with minimal editing. I’ve learned almost all my editing techniques by moving sliders and seeing what happens. Modern digital sensors capture so much detail you can bring a lot back from an under- or over-exposed image. Especially if you’re willing to apply filters and fix color and maybe make it black and white or something to cover up the artifacts.)
A classic photography technique is “bracketing”, where you take one photo according to the light meter setting, and then one a stop brighter and one a stop darker. This is hedging your bets. My old D300 had a setting whereby it would do TEN SHOTS like this (and it could do six frames per second so it sounded like an adding machine or something) starting off way under and winding up way over, and it was awesome for sunsets and things like that. I could digitally combine them and get a perfect image with a few tweaks in Photoshop. Nowadays, I don’t bother, but I do a lot of bracketing if it’s something I really want to come out. I think the 7100 has automated settings for it but I don’t know, I never looked them up, I just turn the thumb wheel.
like this:
vs this:
Same time, different exposure compensation. (Neither one came out how I wanted. I gave up, I think.)
torrilin said: This is giving me ideas for my fisheye. Which I have no idea how to use.
Fisheyes are great but they’re special effects lenses. (And I realize you may mean, technically how to use; I have no advice, as mine is a fully automatic lens. I mean, it’s AF, but my camera has a focus motor, so.)
The thing to keep in mind is that when you take a fisheye picture, you’ve now already taken a picture of everything in the room, LOL. So you don’t need to take any more. It’s easy to overuse them in a portfolio of images, if you know what I mean; the eye kind of glazes over and moves on.
So I use it when there’d be no other way for me to get all the context I want to capture. Mostly, tight interiors. Anything where I want to force a weird perspective on things and juxtapose objects. No matter how wide open your aperture is, basically everything will be in focus. Lines won’t be straight, objects won’t be their proper size, stuff will kind of loom, people will look wacky. It’s great but you gotta use it wisely.
I have found it behooves me to really think about where the distorted lines are going to converge, and take that into account as I compose; also, don’t put someone’s face either in the dead center or extreme edge, unless you want them to look like a total wacko.
(Note: I exposure-compensated because that blue roof and those yellow walls threw my light meter off, and I still didn’t brighten it enough for my sister’s face!)
(also note, that house is tiny and Farmbaby is almost touching my sister’s leg, but they look far apart like it’s roomy or something.)
Compare it to the other wide-angle lens I use frequently: this is my 10-24mm, which has some distortion but not as much. It’s actually wider than the fish, but since it’s not a fisheye, you see less of the picture. It’s math I don’t really understand. (EXIF says this photo was taken at 11mm.)
There’s still distortion, but it’s not as marked.
unicornduke said: I adore all the photos you post!
*blushes* thanks, and good, because I’ve kind of been on a tear lately. This is without plugging in my external hard drive, containing my Comprehensive Works From Before 2013, so.
