Project 40

Using a meter

This project is about using the light meter to get a proper balance of light across the entire photograph.

My camera has a built in light meter, but like most modern digital cameras, the camera measures the light through the viewfinder, and then sets the exposure to give the best lighting balance. The resultant photo is therefore exposed the way the camera manufacturer thinks it should be. As a result, it would differ from camera to camera.

Now, down to my camera. It has three metering modes.

Multi-segment, which divides the entire sensor into 40 segments, and takes the average reading.

Centre weighted, which measures the average brightness, but emphasizes the central part of the sensor.

Spot, which concentrates only on the very centre of the sensor.

My camera also has another element that affects the exposure, called Dynamic range optimisation, which only operates when using multi segment metering, and gives yet another thing to adjust the exposure.

Most scenes are a mixture of light and dark, however, automatic cameras tend to generalize, but most photographic situations are anything but general.

To demonstrate, compare the following two photos.

They are both taken at ISO 100, and a focal length of 120mm, and both taken using multi-segment metering (and DRO on).

The first is how the camera interpreted the lighting, and adjusted the exposure accordingly. It decided on 1/400 sec at f.8. In my opinion, this photograph is over exposed. The camera has taken the overall scene, but there are parts of the scene that are much lighter, such as the building and parts of the rock. As a result, the building is over exposed, and the background mountains are much too light, and look misty. There is also a cloud over the top of the building that is hardly visible.

I took the same shot using exposure compensation of –1, and the exposure changed to 1/640 at f.9. The result is that the building is much better defined against the rock, the mountains in the rear are much clearer, as is the cloud above the building.

Three more photos below demonstrate changing exposures away from the camera setting, and also, the effect of changing the metering mode.

The first uses the camera settings, with metering set to multi segment. The picture is generally dark, but the tree in the centre is quite bright with sunlight on it. The camera has adjusted the overall scene to compensate for the darkness, however this has resulted in the centre tree being over exposed. Incidentally, the camera chose ISO 160 for this shot.

By using an exposure compensation of –7, there is much more definition of the surrounding area, and the tree is now exposed better. The camera chose ISO 100 here, so rather than changing the exposure, it changed the speed of the film.

To experiment, I left the exposure at –7, but changed the metering mode to centre weighted. this time, the camera has given more emphasis to the central portion of the photo, and has lost a lot of the definition, and has slightly over exposed the central tree again. The ISO remained at 100.

One thing to bear in mind here is that changing from multi to centre weighted, the Dynamic Range Optimiser on my camera did not operate, giving yet another element to consider.

The result is that when I look at a shot, if there is not a consistency of light over the whole picture, I prefer to set the exposure compensation to 1 stop down in order to obtain a better effect. Of course, not all circumstance are the same, but suffice to say that although my camera gets good results from pointing and clicking on auto, the vagaries of differing light means that I can get much better results by interpreting the light meter results and compensating where I think the shot needs it.

I have noticed that my camera seems to change the exposure settings when compensating in a light scene, but changes the speed of film, when compensating in a dark scene. I have seen this with a number of experiments so it’s worth remembering!

Assignment 2

Colour

This assignment requires about 16 photographs, 4 of each showing the use of contrasting, complementary and similar colours. Also, the use of a colour that provides an accent. I’ll start with the accent.

Accent

Accent is where a single colour stands out against a background of predominantly another colour.

 

 

Similar

Similar colours are those that are adjacent on the colour wheel, and being similar harmonise well with each other

 

 

 

 

  Contrast

Contrasting colours are those that appear approximately one third away from each other on the colour wheel.

 

Complementary

Complementary colours are those that appear opposite each other on the colour wheel.

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

   

 

 

Project 37

Filters with black and white film

The intention of this project is to show the effect that different colour filters have on black and white images. The brief is to produce a still life image with red, yellow and blue colours, mounted on a piece of grey card.

I then had to take one shot in colour, one in black and white and then three more black and white, one with a red filter, one with a yellow filter and one with a blue filter.

The principle behind this is that each filter lightens any object with the same colour, and darkens the others. the darkening is greater in complementary colours, i.e. those opposite on the colour wheel.

To kick this off, I have put up a picture of the colour wheel, highlighting the primary colours and the complementary colours of those.

From this, you can see that the complementary colour of yellow is purple etc.

 

The original image in colour

 

 

The same image in black and white

 

With the red filter, the red pepper is lighter than in the original black and white. Unfortunately, there is no noticeable change in the blue or yellow objects.

 

Using the blue filter, the blue object is lighter, and the other two are darker, with the red pepper being most noticeable.

 

With the yellow filter, the lemon is lighter, and the blue object is noticeably darker. The pepper on the other hand is lighter than the original.

One of the things happening here is that my camera, in compiling the jpeg image, seems to be trying to interpret what it thinks the colours should be, and the actual differences are lessened (only a theory on my part)

I could shoot in RAW, and then apply my own changes (as discussed in a previous project), but at present, I really want to know what my camera will do by itself.

Project 30

Colour control

This project shows the effect that the exposure will have on colour.

For this, I used a piece of blue coloured card as I found it was easier to see the effect if no other colours were present.

I set the camera on manual and set the aperture to f 8. Having found that the shutter speed should be at 1/25 s, I then changed the aperture to f 5.6, keeping the shutter speed at 1/25 s.

 I then took another four shots, changing the aperture for each shot and keeping the shutter speed the same.

Although I have always known that changing the exposure would make an image darker or lighter, however, by using a single colour, it has become obvious just how much the colour changes.

Just to look a little further, I opened the darker and lighter ones in my image editing software and noticed that the amount of red, green and blue changed quite a lot.

The lightest image below (at f 5.6) has 130 red, 190 green and 220 blue, whereas the darkest (at f 16) has 22 red, 55 green and 70 blue.

Looking at RGB values (256 colours), Black has 0 for each of R, G, and B, whereas White has 255 of each. A pure blue would be 255 blue, 0 green and 0 red, showing that the light blue is not pure blue. The bottom image is one that I have artificially created, and is pure blue.

 

Project 29

Applying the elements of design

The elements of design section has been very difficult to comprehend, which has been discussed during the previous projects.

I think the whole concept of implied shapes depends very much on the person viewing them, and the fact that I have drawn lines on the first picture shows that I am certain that if I didn’t draw the viewers eye to the implied diagonals, they wouldn’t be seen!

I have given some brief descriptions to the pictures to help anybody viewing them to see what I see…………….!

Diagonals

 

Horizontal and vertical. Upright tree contrasts with the horizontal hedging.

Distinct shape

 

Curves

Two points. The two flowers dominate the otherwise uninteresting background.

Single point. The single purple centre stands out from the array of white flowers

Pattern

Rhythm. The repeating rhythm of the leaves and flowers but horizontally and vertically

Implied triangle formed by the converging angles of the tree taken from below

Several points in a deliberate shape

 

Implied triangle formed by the three yellow flowers

Project 28

Rhythms and patterns

Rhythm is effectively a sequence of recurring elements in a predictable sequence. This first shot shows a rhythm in the arches, the buttresses and the small windows at the top.

Pattern is a sequence of recurring elements, not necessarily the same, in a more random sequence.

The difference between these two design feature is that with rhythm, the viewers eye will travel along the sequence of elements, whereas with a pattern, the eye tends to move about the picture more haphazardly, picking out each element as it goes.

Project 27

Real and implied circles

Here we have to include 4 photographs with at least 2 from “the textbook” having implied circles.

The first two pictures are organised around circles, but when examining rectangles it was realised that if the camera was not straight on to the subject, the rectangles were not completely square. The same applies to circles, and the first two shots are actually ellipses rather than circles. I’m not sure whether this matters in respect of this project

 

This third shot was taken directly up a large chimney in an iron smelting kiln. The brickwork is in a perfect circle as is the grill at the top of the chimney. Not a very imaginative shot, but demonstrates a circle.

The fourth shot is of a sculpture called “The Sphere”, which was a perfect sphere in the World Trade Centre intended to symbolise World Peace until it sustained damage during the 911 attack.

For those that haven’t read project 25.5, I have included my two chosen ones at the bottom.