AboutJoe Appel Expertise I can answer questions related to many areas of photography, but most specifically relating to photojournalism. I can also offer advice on using digital and 35mm cameras, Adobe Photoshop, and digital photography in general. Once upon a time I was pretty good in a darkroom too.
Experience I have been a staff photographer for a major metropolitan newspaper group (over 100,000 circulation) for 12 years. Concurrently, I have maintained a freelance photography business.
Organizations belong to National Press Photographers Association
Publications Rolling Stone, USA Today, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Palm Beach Post, New York Daily News, Philadelphia Inquirer, Super Street Bike, Motorcyclist, Sport Rider, Cycle World, Roadracing World, T.W.O. (Two Wheels Only), the ABA Journal.
Expert: Joe Appel Date: 2/4/2005 Subject: Indoor people groups
Question Hi
I recently took a picture of a group of people in a large office. A white object in the centre of the picture was perfectly in focus and exposed while the people around it (by far the greatest area of the picture) were under-exposed and grainy. I rescued it with photoshop but it was not a good picture. The camera was set at multi segment metering and red eye reduction flash.
Most of the pictures I take inside seem to be under-exposed to a greater or lesser extent regardless of the subject.
I have a very good camera with a wide range of adjustments and settings posible but it takes more than that to make a good photographer.
Should I bracket my shots, add a stop or 2 compensation to the exposure, meter from the darkest area and recompose or other?
I would value your advise.
tony
Answer Tony,
If it's an important shot then it never hurts to bracket. Sounds like your problem is mostly to the underexposure side of things so you could probably get away with shooting one and two stops over.
What I suspect is going on (at least in the example you provided) is that your camera is seeing a scene and thinking it's brighter than it is. The large white object is fooling the camera's meter into thinking that there is more light on the scene than there is. The converse holds true with a scene like a black dog sitting on a dark-colored rug. The meter would then think that there is less light available than there actually is so it would tell you to overexpose the scene.
Light meters built into cameras are reflective meters. They read the light reflected from a scene and then determine what the proper exposure should be based on an average scene equal to a card (readily available) that is 18% gray.
So Tony, you can go to a camera store and get a gray card for a couple of bucks and that will probably solve your problem. What you do is take your meter reading off of the card, set your exposure, then compose your shot. Easy.
An incident light meter is a meter, usually handheld, that measures the light actually falling on a scene instead of reflecting from it. They cost a bit of money but are a must if you're using studio flashes.
If the card doesn't work then your camera may need to have its meter calibrated or you may have the wrong film speed set on the camera.
