B Is For Brightness

Photography is all about light and capturing it in a manner that expresses what you, as the photographer, see and feel. To that end, we are always working with Brightness - trying to tame it, redirect it and/or extract it. Exposure to light/brightness is determined by the triumvirate described in the last post "A is for Aperture" - Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO. Trust me there will be more on that later - "E" is not so far away.

Every year around the holidays, the village of Montauk, on the far east-end of Long Island, NY, decorates its historic lighthouse beautifully and it stands out incredibly against a dark late-day sky. On a recent shoot at Montauk Light, it was brutally cold as the sun was setting and as much as I wanted to stay to capture the lighthouse at its stand-out best, it was just too painful. When I took my first shots, I could see that they were just too bright and I knew I wouldn't last to shoot later, so I decided to adjust the brightness of my images by adjusting the Exposure Compensation - the EV (Exposure Value). 

Exp: ½ second @ f/11with 0 EV shot at 5:42:14 p.m.

Exp: ¼ second @ f/11 with -1 EV shot at 5:42:28 p.m.

Exp: ¹⁄₆ second @ f/11 with -2 EV shot at 5:44:21 p.m.

Exp: ¹⁄₆ second @ f/11 with -2⅔ EV shot at 5:48:29 p.m.

All of these images were shot with an ISO (sensor sensitivity) of 200 which I chose because it's fairly low and I wanted to avoid "noise" in the images at nearly any cost. As the shot was a landscape of sorts, I shot on Aperture Priority and I chose f/11 as it's a "middle-of-the road" aperture which would give me an "average" depth of field. f/22 wasn't needed for extra depth of field in these images and would have forced me to shoot with longer shutter speeds which most likely would have caused blur given the gale force winds; and, a larger aperture like f/5.6 would have exposed the image to less sharp focus throughout the image from the sign in the front to the lighthouse in the rear, so f/11 seemed the right choice to me at the time. As I took each picture and looked at it in the monitor, I began to reduce the brightness by "stopping down" the EV taking it from 0 EV to minus 2⅔ EV.

Now I have a question for anyone who might be listening and interested in participating in this new forum. If "a one-stop change in aperture will change the shutter speed also by one stop", should the same be true for Exposure Compensation? In Aperture Priority with a fixed aperture of f/11, between the third and fourth pictures I stopped the EV down ⅔ of a stop and yet the shutter speed didn't change from ¹⁄₆ second. Any idea why? The images were taken 4 minutes apart, could it be attributable to increased darkness, or could it possibly be attributable to the extreme cold? Weigh in here, we all want to learn.

At the end of the day, I was disappointed that the weather chased us away before we were able to get the shots we wanted, but these are a fair representation of what the Lighthouse looked like on that blustery winter's afternoon. Now the question is, which is your favorite?

Comments

[Nancy Lanzoni]

My favorite is the one @ 1/4 second with -1 EV. I have to figure out how to do this with my Nikon

[Claudia Ward]

Nancy, I too have a D60. The Exposure Value button is on the top right-hand side of the camera, just behind the shutter-release button. It's the one showing a + and a -. If you hold that button down while you look through the viewfinder, AND then turn the Command dial (the wheel) by your thumb, you will see the scale move left or right toward the + or the -. Plus (+) means you're adding light to your image (lightening); minus (-) means your taking light away from your picture (darkening). My camera is set up to change the EV by 1/3 of a stop for each "click" of the Command dial; three make one stop. I use the EV button mostly when I see images on the monitor that are too bright; then I begin to stop the EV down (-) until I like what I see. Does this help at all? It's a handy button to know about when you want to "tweek" an image.

[Nancy]

That's so great to know--Thanks a million! I know that my camera and I need to get better acquainted.:) I've had it long enough that I should know how to use it more than I do by now. One of my boys has taken an avid interest in photography and may change his major. He's prompted me to get back to the hobby that I've always loved, but never made time for.

[beth]

This is interesting. I just found EV on my Sony point-and-shoot and never knew what it was! Perhaps I'll start to "play" too, before I buy my first DSLR soon.

[Claudia]

Play on Beth!