Ev compensation

[keithsnyder]

I own a Maxxum 5. p.84 of the manual uses a snow shot as an example

of using the Ev +2 to compensate for the brightness of the snow.

Would someone go -2 (or some other amount) if taking a picture in dim

light to get the picture to be brighter, or am I misunderstanding the

concept?

[jay_piper]

You camera will try to make the dim subject look 'normal' (medium grey, like the 18% grey card used to test reflected light meters).

 

To keep snow white instead of grey add exposure, try +2 stops as the manual says, or range of + compenation settings to see what's best. Same logic, to overexposure a bit, would apply to bright sand beach or other overall light subjects.

 

To keep a dark room looking dim try a few shots with reduced exposure (-1, -2 stops as you said). The exposure compensation is how you tell camera not to make the photo medium grey.

 

Old movies often shot supposed night scenes in daylight at -2 underexposure(or maybe even more, sometimes with a red or polarizing filter to darken sky) as "Hollywood magic" to make scenes look like moonlit night - only brightest highlights had detail, shadows very dark like they appear to vision at night.

[bacsa]

Your conclusion is correct, although the point is not exactly "to get the picture to be brighter", it's more about contrast fooling the meter. The snow example wants to say, that the meter tries to make the full scene an average-lit light grey, which is not correct for snow, so you shouold overexpose. Opposite to this, if you have e.g. a well-lit musician playing on a dark stage, if you leave it to a matrix metering, "he" will think he should give more light to the black parts, and the result will be an overexposed person in front of a grey background. You have to "underexpose" relatively to the meter's advice, or, you have to meter only on your subject.<p>

<center> <img border=2 src="http://www.photo.net/photodb/image-display?photo_id=1339631">

<br>

<i>Here I used -1 stop EV compensation (underexposed) that was still not enough, so the brightest parts of the player's skin were overexposed.</i></center>

<p>

The additional problem is, that most photo labs, when printing from your well-exposed negatives, are "wise" enough to do some (automatized, mostly) metering of the full frame, or sometimes even the full roll, and the result for a too dark (or, too bright) scene like the above will be the same as you were not doing this EV compensation. Always check the negatives too, for highlight resp. shadow details, if you don't like the printed photo you get from them.

Sometimes you can talk them to print more on the dark/light side, or you can print yourself (by scanning negs or by traditional darkroom), or, the safest way, to work with slide film instead of neg.

[andy_fitz]

i also have a 5. I recently shot a talent show at my school with similar conditions as the photo above. what i found really worked was to use the spotmeter, and meter the performer's face. i also tried to shoot one with a flash and one without.