I Heart Spot-Metering
Our cousin, Dan, starred in another play tonight. This time, he was the Centipede in James and the Giant Peach. He makes a fine Centipede.
And this time, I pulled my head out of my arse and figured out how to use my flippin' camera. Today I was loading up my gear, and bemoaning the fact that I haven't been able to really capture great images of Dan on stage. Then, an epiphany. "Spot metering, you dumbass!" It was like a lightning bolt. I was excited and embarrassed at the same time. How could I have not figured this out sooner? Duh. Rookie mistake. I feel like a doofus.
Dan was great, as usual. And this time I finally managed to truly capture him and his castmates. These are my favorites.
(Here's a little run-down on spot metering, in case you're interested. If you're not, stop reading now. It'll just be really boring to you.
Most modern cameras, big and small, have built-in metering systems. That's what tells the camera how much light is coming in, and, if you use fully automatic settings, it helps the camera set both the aperture (f-stop) and shutter speed for you. Point and shoots have basic metering systems: the camera looks at everything that's in the viewfinder and averages the light it sees. My camera is typically set the same way. I usually want to get nice, even coverage and try to expose for almost everything in the viewfinder.
When you're shooting the stage, however, there are huge swings in lighting. The spotlight is on the star(s), and it falls off pretty quickly from there. The edges of the stage are really, really dark. When your camera looks at this, it sees a little bright light in the center, and a bunch of dark around it. So it adjusts for the dark. Because it thinks it's mostly dark, it compensates by slowing down your shutter speed to let more light in. It slows it waaaaay down. Which is why you end up with blurry pictures. The actors are typically moving around quite a bit, and when the shutter is open longer, it catches those movements.
By setting my camera to spot meter, though, I'm telling it, "Look only at this one spot, and use that to figure out how much light is coming in." Then you aim at the actor, in this case Dan, and the camera sees a well-lit subject and exposes for such. Voila! Perfectly exposed images of talented centipedes!)
(My high school photography teacher would be highly embarrassed for me, that I forgot this very basic lighting rule. I hang my head in shame.)
And this time, I pulled my head out of my arse and figured out how to use my flippin' camera. Today I was loading up my gear, and bemoaning the fact that I haven't been able to really capture great images of Dan on stage. Then, an epiphany. "Spot metering, you dumbass!" It was like a lightning bolt. I was excited and embarrassed at the same time. How could I have not figured this out sooner? Duh. Rookie mistake. I feel like a doofus.
Dan was great, as usual. And this time I finally managed to truly capture him and his castmates. These are my favorites.
(Here's a little run-down on spot metering, in case you're interested. If you're not, stop reading now. It'll just be really boring to you.Most modern cameras, big and small, have built-in metering systems. That's what tells the camera how much light is coming in, and, if you use fully automatic settings, it helps the camera set both the aperture (f-stop) and shutter speed for you. Point and shoots have basic metering systems: the camera looks at everything that's in the viewfinder and averages the light it sees. My camera is typically set the same way. I usually want to get nice, even coverage and try to expose for almost everything in the viewfinder.
When you're shooting the stage, however, there are huge swings in lighting. The spotlight is on the star(s), and it falls off pretty quickly from there. The edges of the stage are really, really dark. When your camera looks at this, it sees a little bright light in the center, and a bunch of dark around it. So it adjusts for the dark. Because it thinks it's mostly dark, it compensates by slowing down your shutter speed to let more light in. It slows it waaaaay down. Which is why you end up with blurry pictures. The actors are typically moving around quite a bit, and when the shutter is open longer, it catches those movements.
By setting my camera to spot meter, though, I'm telling it, "Look only at this one spot, and use that to figure out how much light is coming in." Then you aim at the actor, in this case Dan, and the camera sees a well-lit subject and exposes for such. Voila! Perfectly exposed images of talented centipedes!)
(My high school photography teacher would be highly embarrassed for me, that I forgot this very basic lighting rule. I hang my head in shame.)
posted by Amy at 9:05 PM
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