Perfect Exposure For Digital Photography

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Manipulating Light?

This is kind of a technical question, but I hope others might learn something as well.

If you have ever seen black and white fine art photography, you'll notice that the lighting is perfect. Perfect contrast, and beautiful exposure. However, I was wanting to ask, what is the best way to bring in enough light to achieve such lighting conditions? What is used, natural, or artificail light? Here are some examples that I have found online: http://www.ralphgibson.com/archive/

If natural light is used, what is the best way to capture it? What I mean is should I use high ISO, slow shutter speed, a wide aperture.... Does film seem to capture light better than digital? Thanks for any advice.

The right light can give form and depth to a scene. You need to look at the direction the light's coming from, and position yourself the right way to capture it. They used to tell people to shoot with the sun to your back. In the days of slow film, that helped brighten up a scene. Unfortunately, it also meant your models were squinting into the sun, and the straight-on light was too flat to give any depth. It's the most boring type of lighting there is.

All you have to do is find a tree trunk that's lit by the sun to see how this works. Look carefully at each side, and you will see that you get more depth and dimension when the sun skims across from the side. The sun will be to your left or right. That will also be a high-contrast scene, though.

You get a nice balance of form and contrast if the light is in between a direct sidelight and straight-on light. Turn so that the light is in between directly behind you and straight to your side. That's quarter side light. If the contrast is still too high, fill in just a little with direct flash, or reflect some light into the scene.

For more drama, you can use backlighting, but your contrast will be the highest. You can use it to silhouette your subject and show off a nice sunset sky, or let your background wash out and have detail on your subject. Or you can use fill-flash or reflectors.

Perfect Exposure for Digital Photography Part 3of7.flv


perfect exposure for digital photography5
perfect exposure for digital photography5