A story about learning to use your camera’s meter
One day Goldilocks came to visit the three bears, Mama Bear, Papa Bear, and Baby Bear. Now what you might not know about them is that Mama Bear is a black bear, Papa Bear is a polar bear and Baby Bear is a gray bear. Now you also might not know that portage makes all fur look amazing and so silky. Goldilocks wanted to capture the gleaming glow of their fur in three portraits so she put her fancy DSLR on aperture priority and filled her lens with Mama Bear’s beautiful face and then looked at the back of the camera and mama bear was all washed out. Then she tried to take a picture of Papa Bear and again filled the camera with his beautiful white fur, but this time the photo came out to dark and muddy. Then she took a picture of Baby Bear who was throwing kisses, she got really close and captured the big smile on her face after she threw a kiss. The picture turned out just right.
Goldilocks was perplexed, so Baby Bear offered her a point and shoot that she thought always made good pictures in the portrait setting. Goldilocks did the same thing, and again, Mama Bear came out too light, Papa bear too dark and Baby Bear just right. Then she decided to take a picture with her DSLR of all three of them, but metered on just Baby Bear. The picture came out just right.
So then she metered on each one of them and noticed if the camera was on Mama Bear’s dark fur that the camera meter said she needed a lot of light, then if she metered on Papa Bear’s white fur (a shutter speed of 1/30th), the camera’s meter said that she needed a little bit of light (a shutter speed of 1/250th,) when she metered on Baby Bear, she needed somewhere in between (a shutter speed of 1/80th).
Then Goldilocks and Baby Bear went to try see what would happen if they photographed in the front yard. First they photographed the white lillies against the white sky and the photo came out gray. Then they photographed Baby bear’s favorite place to hide in a big tree that was pretty dark and it was all washed out, then they photographed some flowers growing in the green grass, and they came out just right.
So they tried to use the exposure compensation on their cameras and first they made the photo lighter when they took a new picture of the white sky and lilies and darker when they took the photo of the hole in the tree. They were amazed by just changing that one little function to the plus or minus side, they were able to control the look and feel of their photos.
Photos to come when Goldilocks comes home with her camera.
Written by Jessica Wallach, inspired by teaching Exposure and Metering four times within three weeks
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