Ah yeah, I forgot. They must be starting their phase-out of Google here in the US. Must not have reached PA where I am at yet....

Camera light meter

and Histogram

The light meter I am talking basically just the little graph you see on your display or viewfinder that moves back and forth. It will look something like this....

......v
| . . | . . .|

You will see the arrow or marker move around the display as you point the camera to different things. You are "suppose" to have the proper exposure when the marker is in the center, but that isn't necessarily what you want in a photograph. Use it as a guideline to what the exposure is going to be. If it is to the left of center, the exposure is on the underexposed or dark side. Open up the aperture 1 or 2 numbers and you will see it move towards center.

Put your camera in "spot metering" mode (RTFM). This will tell the camera to use the very center of your viewfinder to meter the light (measure the light.) Point it at something dark and you'll see the display marker move to the left. Point it at something lighter and the marker moves to the right. Now point it at what you want to photograph and adjust the aperture or shutter so that the marker moves towards the center.

I'll let you read about histograms.

very interesting

that might be a good step

does every 35mm camera have it?

Most every camera made since the 1950s/60s has one, though not all of them have it prominently visible and not all work the exact same way.

(p.s., your dSLR is not a 35mm camera)

most of old rangefinders (before electronic photo era) had exposuremeters where you only could see "amount of light" in an area...you had to perform couple of calculations depending on what ISO film you had, what aperture you wanted to use and "how much" light there was; i own a FED5 camera with industar 55/2,8 lens and it makes wonderful photos
modern cameras have just the light meter; camera makes this calculations automatically...

dslrs also have this light meters - most of light bounces from a mirror into viewfinder, but some get across it in order to calculate amount of light and perform autofocus

sorry, i dont know much at all about photography, and i dont know what my camera really is

Quote from diablo21 :

I suppose you have done some post processing with the images, if you have could you tell me what you've done with the first one? love it.

Thanks. Sure I can

I used photoshop CS3 and added 4 adjustment layers:

1 Color Balance:
Shifted shadows to blue and highlights to yellow
Color levels for shadows -30;0;+30
for highlights +30;0;-30 (hope that makes sense)

2 Hue/Saturation:
Simply reduced Master channel saturation to -41

3 Selective colors:
Whites (Black)-49%
Blacks (Black) +100%

4 Brightness and Contrast
Brightness -20

Before and after - see attached

Talking of post processing, I tried something new for me.

Quote from Tomba(FIN) :

Talking of post processing, I tried something new for me.

That's a great picture. I like the moody lighting

Some quick and dirty promo work from June.

(Had I posted these before? Can't remember since access to computer is limited).

Nope, those are new, Mikko.

(and very nice)

nice, i made similiar photos on stairs with another band few weeks ago, almost same lighting and almost same results - guys standing back up ended with almost white, tiny faces :-)

it's a gurl! http://don.vn.cz/photos/domca_photoshoot_july_2010/

Quote from Taavi(EST) :

Finally got two of my images approved in the Pentax photogallery...

Taavi, you're one hell of a photographer!!!
Really love your shots!

Quote from Don :

it's a gurl! http://don.vn.cz/photos/domca_photoshoot_july_2010/

very nice

First time to shoot (had the opportunity) lightning. Here's my learning process.

Damn, man. Last one is awesome!

Some more promo work from June. He's the frontman of a blues, roots, bluegrass group Jussi Syren & The Groundbreakers.

Sweet! Bokeh looks maybe a little "busy" though, around highlight edges.

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

Sweet! Bokeh looks maybe a little "busy" though, around highlight edges.

50mm/f1.8 for 99$.

true, his jacket is a bit distracting...btw is this a guitar commercial?

Quote from spankmeyer :

50mm/f1.8 for 99$.

Haha, word. Excellent quality for the money, no doubt.

I was kinda reaching for that criticism, anyway.

Quote from majod :

true, his jacket is a bit distracting...btw is this a guitar commercial?

The jacket was very cool if anything.

But, yeah, you could say it's more of a mandolin commercial as it's not really meant to be a straight up portrait. We shot quite a lot of 'safer' portraits that day but usually I pick the stranger stuff for myself.

I liked this as it contained small clues about the style of their music, their image with catchy clothes and greasy 50's rockabilly hair styles and the name of the man in the head stock.

And now something completely different.



She was having her bachelorette party and her friends booked her a impromptu modeling session. The theme for her bachelorette party had something to do with TV-series about becoming a supermodel.

Somewhat stressful shoot due to various reasons. Time pressures prohibited me from doing scouting beforehand so I scrambled for a location near their party in the same morning. No time to fiddle with the equipment or lights when the group arrives so it's straight to the shooting and trying to pull the exposure together in very few test shots to keep the small amount of momentum going on before the bachelorette chickens or tires out (she was not drunk enough that time of the day). Nikon system and their CLS is amazing in these kind of settings. Too bad it doesn't deliver the alcohol too.

Oh yeah and then it was group shots. Change the lights, pull the exposure together, shoot shoot shoot, bag gear, have terrible tan lines when the day is over.