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Feb. 19, 2001 - Bill Cooper
01:00:14
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Time Text
Thank you.
This is a test.
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
You're listening to the Hour of the Time.
the evening ladies and gentlemen you're listening to the power
of the time i'm william cooper
and uh... tonight once again is photography night And I hope you've all got your pen and paper sitting there and your camera so that you can look at it.
And you're ready to learn how to make a correct exposure because tonight we're going to talk about meters.
You know, we talked about what an exposure is.
We talked about the sensitivity of film that's reflected in the film speed, which is an ASA or an ISO number.
And you learned that The higher the number, the more sensitive the film is to light.
The lower the number, the less sensitive film is to light.
So the higher the number, the less exposure you need.
The lower the number, the more exposure that you need.
But you need some way to determine what the exposure is going to be.
Now, I gave you some rules to determine exposure You don't have a light meter.
And quite simply it was, place the shutter speed on the closest number to the ASA or ISO number of the film speed in bright sunlight and place the aperture on F16.
And you get a perfect exposure every time.
If you understand the reciprocity law, then on another night I told you how to vary That those settings in order to get the same exposure if you needed a faster or slower shutter speed or if you needed a more wide open or more closed down aperture.
Also if you understand the reciprocity law then going from bright sunlight to open shade to dark shade to the various types of lighting you can simply figure in the changes in f-stop or shutter speed in order to get either right on exposures or pretty close.
And if you're in doubt, I told you to bracket.
In other words, do one on the exposure that you think is right, then do one on one stop under, and then do another exposure on one stop over.
What happens is you use three frames of film for each picture that you're going to take, but one of them is going to be good.
But there's a better way.
Long time ago somebody figured out how to measure how to measure light and they figured out a standards a standards for doing that so that all light meters will always give you the same reading if they're manufactured and calibrated correctly under the same lighting conditions for the same speed of film and so that should tell you right off the bat Then in order for the light meter to work properly, you have to tell it how sensitive the film is to light.
And you do that by programming in the ASA, or ISO film speed number.
So let's pretend that we're working with ISO film speed, excuse me, of 400.
So on every camera that has a light meter, And every single individual light meter that may not be part of a camera, there is a place on the camera or on the light meter to dial in the film speed.
You need to find that.
If you're holding your camera right now, find that place.
And you'll see that older cameras don't go up as high in film speed as newer cameras do.
And none of those cameras go up as high or as low as professional cameras do.
Because a professional photographer You may have to use a film speed as low as 6 or maybe as high as 6400 or maybe even higher than that.
Okay?
So find the film speed placed on your camera and set it for 400.
If you've got film in there, remember what it was set on before we did this little thing.
Okay?
So look at it.
See what it's set on.
Remember to go back to that if you've still got film in your camera because you don't want to expose 200 film speed film at 400, okay?
So, set it on 400 or pretend that you're setting it on 400 because that's what we're going to have it on.
For those of you who have cameras where the meter works simply by looking through the viewfinder and pressing slightly on the shutter speed trip Or the little button that you use to actually take your photograph with.
Look through your viewfinder and do that.
And for most cameras, there'll be a readout that tells you what shutter speed and what aperture the camera either wants you to set to take a picture, or in the case of an automatic or programmed camera, is actually going to set to take a picture.
But don't take a photograph, okay?
We're not going to do that.
I just want you to see that That most of you have in your hands a camera with a meter in it.
Some of you have cameras and have been doing photography for a long time with cameras that may not have meters in them.
In which case, you may have a handheld meter.
Go ahead and set your handheld meter on 400 ASA film speed or ISO film speed, however you want to term it.
They're both the same.
ASA and ISO are the same.
Set it on 400, and then however your specific meter works, go ahead and take a look at what the shutter speed and the aperture is recommended by that particular meter.
Now, I'm going to tell you right now that every meter in the whole world, except for cameras that have program modes and automatic functions, are going to give you exactly the same reading.
Now cameras that have programmed mode are automatic functions that automatically set the camera are going to deviate from that.
It's going to be exactly the same exposure according to the reciprocity laws but it may be a different shutter speed and a different aperture f-stop.
Okay?
And there's reasons for that.
You know cameras are programmed to do things according to the way the manufacturer built it to work.
But the exposure All of these meters and all of these cameras, no matter how they work, is going to work out to exactly the same exposure on the film, unless the meter is broken.
Okay?
Now, I'm going to play some music, and when I come back, I'm going to take... Well, you know, we can't do it.
One thing I forgot to tell you.
They're all going to be the same if we're metering the same Lighting conditions.
In other words, if we were all in the same place, and there was a tree in the middle of a field, and all of us are taking a meter reading on that tree in the middle of the field, either through our camera or with our handheld meter, all in the same place, all taking the same reading of the same subject at the same time under the same light, all of the meters are going to give us exactly the same exposure.
Okay?
Now since we're all scattered all over the globe, and there's people listening in foreign countries, all over the United States, Canada, Mexico, South America, Australia, Russia, people are listening to this broadcast everywhere.
Here in Arizona, wherever you're at, your lighting conditions are different.
So, there's not going to be, we're not all going to have the same reading on our light meters because the light is different, we're metering different subjects.
Just forget that.
I'm not going to play music and come back and do anything.
Now, the standard by which everybody knows exactly that their meter reading is going to be right is It used to be the American Standards Administration or Association, called ASA, and they had the American Standards Institute, ASI, and they determined exactly what the standards were for all of these things, for weights and measures, for rulers, for, you know, the whole works.
And somewhere there's something that is exactly one foot long, so when they want to make a ruler and somebody doesn't know how to, you can go there and you can get that exact one foot measurement.
Same way with light meters.
They're designed that no matter what manufacturer makes a light meter, whether it's in a camera or whether it's a handheld light meter, and no matter what the sensitive light sensing element in the meter is, and with different meters it's a different type of thing, that they're all calibrated to read exactly the same under a specific amount of light Reflected from a specific thing.
And in photography that specific thing is called a gray card.
A gray card.
And it's measured as 18% gray.
For instance, black velvet, which is about as black as our eyes can determine.
And anything blacker than that doesn't look blacker to us.
Black velvet is about as black as anything is ever going to look.
When we're looking at it, black velvet reflects 3.5%.
Black velvet reflects 3.5%.
Now, nothing can be blacker than that to the human eye unless there was a hole into which all light disappeared and never was reflected back, like a black hole in space.
Then we might perceive some difference.
But the human eye Cannot perceive any difference between black velvet and anything that may appear to be blacker than that.
Okay?
Black velvet reflects 3.5%.
A gray card, or what we call a neutral gray card, reflects 18%.
Now, a white sheet of paper reflects approximately 90%. 90%.
So that'll give you some idea of what we're talking about.
So, all light meters are calibrated to give the same exposure under the exact same intensity of light when measuring a gray card.
Okay?
So that's the standard by which all light meters are judged.
are set are calibrated so when you set your light meter to ASA 400 and every single one of us are together whether your light meter is in a camera or held in your hand and we were all to measure an 18% gray card under the same intensity of light every single meter if we set it to the same ASA or ISO of 400 is going to give us the same solution to the most important technical problem in photography and that is how to set the exposure to take a photograph of a scene.
Now why is that?
Well 18% gray folks have been determined to be the middle tone of the range of tones in the range that any type film is capable of producing an image from the whitest white to the blackest black in the middle, right in the very dead center, the center tone is 18% gray.
So the meters are set at 18% gray because when you're taking a photograph of most scenes, not all, but most Scenes.
The average of all of the tones in the scenes is going to come pretty close to or right on 18% gray.
So when you use a meter calibrated for 18% gray and you're taking a photograph to where all the tones in that scene average out to 18% gray or very, very close to it, you're going to get a well exposed, a good photograph.
Okay?
Now, not all scenes average out to 18% gray, and meters can be fooled.
And when you walk around thinking that your meter is always going to give you a perfect exposure, you're going to be disappointed on some of the shots that you take, and you're going to be pleasantly surprised by some of the shots that you take that are going to turn out much better than you ever dreamed, simply by accident, simply because of what I just told you.
You're not going to understand how it happens.
But a professional photographer or someone who may be an amateur photographer who's really studied light and light meters and exposure, they will be able to determine exactly how that photograph is going to look before they take the photograph, and they'll know exactly what that print's going to look like long before it ever comes back from being processed and printed.
Okay?
Now, there are different types of meters.
Most meters work exactly like I just told you.
They're reflective meters.
In other words, they measure the light reflected from the subject that you intend to photograph.
And they average all the light in the scene to give you an exposure that should, in most instances, give you the correct exposure if all of the different Light values in that scene average out to 18% gray or somewhere real close to it.
Okay?
Now that's called an averaging meter.
Most meters work exactly in that manner.
Now there are other types of meters that are all reflective.
I'm talking about reflective meters now.
They measure the reflection of light coming off the subject That you intend to photograph.
There is a center-weighted meter.
Which means, and the common one is like 60-40.
They'll measure 60% of the exposure somewhere around the center of your viewfinder.
And the other 40% is measured around the edges of that area.
That's because most people Whether they intend to or not, usually put the subject of their photograph in the center of the viewfinder.
And on some other night, we're going to talk about composition and you're going to find out why you shouldn't do that.
And why your photographs may look boring after a while.
So, but we're not going to talk about that tonight.
So, we have an averaging meter that meters all of the light in the whole area of the And determines an exposure based upon the proposition, whether it does or not, based upon the proposition that all of the light values in that area average out to 18% gray.
Now you're going to appreciate this a little bit later when I tell you how to make a perfect exposure every single time under any lighting conditions.
I don't care what it is.
Then you have a center weighted meter.
Which measures about 60% somewhere around the center of the viewfinder, as you look through the viewfinder, and then 40% of the exposure will be determined by what's outside of that area.
Okay?
It sort of averages those two together.
And that's based upon the fact that most people, especially amateurs or people who don't know anything about photography, buy a camera, they put the subject right in the center of the area.
Then there's another center-weighted averaging meter that will measure from 75 to 80 percent of the exposure from the center of the viewfinder, or the meter, and the other around the outside of that is averaged in to give what it determines to be a correct exposure.
Those are on cameras where you can lock the exposure by keeping slight pressure on the shutter button.
So you can compose in the center and take your meter reading and then recompose keeping a slight pressure on the shutter button so that you still have the same exposure and when you have your scene composed the way you want it then you go ahead and press it the rest of the way and it takes the photograph.
Then there's what we call a spot meter.
Now spot meters It depends upon what camera company makes the camera or the meter, but the very best spot meters measure one, one degree.
In other words, one degree in the very center of the meter.
It's a very small spot, so you can be very selective.
Even if your subject is quite a ways away, you can measure an exact portion of what it is that you're going to photograph And take a meter reading just off of that.
You can take a meter reading off of somebody's ear.
Just the ear.
Nothing else.
If that's the most important part of the photograph that you want to get exposed absolutely perfectly.
Some other spot meters measure 2 degrees.
Some measure 3 degrees.
Some measure 4 degrees.
Some measure 6 degrees.
Some are as high as 12 degrees.
And they're still called a spot meter.
I don't know why.
Well, when you're measuring 12 degrees it should not be called a spot meter, although some of them do.
So make sure if you're going to buy a spot meter or a camera that has a spot meter in it, that you know exactly how much of the area being photographed is actually being measured.
The smaller it is, the better the spot measuring will be, especially if your subject is at a distance.
Spot meters are normally used by photographers who are doing commercial work who have to make sure that exposures are absolutely perfect.
And so they'll measure different areas of a scene, and sometimes they'll average these things together themselves.
When you're using a system such as Ansel Adams' zone system, you have to be able to measure the highlights in a scene and the deepest, darkest portions of a scene in order to determine where you're going to place middle gray.
In that instance, when you're using the zone system, you don't let the meter tell you where to put your middle gray or your 18% neutral gray, which is the middle tones of any photograph that's ever going to be printed.
You determine that by measurement using a spot meter and determining exactly which of the tones in the photograph You're going to make the middle tone so that you get detail in the bright highlights and in the dark shadows.
And then that's what you meter.
Whatever you have determined is going to be the middle tone.
Because whatever you meter, ladies and gentlemen with a light meter, is going to be 18% gray.
Now in an overall scene, when you're measuring the whole scene, if all of the light values in that scene average out to 18% gray, you're going to get a good exposure.
If they don't, then you're going to get portions of that photograph that are either going to be overexposed or underexposed.
And they're usually at the dark end or the highlight end.
When highlights are overexposed on negative film, it's washed out and there's no detail.
It just turns into just total white.
And on the other end, when something's overexposed, on the dark end, it turns out to be total black and you can't see any detail in there.
A good photographer will make sure that the viewer of the photograph can see detail in every portion of the photograph from the brightest portion to the darkest portion.
There are some times when that's absolutely impossible, like when making photographs on the moon.
And I understand tonight on Fox Channel, Fox is running a show that is more or less setting out to prove that what I've been telling you about the Apollo moon missions It's true that the photographs are fake, and if they went to the moon, they certainly didn't do it in the manner that they described to us in the Apollo space program, and the photographs that they showed us were not ever taken on the moon.
Now, I don't get Fox, so I'm going to ask somebody out there, and I hope somebody's taping it.
Please send me a videotape.
I don't get that channel.
I get FFX, which is a Fox channel, but that's the only Fox channel I get.
I don't get any of the others, and they have a whole bunch of them.
So somebody please do that for me if you hear this broadcast.
If you don't, I'm sure somebody will.
So, the problem is with the latitude of the film and the extremity of some lighting situations.
When you have extremely bright light and in the scene there are also shadows that are You've got to make a decision.
Are you going to expose for the bright areas or are you going to expose for the shadows?
And whichever one you expose for, that's the one where you're going to see detail and you're not going to see any detail in the other extreme.
And that's why I can look at photographs that they claim the astronauts took on the moon and tell you that's the biggest crock of crap you've ever seen in your life.
Anybody who knows lighting, who knows the latitude of film, who understands what film could do at the time they claimed to have been on the move and the ability of that film to handle extreme lighting conditions knows that those photographs are fake.
They're just as fake as they can be and by the way I can prove that and have done it many times with many people.
Those photographs were taken under studio lighting conditions Where the lighting was balanced so that they could get detail both in the highlights and in the shadows with no problems.
Okay.
Now, I've explained those different types of meters.
Now, there's another kind of meter.
It's called a matrix meter.
And the first camera that ever had a matrix meter was the Nikon FA.
Which, by the way, I have one for sale for $350.
If anybody wants it, call me tomorrow between 12 noon and 5 pm and let me know that you
want it.
Send your money and you can have it.
For all intents and purposes, it is just like the day it was purchased.
It looks brand new.
It works like it's brand new.
I take care of my equipment.
The only thing that you're going to find on it to detract from its value at all are some
very small scratches on the bottom near the hole where you mount the camera on a tripod.
Unless you turn it upside down and show it to everybody and say, hey look, nobody will
ever know that you've got some very tiny, little bitty scratches that you can hardly
see on the bottom of the camera.
And most, if not all, used cameras have those same scratches in the same spot.
But most cameras are in much worse condition and are pretty banged up and have rub marks and brassy places and all that kind of stuff.
I take good care of my equipment.
I guarantee that anything that I sell for six months, if it's photography equipment, to anybody that purchases it, and if anything goes wrong with it in that time, send it back and I'll refund your whole money.
So if you want it, call me tomorrow.
The Nikon FA was the first camera ever to have a matrix metering system built into the camera.
Now here's what that means.
In the Nikon FA, Nikon, the company, took 10,000 10,000 photographs that were produced with perfect exposures by professional photographers under every conceivable different lighting condition that there was.
And they programmed the information from these photographs.
In other words, all the light and dark areas and the different shades and the 18% portions and the 90% portions and the 3.5% portions and everything in between.
We're programmed into a computer chip that was placed into the camera.
Then the meter measures five different areas of the scene.
An area in the center, two areas on the top, and two areas on the bottom, and both of those areas curve down on the side around the center spot.
And we measure the light values in each of these five areas And compare it to all of these 10,000 different photographs that have been taken and perfectly exposed by professional photographers that's in the database in the camera.
It picks the closest solution to the technical problem of exposure from the database and programs the camera or tells the photographer that that should be the exposure.
And I'll tell you when the Nikon FA came out everybody was pretty doubtful about whether that would work.
And professional photographers are pretty used to relying upon their knowledge.
Well, some pretty famous names took the Nikon FA out and determined to put that notion to rest and they were amazed.
They were absolutely amazed because almost every photograph that they took turned out to be the best exposures that they'd ever seen.
And the meter was only fooled by some, some unusual lighting situations.
Once you learn what those lighting situations are, you know how to make up for it either by over or under exposing from whatever the meter tells you to read it at.
There's not too many situations like that.
One of them is sunset.
If you're going to take a picture of a sunset with a Nikon FA using the matrix metering, What it's trying to do, what the matrix meter is going to do is it's going to see that bright sun out there that creates the sunset effect and it's going to try to tell you that the scene is backlit and overexpose it.
So you have to shift to a center weighted or an averaging meter in order to expose for sunsets.
Or you can just stop it down two stops.
And you'll still get the perfect sunset exposure, but a good photographer will know that in his head and will not have to shift to another meter.
Okay?
So, that was the beginning of the race to make the perfect meter.
Now, Nikon has succeeded as far as I'm concerned.
There is a meter that, so far, see I have a Nikon F5, which is The Nikon F5 and the Canon EOS-1V, in my estimation, are the two best cameras in the entire world right now.
The best, bar none.
Now, I'm not talking lenses.
I'm talking cameras.
Okay?
So don't call me up tomorrow and say, Hey man, I got some light lenses and some, uh, you know, some sonars lenses that are, that are better than anything Nikon or Canon ever made.
I'm not talking lenses.
I'm talking cameras.
Okay?
I'm talking cameras.
So listen to me.
These are the two best cameras, in my estimation, ever made in the history of photography.
They cost a lot of money.
Lots of money!
Most people don't even want to think about buying one of these cameras.
Therefore, professional photographers are advanced amateurs who only want to have the best.
In... now, the Canon meter falls way below the Nikon F5.
But in the Nikon F5 is the most advanced, best meter that's ever been built on the face of this earth.
And to this day, I have never been able to fool that meter.
Take a fool of it.
Under any lighting circumstance that I've ever used that meter in, it has given perfect exposure every single time without fail, and I have intentionally put it through some hoops that no other meter could ever, ever even hope to pass.
Here's what this meter does.
It's called a 3D Color Matrix Meter.
Now, when I saw that, I thought, oh, what kind of Mickey Mouse What crap is this?
Who would call a 3D color matrix meter?
But then, I studied it, I read the material, I read the technical information, and indeed, it is a 3D color matrix meter.
It's the first meter in the history of photography that takes color into consideration in the exposure.
For instance, certain colors, when you meter them with a regular meter, will give you a false reading.
with the meter's perception of the reflectance off of that color because of the color instead of the reflectance of the light, but that's not taken into consideration of the meter, and it'll give you a false exposure.
Okay?
This is the first meter that does that.
First, it measures a whole bunch of different areas in the scene.
One thousand and five.
It has 1,005 sensors.
So it's measuring the light and color values of 1,005 points within each scene that you're going to photograph.
And it compares each of those points with over 30,000 photographs that have been taken with absolute correct and beautiful exposures by professional photographers.
That's placed in a data bank in the camera.
But there's something else here with this one.
It is not only measuring the reflectance of the subject in these 1,005 different areas within the meter, it is also sensing the correct color that is in each of those 1,005 different areas and it's making minute corrections to the exposure based upon the colors in that If you use the proper lens, okay, which is an I-lens, an A-lens, excuse me, an S-lens, which would be an AF-I.
See, these are autofocus cameras.
If you're using autofocus lens that are AF-I, AF-S, or AF-D, it also measures the exact distance to the subject in the photograph that you're measuring.
And this is very important, and it's the first meter in the history of metering that's ever measured not only the reflectance values of all of the light values in the photograph, but it determines all the different colors in the photograph and makes adjustments for the deviations in exposure that these colors will cause that other meters can't even sense or tell because they don't see colors, they see shades of gray.
And it measures the exact distance To the subject, the most important subject in the photograph, because if you know anything about light, you know that the intensity of light and the measurement of light increases or decreases depending upon how far that light has to travel.
This is the most accurate meter ever in the history of photography.
It is in the Nikon N90S.
It's in the Nikon N90S.
It's in the Nikon F5.
And it's in the Nikon F100.
So those are the only three cameras in the whole world that have that meter.
There is no such handheld meter that I know of anywhere.
Now I'm not telling you you need to go out and buy this camera to get this perfect meter to make perfect photographs.
You don't need to do that at all.
You just need to know a few rules about meters and how they work.
And be able to know when the meter is being fooled so that you can determine how to make a manual correction to your exposure in order to get the best photograph.
Now those of you who have automatic cameras that do everything for you and there's no way that you can possibly override the manual setting, excuse me, the automatic setting of the camera, then you're out of luck.
And my best advice is to give that camera to your children and go buy a real camera.
And learn a little bit about photography so you can get some really breathtaking photographs.
And you really can.
You know, a lot of people think, well, I just can't learn enough about photography to be able to do this.
But you really can.
It's not that difficult.
Like me, in the beginning, I was a little confused by some of these things.
But after a while of taking photographs and reading some books and, you know, applying what I learned, I became Educated so to speak and then I just fell in love with photography and so I went to college and got a degree in photography And if you think what I'm teaching you on the air here is difficult Try going through some college classes where they put you through some hoops for instance Let me give you one of the problems that I had while I was in college I had to provide a light table with a white
Perfectly milk white surface.
Okay?
Now the surface of a light table is curved so that there are no breaks or lines.
It's used for product photography, catalog photography, fashion photography, things like that.
You look at a photograph and you see these things in the photograph and they're all sitting on a white surface or a black surface or whatever surface it is and you don't see any corners or breaks or Our lines, where things come together, that was taken on a light table.
Okay?
Underneath the light table, when you're using white, and it's milk white like I use, I had to place bright flood lamps that shone up through the bottom of the table.
Around the table, on all sides, so that there would be absolutely no shadows in the photograph, I had to place flood lamps also.
And my assignment was to take a photograph of an egg, you know, a white egg, not a brown egg.
And I had to get the whitest egg I could find on this light table.
And I had to photograph it so that there was texture in the egg and that the outline of the egg was perfectly visible.
And that there was nothing of the table that came into focus or could be distinguished in the photograph.
Now if you don't think that's difficult, you try it sometime.
Another assignment I had was to photograph something that was the blackest black that I could find and it could not be cloth.
It had to be an item.
And I had to photograph this on the same white table with the light shining from underneath.
And I had to make sure That there was texture and detail in all of the item that I photographed.
Okay.
Now, this is hard.
And I had to show that it was on the surface of the table.
In this instance, I had to show detail in the blackest black of this object so that everybody could see it and determine what it was and see the texture of the surface of it.
And I had to provide the same thing for the surface of the white table with the light shining through it.
Now that is an extremely difficult assignment and most students fail it.
And I got to tell you, I worked for several days before I was able to produce a photograph that even came close.
And the only way I did it was I cheated a little bit on the lighting.
I'm not going to tell you how.
But I did it and I passed it.
Most students fail those two tests.
Unless they're pretty good.
I'm not even in the league with real professional photographers who practice this craft every day and make their living and have established a name for themselves.
But I'm pretty good.
And so are some of you from some of the conversations I've had with you on the air and also on the telephone.
So, here we go.
When do meters fail to give you the proper exposure?
Well, it's very simple.
If you know that what the meter is trying to do is give you a solution to produce 18% gray of whatever you photograph.
Here's the truth.
If you take an 18% gray card and you meter it and photograph it, you're going to get a perfect exposure of that 18% gray card every time because that's what a meter is supposed to do.
Okay?
Now, if you're photographing a scene where the averaging of all of the elements of the scene, the light intensity of all different portions of the scene, do not equal 18% gray, or the middle tone in any range of tones producible on any strip of film, then you have a situation where your light meter is going to be fooled.
And here's how you can tell that I'm absolutely right about this.
And you have to do this with positive film.
Because if you do it with negative film, wherever you take it to get it processed, whoever prints and develops and prints that film is going to look at it and see that you screwed up the exposure and they're going to try to make whatever is in that picture look like what it's supposed to look like.
So you have to do it on slide film.
Because slide film is just processed and put in the little frames and sent back to you.
So, whatever you shoot, that's what you're going to get back.
So take a roll of slide film.
Set the meter in your camera to the ASA of whatever that film is, or the ISO number.
Okay?
And then, here's what I want you to do.
Go down to the store and get some black, you know, just a big sheet of black construction paper and a big sheet of white construction paper.
Okay?
And with your Your camera loaded with slide film, which is called Fuji Chrome, Kodachrome, Ektachrome.
It's always chrome something.
Okay.
Set the proper ASA according to the film and put the white construction board up on your wall.
And then stand in front of it.
You know, make sure that there's light shining on it so that you can get a proper exposure.
Stand in front of it.
Make sure that that's the only thing in the frame.
And if you have to move a little closer, just to absolutely make sure that nothing outside of that white board is going to be photographed, take a picture of it.
Then take it down and put up the black construction paper, construction board.
You all know what that is.
It's what your children use to make projects in school.
And then do the same thing with that.
Take a picture of it using whatever setting your meter tells you to use.
Make sure on both of these pictures that you take it exactly according to what the meter tells you to take it at.
And then, you know, take whatever you want on the rest of the film, send it in to be processed.
When you get it back, guess what?
Guess what, folks?
The white sheet of paper that you took a picture of on the wall is going to be exactly 18% gray, And that black sheet of paper that you took a picture of on the wall is also going to be 18% gray.
Because that's what your meter is telling you to do.
It's telling you to make that 18% gray.
And that's what it does.
Okay?
So once you understand that, you understand that when you're taking a picture of a scene where all the light elements of the scene will average to 18% gray, you can take a picture of that using your meter reading.
And the elements that are truly middle gray in that scene will be middle gray and the rest of them will be what they're supposed to be.
It works every time.
But say you're taking a picture of your little girl standing in front of a barn that's painted white.
So here you have this little girl standing in front of this huge barn.
The barn is all painted white.
Your meter is going to tell you that there's too much light in that scene to make an 18% gray and it's going to tell you to underexpose it because your meter is going to want to make that white barn 18% gray.
So here's what you have to do.
When you're taking a picture of a person or anything, a cow, doesn't matter what it is, in front of a white barn or a white wall or a white building or a white anything that's all real bright Open up two stops, which means you can slow down the shutter speed one stop, and open the aperture one stop, or you can open the aperture two stops, or you can decrease the shutter speed by two stops.
Any one of those three combinations will give you the correct exposure.
In other words, ignore your meter.
Hey, it's against the white bar, man!
This camera is going to try to make an underexposure because it's saying there's too much light.
So you have to compensate for that and open up so that that barn will really be white.
And you do it two stops.
Now, if it's something that's bright but not white, and it's not that reflective, then do it one and a half stops.
In other words, and if you're in doubt, bracket.
Like I told you, do the one you think is the right exposure, then take one under and one over.
Okay?
In the case of this, though, if it's real bright, you don't have to take one under.
You know it's going to be underexposed.
It's okay.
Okay, that's the way to do that.
Now, what if it's a black wall, or something real dark, and your subject is standing in front of it?
The camera's going to tell you there's not enough light there to make 18% gray, so it's going to try to overexpose your picture.
So what you have to do in a case like that, when you've got somebody against a black wall, is you've got to close it down two stops.
In other words, close it down two stops, or one and a half stops.
If it's really, really dark and black, do two stops.
If it's real dark, but it's not quite that black, then do one and a half.
And if you're in doubt, always bracket if the shot's important to you.
And here's my rule.
If the shot's not important to me, And if I've got to bracket to get a good picture and it really isn't that good of a shot, then don't take it at all.
Learn not to waste film, but don't be conservative with film either because the more pictures you take, the better you'll get and the more good frames that you'll get that will turn out.
Some of them by accident.
Believe me, I've taken some pictures before I understood how all this worked that I didn't think, you know, Well I'll take a picture of this sunflower.
Then I took a picture of the sunflower and then when I got the film back I looked at it and I was blown away.
It was one of the most beautiful photographs I've ever taken in my life.
And I didn't know what happened or why until a long time later when I figured out what the heck I had done.
Without even realizing.
And you will find that you get some of those too.
In fact, I'll bet it's happened to a lot of you already.
You get back your film, you don't even remember taking it, it's so good.
Wow, did I take this?
I don't remember that.
And it will wow you.
I remember once in Hawaii I took a photograph of a man bending over and there was another man lighting his cigarette.
Now I didn't think it would turn out at all because it was a dark scene.
When I got it back it was one of the most beautiful photographs and a brilliant character study of these two people grabbing a smoke, you know, late at night on a dark street.
And people would look at it and just say, wow, I really love this photograph.
Could I get a blow-up to hang on my wall?
I sold a lot of those pictures and they didn't even know who these guys were.
It just had that kind of an impact on people.
Okay?
Now I'm going to tell you the best way.
Now I didn't tell you about incident meters.
Incident meters measure the source of light instead of the reflection of the light.
So if you're standing in a certain spot and your subject is right in front of you and you're going to take a picture of that subject and you want to get a perfect exposure, you can do one of two things.
One, you can use an incident meter.
And that is where you take your meter and you walk to where the subject is.
This is used in studio photography, product photography, fashion photography, where the scene is not going to change.
You have control of the scene and you want to make perfect exposures every time.
You walk to the subject, point the incident meter at the source of light and take your reading.
Now most photography books and most teachers of photography will tell you to point the
meter at the lens or where the lens of the camera is going to be.
Not me.
I measure pointed directly at the source of light and I get better exposures than those
guys do.
So that's what I'm, you can take your pick.
You can listen to them and point your incident meter at where the lens of the camera is going
to be pointed at the subject and take your light reading from there.
Or you can point it at the source of the light and take your meter reading.
I get better readings when I point it at the source of the light and I get better exposures.
So up to you.
The other one is to always have a gray card with you.
Always have a gray card with you.
If you have a gray card with you, you can get a perfect exposure of whatever you're shooting every single time that you shoot it without fail.
If you can measure the gray card and lock in that exposure, if you've got one of those little automatic cameras where you have no control over what happens in the camera, you can't do this.
But, if you have the ability to override the camera or to meter with the meter and lock in that exposure just by maintaining a little pressure on the shutter button, then you can do this.
Take a gray card with you wherever you go.
You don't have to go over where the subject is.
Okay?
Just hold up the gray card so that it is Facing the light at the same angle that the subject that you are going to photograph is facing the light, meter the gray card and use that exposure to take the picture of your subject.
All you have to do is always make sure that the light is falling on the gray card when you meter it exactly like it's falling on the subject that you're going to photograph.
If you do that, you will get a perfect photograph every single time.
If you use an incident light meter, you should get a Perfect photograph every time that you do it.
Now why don't cameras have incident meters in them?
Because an incident meter has to be read from the position of the subject and the camera is never in that position.
Okay?
The camera is in a position where it can only read reflected light from the subject.
An incident meter measures the source of the light that's falling on the subject and gives you a correct exposure every single time.
Okay?
Now there's another thing that you can do.
If you don't have an incident meter and you don't have a gray card, meter the palm of your hand.
Meter the palm of your hand.
Make sure that's the only thing that's being metered and then open up one and a half stops and you'll get a perfect exposure every time.
Why the palm of your hand?
Because the back of everybody's hand is a different color.
The back of everybody's hand is a different color because Some people have real light skin and never go out in the sun.
Some people are in the sun and their skin is a little darker.
Some people are in the sun a lot and their skin is real dark, tan.
Now, this won't work with some ethnic groups.
If the palm of your hand is lighter than the average Caucasian palm of their hand or darker, it won't work for you.
But you can compare And if you're a black person, or if you're a Hispanic person, or if you're any of the dark-skinned or darker-skinned races, if you take and meter your hand with whatever meter you're using and see exactly what exposure it tells you to take, then meter a gray card and see what the difference is.
Whatever the difference is, that's the change that you need to make when you meter your hand in order to get a gray card reading.
And it'll generally be between one and a half and two and a half stops.
And that's the way you do it, folks.
And if you follow these directions, you'll get perfect exposures every single time.
And you'll be so happy with your photographs, you'll just be, well, I can't say that on the air.
Now, let me give you some general rules if you don't have a meter at all.
For a snow-covered ski slope, snow-covered ski slope or photographing a scene that has a lot of snow in it.
Okay?
If you use a meter, underexposure is going to occur.
Always increase the exposure by one and a half stops.
Okay?
If you don't have a meter, you always start with the shutter speed closest to the film speed and f16 and you go from there.
You would increase the exposure by one and a half stops.
Child on a beach, bright surf, A lot of sand.
If you use the meter, you're going to get an underexposed photograph.
Always increase your exposure by one and a half stops.
A very dark subject.
A black car fills most of the frame.
Or you've got somebody standing in front of a black building.
Or something like that.
A small person or object against a black building.
Your photograph is going to be overexposed if you use the meter.
Always decrease exposure by one and a half or one stop.
Okay?
One and a half or one stop.
You make the judge.
Depends on how dark it is.
Landscape.
Two-thirds of the frame of the hazy bright sky.
In other words, you've got a lot of sky in the picture.
You're going to have an underexposed photograph if you don't do this.
Increase your exposure by one stop.
Backlighting.
A person or object that you're photographing has the sun behind them.
As the sun behind them.
The subject of your photograph is going to be underexposed.
So you need to increase the exposure in this case by two full stops.
Two full stops.
The sun is so bright that it will cause your camera to fool itself and underexpose by two full stops.
You've got to increase exposure by two stops.
A spot lit performer surrounded by a large dark area on a stage.
It doesn't have to be on a stage.
But if they're spot lit.
There's a spotlight shining on them and them only and all around them is total darkness.
Okay?
You're going to get overexposure unless you decrease, decrease the exposure by one stop.
A landscape with the sun anywhere in the frame.
Sun anywhere in the frame.
A landscape.
You're going to get a severe underexposure unless you increase the exposure by two and a half stops.
That's it, folks.
I hope you can apply all of this and learn to use your camera and make some beautiful photographs.
And I want you to send some of them to me so I can see them.
And we'll put them up on the website.
We're going to have a photography section on the website.
And every month we're going to have a photography contest.
And the winner, and I will not be the judge, we'll have some impartial judges.
The winner will be declared the photo of the month.
Good night, folks.
God bless each and every single one of you.
Good night.
I love you.
Get it to vote, Get it to vote Get it to vote, Get it to vote
Oh All our friends keep knocking at the door.
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