Tools

I’ve been doing photography a long time. Not so long as many, but long enough that I’ve seen a couple of dramatic changes in the tools of the trade. My first camera was an Argus C3, a little rangefinder; with no meter. It looked like a brick

My first, “serious” camera was something only a little more sophisticated. The first camera I applied myself to, carrying with me everywhere, was a world apart. It was the N2000, one of Nikon’s “amateur” cameras (Nikon has three lines, amateur, pro-am, and pro. With the digital cameras it’s easy to tell them apart, they are Dxx, Dxxx and Dx, respectively. With the film cameras the only obvious trait is the pro models are Fx. With the exception, IMO, of the F4, all of them are great, and by and large worth the money if you want a 35mm camera. The other one to look for is the FE2, which was a Pro-am model, and, one of the best deals Nikon ever had. Nikon is very good about pushing advancements from the professional camera models down to the other lines. The best deal right now, in Nikon bodies, is probably the D40, which has been updated with some of the features from the D3/D300. It’s not as bells and whistles as the D90, but it’s probably the best, “bang for the buck” Nikon has right now. It’s certainly the “entry level” camera I’d commend for someone who is interested in starting, but not ready to commit to the kind of money even a used D200 costs).

It was manual focus, had an auto winder (no more thumb-flipping), and possessed of three modes of automatic assistance. The shutter speed indicator had two red lights, which let you know if you were over/under exposed. It also had a readout showing the shutter speed. It’s only real failing was that you had no way to know, through the lens, what the f-stop was.

Fundamentally this hasn’t changed. The window is gone, replaced with a readout. The list of shutter-speeds is just a number, the red lights now a scroll bar, showing how much away from the recommended exposure you are. There’s a couple of arrows purporting to tell you which way you need to twist the lens to be in focus.

Purported is the key. Your camera assumes things. It assumes 1: The lighting is average and 2: that you are trying to make a “normal” exposure (more modern cameras have better sets of exceptions; and are more likely to deal with them tolerable, but it’s still making assumptions inside that pair of parameters).

When one of those, or both, is not the case the camera will make a less than ideal chose. How do we, as engaged photographers cope with that? We have three options. Become intimately aware of how our film/camera responds, set the camera to manual and make all the judgements.

It’s a less than perfect solution. Unless we used only one film (or ISO setting) the qualities of various lights aren’t the same. Our eye can discern things the camera can’t. I forget how many times I was sure I get a shot, only to discover, when I metered the scene that it was a vain hope.

The second option is to use a meter. This is a tricky thing, meters are what they are, and an external meter isn’t all that different in kind from an external one. I recall, many moons ago, when I wanted to buy a spot meter. The first camera shop I entered mocked me. Told me that, save I planned to become a large-format zone photographer it was a waste of money.

It’s not. A spot meter is probably the best backstop you can get. Why? Because the limit we must work around is the dynamic range limits of our recording media. If that’s five stops, a scene with seven isn’t going to be completely captured.

Do I use my spot meter? Not as much as I ought. I’m lazy, and it takes up room in the bag (adds some weight too). Instead I set the camera to spot, and point it around the scene. It’s not as small a spot (I can’t get less than 3° with it, and my Pentax is 1°) but it’s close enough. N.B., remember to go back to your usual metering mode, or you will have some very odd shots, massively over/under exposed, and no apparent rhyme or reason to the errors.

That’s a really handy trick. I use to not need to go to manual. With some time spent calibrating my in-camera meter, I can usually make a decent guess as to what the problems are likely to be. A quick switch to spot-metering, and then the “exposure lock” button on the back of the camera (which takes whatever the present exposure is, and hold it until the button is released) and I can control where the “middle grey" falls.

Another problem, and more common, is the “predictable” error. Bright snow will need more light, and a dark hillside need less. It’s because the camera is fooled, and is trying to move everything to the middle. That’s where exposure compensation comes in. If I’m shooting birds, against the pale blue sky, I pop on a polariser (to avoid the sky washing out, and make it easier to shoot closer to the sun), and dial in 1/3-2/3rds of a stop of extra exposure. That way I can leave the shutter speed the same, and not worry the camera will stop down too much and leave the bird a dark lump in the middle of the frame.

(this is a photo which has the the problem of overbright background, I dialed in 1/rd of a stop of overexposure to keep it from blocking up)

Or, conversely, when shooting a dark background I can dial in 1/3-2/3rds of a stop of underexposure, and not worry the shutter speed will be slowed down to the point the subject is blown out.

Modern cameras have lots of bells and whistles. I don’t know anyone who uses all of them, but some of them (e.g. exposure compensation) ought to be in everyone’s bag of tricks. Not because we need them (manual mode is there, we can do it all ourselves; and sometimes we need to) but because they make it easier to take pictures, which means we can, more often than not, spend less time worrying about how we are getting the shot, and more time about the shot we are getting.