Try This at Home

Chapter One: Prerequisite—Photo 101

Silhouette Portrait Experiment

Tools: A camera, tripod, normal ¹ (50mm for a full-frame camera) or medium telephoto (100mm for a full-frame camera) fixed lens ²—or a zoom lens that covers these focal lengths

Optional: A laptop and card reader so you can evaluate images “on set”

Location: Indoors, in front of a window

Subject: A willing and patient friend

What to Expect

For this test, you’ll be putting yourself into a situation where the meter is wrong and the histograms are weird. We’re deliberately creating a situation where Manual mode and some careful light metering are required. By working with our light source—the window—behind our subject, we’ll make three distinctly different portraits (Figure 1.23). A north-facing window would be ideal, because there won’t be any direct sun; that way, the light values will be consistent. Any window can work, but be mindful of direct sunlight or changing light levels.

The Setup

•  Place your camera on a tripod. This will keep the framing consistent and give you one less thing to worry about. You can shoot without one, but make sure you’re very consistent about lining up the same shot each time.
•  Place your subject directly in front of the window. Frame up a head and shoulders shot, vertically or horizontally. Try not to include the edge of the window frame, curtains, etc. in your shot.
•  Use Manual mode and set your in-camera meter to Pattern (aka Matrix or Multi-Segment).
•  

Meter Your First Scene

• With your shot framed up, use your camera’s meter to get a reading. Select an aperture value around ƒ/5.6. You’ll use this as a fixed value for all the versions. Adjust your shutter speed and ISO to get a good normal exposure. Write down these settings so you can refer to them later, and call them Set A.

•  Take a quick series of photos—you’re going to want a nice one to give to your friend.

Meter Your Second Scene

• Without changing your camera position, ask your subject to move out of frame.
• Now use your camera’s meter to get a reading of the scene, using the same aperture. Write this down as Set B. Without your subject in the image, your meter reading should have changed, which means you’ll need a faster shutter speed or lower ISO setting to get a normal value for the brighter background.
•  Ask your subject to come back into the frame and take another quick series of photos.

Meter Your Third Scene

• Now remove your camera from the tripod and walk close enough to your subject so that his or her face fills the majority of the viewfinder. Don't worry about focus, you’re just here to get a meter reading. Use your camera’s meter to get a reading of the scene, (using the same aperture), and adjust the shutter speed and ISO as necessary to get a normal exposure. Option: If you’re comfortable with Spot meter mode, you can use that to force the camera to read only the light on your subject’s face. Write this down as Set C.
•  Walk back, put your camera back on the tripod and take another quick series of photos.

Download Your Images

Get your images into your computer and open them up in Lightroom, or whatever your preferred raw processor is. For this kind of evaluation, we like to use Lightroom, since we can make Collections to organize our images. Create three Collections, naming them A, B and C, and put each set of images into their corresponding collection.

For each group, decide which image you like best. Take the three images you selected and put them in their own collection so you can compare them against one other.

Technical Questions

• Can you make a connection between the meter values, the histograms and the resulting images?
• Which of the images has the best skin tones?
• Is there clipping in areas that are important to the photograph?

Aesthetic Questions

• What kind of story does each image tell?
• Is there one image you prefer over the others? What about it works for you?
• Compare the way the scene looked to your eyes with the way it is recorded in the image. Which image looks closest to your memory?

 

In each version of the image, you took a meter reading in a different way. The first set averaged both the background values and your subject. The second set metered only the background values and the third only the subject values. All three of these methods are correct for metering this type of scene; it’s up to you to decide which method will give you the results you want.