MASTERING EXPOSURE - Get it right EVERY time! - Bird Photography Secrets Revealed - Jan Wegener

[Applause] [Music] hi guys welcome to another episode of 3rd Photography Secrets Revealed today it's all about how to nail your exposure and get the best images for editing last time we learn how to use manual mode and take full control of our exposure and our images today we're going to find out how to actually get the right exposure set up my camera put off Charlie on the tripod so I can move them around I'll put them in different spots show you how I find my exposure and how you can easily find the correct exposure as well let's do it before we get started let's look at what exposure is it's basically the amount of light coming through our lens onto our sensor and for us as a photographer we really want to manipulate this light in a way that we get the perfect exposure in how can we do that well with three tools for that we have aperture shutter speed and ISO that we can put into the camera and then manipulate in a way that we get the perfect exposure and that's what we're gonna do today also recall from my manual mode video that I usually set aperture and ISO at the beginning of the day especially if it's a cloudy day like today and then kind of leave it for the rest of the day so we'll mainly be changing the shutter speed to get a brighter or darker image when we talk about exposure we also have to talk about editing I ended all my images and I believe editing is just the normal part of the process of using digital cameras we're shooting in RAW the aim is to get a nice and flat file then we load them onto computer we edit them into perfectly looking final images that's just the process I don't really understand people that say I don't need to edit my images it's fine only spend half a second why why do you want to compromise the images or get not the best possible results out of your photography wouldn't you rather spend a little bit more time and get absolutely stunning looking images for me this process starts by shooting in RAW nailing my exposure by taking test shots looking at the histogram supposing as far to the right as possible so if the least amount of noise and images and set myself up for success in the post-production process so I can get the best looking final images so let's do that today before we get started let's look at a few facts exposure is always a compromise our cameras sensors are a lot less sensitive than our eyes for instance I can see a white bird in front of a dark background and I can see with my eyes the details in the bird and the details in the dark background Reds you take the same picture with your camera the bird will be blown out and the background will be black so what does that mean for us as I said exposures always a compromise we as the photographer have to find a way to circumvent the limitations of the camera sensor and find a compromise that in this scenario that I just said doesn't make the background too dark or doesn't make the bird too bright so what we really try to achieve by finding the right exposure is getting a raw file that's the best compromise out of the situation that the camera could manage so that we can then take it into Photoshop and create a perfectly exposed really nice-looking final image and what is the tool in camera and in the field that shows us what our exposure is like it's the histogram it's the one and only tool that tells you how we expose the images and whether you exposures too bright to dark or spot-on let's look at this to go a bit more in detail the histogram itself is a visual representation of all the pixels in our images on the left hand side we have all the shadows and the blacks in the middle we have the mid-tones and on the right hand side way of the highlights in an ideal world our perfect histogram would kind of look like a bell curve kind of like this but obviously we're not living in an ideal world and then nature photography we would never have a histogram where there's just kind of mid-tones and no real highlights or blacks so what's the histogram we're aiming for we want to expose to the right as far as possible what does that mean it our images will look very bright and flat but that's exactly what we want because we get the lowest amount of noise the most amount of details and the best foundation for our editing process so let's look at this histogram what we want to do is exposing as far to the right as possible but not touching the wall on the right-hand side if your histogram is bunching up on the right-hand side of the histogram wall it means you're losing details you're clipping the histogram and there's no details in the highlights that's not what we want what we want is a histogram as far to the right as possible but not touching the wall on the right hand side giving us the perfect foundation for our editing process so how do we find the right exposure I already told you the tool to use is the histogram so what I do on a day like today overcast birds over there I just think of an exposure first on a day like today I'd probably say ISO 1600 f/8 four hundredths of a second I take a test shot look at the histogram see where that gets me so let me do that and then we go from there and there's our first shot four hundredths of a second when we look at the histogram we actually see that it's still fairly clipped on the right-hand side and that's something we don't want because it means that we are losing too much detail in the white bird so what can we do the pictures too bright we're shooting menu mode just set a faster shutter speed so let me do that it's not clipped drastically so I'm just gonna go down a third of a stop five hundreds of a second and that histogram looks perfect it's not clipped anymore on the right hand side that means we're maintaining enough detail in the bird and it also gives us the background that's still light enough to be easy to edit you saw me use the flash as well don't worry about it for this video doesn't affect the exposure too much and we cover that in the next video I'll show you why use flash how are you / and how you can use flash as well so stay tuned subscribe to my channel so you never miss a video back to the camera if we wanted to expose any darker what would happen we maintain a little bit more detail in the bird but our background gets so dark that we end up with an image that's actually unpleasant to look at and very difficult to edit just let me do that for an example now we end up with an image to just oval to dark you might say but Jana an image you shot me before there was still a few highlights that were a little bit too bright I say don't worry about those I rather have a background that's not too dark and those highlights I can easily recover my post-production process so I expose as far to the right as I can even with a few highlights blinking so my background is nice and bright and my bird is still manageable and then when I edit my picture I combined it to to find a perfect compromise and get the best final image and just like that you see how easy it is to find the right exposure go out set basically any exposure take a test shot look at your base to go see where am i add my too far to the left too far to the right adjust your shutter speed accordingly for this video I'm obviously assuming you're all shooting manual so all we're gonna do to brighten or darken the image is adjust our shutter speed [Music] so while you are sound and exposing the images is so bad it's simple the more you are next spokes the more noise introducing to image the more you have to lighten it in post-production and the more you lighten the image and pross production the worse you make your image quality it's actually better to shoot a bit brighter and darken the images then shooting a bit darker and lightened images if you shoot nice and bright and dark and a bit you end up with a nice and clean picture with perfect colors in the least amount of noise if you shoot too dark lighten the image you start introduced noise you start to introduce colors on the bird's body there might be dark areas on the wing that lose all the detail have a lot of noise it just becomes a lot harder to deal with if you have to lighten it a lot you might introduce banding in the background there's just a lot of things we don't want to have in our images noisy crow up there so set yourself up for success by using the histogram to find the perfect exposure that's as far exposed to the right as possible to get the best inputs for your post-production process and get the best final images I said before it's harder to find a right exposure when the background is dark and the bird is bright like in the case now we have set up Charlie higher so there's dark back and behind him and why is that it's just because it's harder to find the right compromise if the bird and the background have a similar color you can treat them as the same and just find one exposure that matches everything perfectly where's with the dark background and a bright bird I want to find a shutter speed that doesn't make the background too dark and doesn't make the bird too bright so I just have to try around a bit more the lights changing nails well so let's just find any exposure I tried the first setting first five hundredths of a second of eight ISO 1600 that's still pretty good probably a little bit too bright now because there's a bit more Sun coming through and a lot of harlots clipped on a bird so I just tried a little bit darker six 40s of a second that's looking good again but what's happening now is you can see how dr. Becker and is compared to the image I had before where Charlie was nicely exposed in the background was nicely exposed now with the dark background I have a bird that's pretty bright and I have a background that's pretty dark so I'm just not in an ideal scenario anymore so the aim for me whenever go out is not to only get a bird get it on a nice perch but also find a background that matches the bird because then it's much easier to get a pleasant and balanced looking image you might ask yourself how you find the right exposure when there's no bird around that you can actually check with the histogram so in that case what I would do I would if I use a perch like I'm using today or just focus on the perch take a test shot and make sure that I'm not blowing out any details but exposing as far to right as I can I'm just kind of walking around sorry there's a lot of noisy cookers in the background I'm just walking around I would try and think of what bird I'm expecting and then try to meter something that has a similar color to the bird but let's just go with this perch I'll focus on it take your test shot check my histogram it's looking pretty good this perch is already kind of light-coloured into birds I'm expecting have a lot of white on their body as well so this should actually work quite well I'm not blowing out the brightness on the rock but I'm exposing all the way to the right so it's looking pretty good and the birds coming in now my exposure will be spot-on and I can actually even without having the bird already anticipate what the correct exposure will be a little bit of time went by so I checked my exposure again it's still looking good it's pretty sunny already so I'm shooting f/8 I saw I had hundred to thousands of a second and there's the bird and just as expected I've got a perfect exposure on the bird with our predetermined histogram by just checking exposure on the rock and making sure exposing as far to the right as possible without blowing the whites on the rock and then when the black and white bird came we just had the right exposure dialed in and we're ready to go and got some nice images [Music] hope today was an easy introduction to how to nail your exposure and all the factors that determine the right exposure like the color of your bird the color of your background and the lighting situation and CC all you need to do is take a couple test shots look at the histogram and exposures no miss you anymore and you can nail it every single time just because pulse as far to the right as possible without clipping the right hand side and you get the perfect image for your editing process I hope you enjoyed this video like always subscribe to my channel to stay up to date with all my latest videos give me a thumbs up and let me know in the comments if you have any questions or which topics you want me to cover next see you in a next video [Music]

Channel: Jan Wegener

Views: 51,632

Keywords: bird photography, australia, vogelfotografie, jan wegener, birding, photography, birds, tutorial, equipment, exposure, manual mode

Id: dicPTGRL45E

Length: 13min 18sec (798 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 04 2019