Exposure question

[MerrittPhotography]

Playing with exposure compensation helps with creative techniques.
http://www.johnmerrittphotography.com/

 

[KmH]

I just finished the first chapter of Understanding Exposure: How to Shoot Great Photographs and Bryan Peterson is talking about the fact that each time you set-up for a shot, you should take 6 exposures and choose the "most creative one".

Example :

1/500 : F/4
1/250 : F/5.6
1/125 : F/8
1/60 : F/11
1/30 : F/16
1/15 : F/22

What do you guys think about that ?

That isn't what Bryan says at all.

He doesn't say to make 6 exposures of every image.

What he says is that any scene can be captured as a proper exposure with 6 possible combinations of shutter speed and aperture.

Depending on what creative look the photographer is wanting in the final image, one of those 6 combinations will be more pleasing to most viewers than the others.


He goes on to point out that settings can be grouped to coincide with various creative effects:

• Small apertures (f/16, 22,32) are the creative force for what he calls storytelling exposures that work best with a lot of DOF.
• Large apertures (f/2.8, 4, 5.6) are the creative force for what he calls singular-themes or isolation exposures that show shallow DOF.
• Middle apertures are for "Who cares?" exposures when DOF doesn't really matter or the subject is very close to the background.
• Fast shutter speeds (1/250, 1/500, up to 1/8000 are used to freeze motion.
• Slow shutter speeds (1/60, 1/30, 1/15) are used for panning.
• Superslow shutter speeds (1/4 and slower) are used to imply motion.

So as an example to isolate a racing car on the race track the photographer will want to use a large aperture but a slow shutter speed and panning so the car is stopped but the wheels and tires are still blurred too.

A landscape shot of an alpine mountain meadow with a cascading brook will photograph best with a small aperture and a superslow shutter speed.

You might want to re-read that chapter.