C&C on Correct Exposure

[BJPhotography]

I am trying my darndest to get this exposure triangle right.
My settings are: 50mm lens.
1000 iso
1.8 aperture
1/15 shutter speed
I spot focused on the lens. I was standing about 10 feet from the table.
My camera was not on a tripod.

Did I get the exposure right?
The histogram, once again, says Im right on but....we know how trustworthy they can be.
Thanks all.

 

[KmH]

Did you know you can check the exposure using Photoshop (or Gimp, or the software that came with your camera)?

Plus the 'correct' exposure is not always a cut and dried issue.

In this shot you have both dark and light elements. Your main subject is the lens. That is what you want to expose for. By the same token, part of the lens, like the front lens element, is both bright and dark.

 

[Big Mike]

Histograms are very trustworthy. The image as viewed on your LCD screen, on the other hand, should not be trusted.

I'm guessing that you cropped this image? Standing 10 feet away with a 50mm lens, should give you a much wider view than this. Also, the EXIF data said that you used F4, not F1.8....but the DOF is very shallow, which would lead me to think that you did use a large aperture like F1.8 and/or that you were actually much closer than 10 feet.

As for the exposure, I'd say that it looks pretty good...but to get technical, it's probably a bit over exposed. The lens is probably black, but in the photo it's not black...it's dark grey...which would mean it's overexposed. That being said, if you want to really show detail on a black object, you do often need to slightly overexpose it. So while it may not be 100% technically accurate exposure, it's a photo that shows the subject well, which is a success.

 

[BJPhotography]

I did not crop this image. It has not been altered whatsoever.

 

[Derrel]

The image looks "too bright" to me. I was not at the scene, but ISO 1,000 at f/1.8 and 1/15 second....that is some dim lighting. The way this photo is rendered does not look like "dim light", and the black of the lens rubber looks grayish, which is why I say the image looks too bright.

 

[BJPhotography]

And you are right, my apologies...F4.

 

[BJPhotography]

So what would have made this shot better exposed? I had outside light coming from the right side and overhead light from one bulb. So I should have brought my iso setting down or changed something else?

 

[tirediron]

Histograms are very trustworthy...

Agreed, if you know how to interpret them.

Just because an image shows an excess of one or more colour channels, and/or does not form a perfect bell curve, etc, does not mean that the exposure is incorrect. For instance a correct exposure of a night-time street scene would have a vastly different histogram than a correct exposure for a product shot of an item consisting mostly of middle greys.

 

[tirediron]

So what would have made this shot better exposed? I had outside light coming from the right side and overhead light from one bulb. So I should have brought my iso setting down or changed something else?

The lighting is fine, that is the number, position etc of light sources, the shadows and so on. As a general rule, you should keep your ISO as low as possible to minimize noise, so my recommendation would have been to reduce your ISO to say ~800 while leaving your aperture and shutter-speed the same.

 

[Timoris]

So what would have made this shot better exposed? I had outside light coming from the right side and overhead light from one bulb. So I should have brought my iso setting down or changed something else?

Removable Flash, bounce the light off the ceiling or the walls, or a white drape. As such you'll have better control. Much lower ISO, faster speeds.

 

[DiskoJoe]

ISO 1000 seems really high to me too. Also exposure is somewhat subjective as far as what is considered correct. Just take the shots in a way that you think looks good. This is what professional refer to as - style.

 

[Patrice]

Here is my take on this. I don't know on what part of the image you metered when you set your exposure parameters. If you metered on the lens, which is darker than 18% grey, then your meter will try and make this into an 18% grey object, thus overexposing the dark object. In this case a setting decrease of about one stop might have been appropriate to get the black lens looking a bit more black.

Exposure meters, be they in spot, average or matrix (evaluative) mode, are usually pretty good at what they do, which is to meter everything as an 18% grey object. Also, in camera meters only work with reflected light, so the reflectance of an object will affect the meter result. Experience will tell you how and when you should be overriding your meter readings. Best metering is achieved by an incident reading on the the light reaching the subject. Second best would be to meter the reflected light off an 18% grey card. Without either one then you are left to your own experience to determine when the meter might be getting fooled and how to correct.