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CHAPTER
NIGHT AND LOW-LIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY / All About Light and Exposure

MEASURING THE

AVAILABLE LIGHT

To be able to take a good photograph with proper

exposure, you have to be able to quantify the

amount and intensity of the light present in the

scene. Many times your eyes are fooled, and

scenes that look bright are really quite dark,

while scenes that look normal can be very

bright. This is because your brain can adjust

the way you perceive the light. While you could

purchase a separate light meter to measure the

light for you, your camera’s built-in light meter

does a great job and will serve you well with just

a little practice.

The built-in light meter

Your camera’s built-in light meter enables the

camera to see the light in the scene and, depend-

ing on the camera’s exposure mode, provides a

fairly accurate reading of the light present. The

camera reads the light coming through the lens

and it determines the correct settings to capture

the scene properly. These results are usually

pretty good, but the camera has problems when

the scene you are shooting is predominantly light

or dark. The light meter tries to take all the dark

and light areas and average them out to create a

scene that is an overall 18 percent gray. This

might be great for average scenes, but night and

backstage when I noticed that the lights coming

straight down cast great shadows, so I had Keller

Williams pose with his guitar before taking the

stage. Of course, it isn’t always so clear.

very different looks to the same scene and can be
one of the more interesting and fun parts of pho-
tographing at night. Take an office building that
is usually lit from the sun; it is now lit up inter-
nally, and instead of the very bright sunlight
coming down from above, the combination of
different electric lights all mix to create a very
different view.

When shooting indoors at weddings, concerts,
and even sporting events, the light sources are
usually really obvious. Take the lighting in Figure
2-4; it is easy to see exactly where it is coming
from and what it is illuminating. This was taken

ABOUT THIS PHOTO Keller Williams posing under the hard,
directional lights in the backstage area of the Los Angeles Greek
Theatre. Taken at 1/40 second, f/2.8, and ISO 250.

2-4

It is important to remember that

when it comes to long exposures,

small sources of light that might often go unnoticed can

become significant sources of illumination.

tip