>> |
Anonymous
>>42549 >It's not. That's my point.
So why futz with the exposure dial over the shutter speed dial?
>Choosing exposure is pretty much mechanical most of the time--you usually want to get as much of the scene within the camera's dynamic range as possible, and modern meters are really good at doing that.
While I agree that "the hardest part of getting a good picture is finding a good subject and composing the shot," photography is exactly what its name means: writing with light. The light, that is, the exposure, is the key thing. It's not the hardest, but it is the most important.
Hence, choosing exposure is not mechanical. Like I said, they'll be multiple light values that will meter the same. You want digital (as in, digital versus analogue, not as in, digital versus film)? Try something that reduces a value as complex as "amount of light" to a scale measured in thirds. That's just the beginning, too. Converting a light meter reading to the proper exposure value is anything but mechanical. Auto-exposure options don't have experience or intuition. They're designed for the "usual," as you said, which is, in the practice of most photographers, anything but.
>If you want to shift the histogram around, the EV comp dial works just as well as the shutter dial. If you don't want to shift the histogram around, you can ignore it and let the camera deal with it on its own.
I never use a histogram live while I'm shooting, and only rarely check it, and only out of curiosity, after the fact. It tells nothing that a light meter reading doesn't, just in an even less precise form. If you're using "histogram" as an abbreviation for "what the histogram shows" as a synonym for "exposure," then see the next section.
>you can ignore it and let the camera deal with it on its own.
You've yet to make an argument as to why it is better for the camera to deal with it than the photographer.
|