Jason Tag Photography

Yesterday I wrote about my problems with exposure settings. After trying to understand the zone system, I think I have a better idea of what’s going on and how to fix my issues with exposure. One of the issues I realized is that the display on my camera is completly unreliable as a method for checking exposure or sharpness. it ocurred to me that I looked at each shot after I took it and it looked fine to me until I got home. So my goal is find a way to know that I got the shot without having to look at it in the on-board display.

I thought I’d post a few images to explain what happened during the shoot. The first image is an example of an exposure that’s 1 f-stop too dark. it’s fixable but the point is to get the shots right in camera. it’s a high bar but I want to be able to do that.

In the next image you’ll see the effect of using the fill flash set to it’s lowest setting while still being seen. On my camera there’s one more setting below this one but at that setting it didn’t affect the shot at all. The white shirt in this shot just pops but the background is too dark. Again it’s not a bad shot but it’s not what I wanted to capture.

The next shot is an example of just how much camera shake can be present to ruin a shot. The last shot isn’t totally ruined by shake. But this one is definetly unusable. But the exposure values are good.

This last image was shot at the end of the shoot when we started to lose the light a little bit. This shot was shot at the longest shutter speed I was willing to use which was 1/10. Not bad considering I’m not that good with shutter speeds longer than 1/60. The noise isn’t too bad but because of the low light this shot takes on a creepy, b movie monster is after me in the woods…” Although now that I put it in those terms I kinda like it.

Overall it was a challenging lighting situation. If I had to do it all over again I would have brought my reflectors and an assistant to hold them. I would also bring a tripod to help prevent camera shake. I ended up getting about 40 good shots so I’m not too bummed about it but I would be nice to have all the images be good.