Getting The Exposure You Want For Any Kind Of Photo

Once upon a time, it was a beautiful afternoon in Austin, Texas. I was sitting in a restaurant at a window table across from a business contact who was an amateur photographer. He had brought his camera to our meeting, because he said he wanted to make a natural light photo of me.

The light was beautiful, and it was streaming in the window at just the right angle to create a soft golden effect on those sitting inside. I willingly agreed to have my photo made. But what happened next pained me.

The photographer spent 30 minutes getting the exposure correct. As he furrowed his brow, he said he was playing with the light. Then he got out a hand-held light meter to measure the light near me. He changed his camera settings, and made several more photos of me.

I say all this not to shame the growing photographer, but to point out why the topic of this blog post is important. This post will address how you can get the right exposure every time by using the meter that comes in your camera. This way you won’t have to use a light meter when you are photographing in natural light.

Your Camera’s Light Meter

If you have a digital SLR camera, chances are that your camera has a built-in light meter. This may look like a sliding scale in your viewfinder…