AV News Magazine | Page 39

AV News 200 - May 2015 For some subjects, especially those with a very high contrast range there may be no such thing as a single 'correct' exposure. In such circumstances the photographer needs to decide which part of the scene is most important, and which method of metering to use. The Gossen Lightmeter image on the preceding page was taken using an incident light reading of f5.6 at 125th Sec at 100 ASA (ISO), this exposure required no post exposure correction whatsoever, although it was given approximately 3/4 stop more exposure than indicated by a camera TTL meter. Reflected meter readings can be influenced by the brilliance of background, whereby an incident reading completely ignores this. Adobe Photoshop can rescue some awkward exposure situations using quite remarkable correction' tools. Gaining access to the 'Exposure Correction Tool' in Photoshop is via the main menu. Select Mode, then Adjustments, whereby another panel of options spring to life. On this panel choose Exposure. Clicking Exposure causes a small and simple looking control panel to pop up containing three slider bars entitled 'Exposure', 'Offset', and 'Gamma Correction'. By default the top two slider bars are set central indicating zero in their numerical boxes, the bottom slider bar 'Gamma Correction' is also set central but as you may expect indicates a Gamma reading of 1.00. At the top of this control panel sits a drop down menu entitled 'Preset' which is set to 'Default' when first opened. Within this drop down menu sits a pair of tiny arrows, clicking on those arrows opens up a drop down menu containing several Presets i.e. Minus 1 stop exposure, Minus 2 stops exposure, Plus 1 stop exposure and Plus 2 stops exposure. There is also a choice to select 'Custom' whereby you can customise the amount of stops either over or under exposure to suit your own requirements. To the right of the drop down menu sits a 'Gear' shaped icon, clicking this icon allows you to 'Save a Preset', Load a Preset', or 'Delete the 'Current Preset'. Page 37