The Correct Exposure

As photographers, be it a hobbyist or a working pro, you cant help but to pursue one key element in the building blocks of photography. Just what is the correct exposure?. Everyone's talking about it, magazines, forums, professionals, bloggers. Exposure is what makes and break a picture.

To 'gauge' the correct exposure, just look at the exposure meter in your viewfinder while taking a shot, and the histogram after taking a shot. If you don't know what the exposure meter looks like, I'd suggest you go back to your user manual, or just search online.

Or if you are a total knob. here is what it looks like.

Courtesy of www.dpreview.com

Ideally, you would want the metering to fall right in the center. As that is the perceived "correct" exposure.

But hey, here's where it gets all complicated. We are humans, and naturally we interpret things that we see differently from others. Your camera is made to "think" that thats the correct exposure. But you have the creativity in you to correct that.

Here's a classic case and point. You take your camera out for a walk on the beach and you come across this beautiful sunset. You raise it up to your eye, make sure the exposure is correct, and you depress the shutter. Taking a look at your view finder..

Errrr.

What happened!? its all over exposed, you cant see details in the clouds and colours are washed out. It is totally different that what you eyes saw.

Now why not increase your shutter speed by 2 to 3 stops?

"Correct" Exposure.

There. Looks a whole lot better don't you think?. I don't know about you, but this definitely looks better to me rather than the "correct" picture interpreted by the camera.

Here's another scenario, You see a nice patch of green and a beautiful sky, you proceed to take a picture of it. Once again relying on the camera's "correct" metering...

Most of you would just walk away with this shot.

Now how about using a higher shutter speed to under-expose the picture?

Under exposing by 3 stops and hitting the flash to illuminate the foreground.

Much much better.

So in short, there is NO correct exposure. The correct exposure lies within the person behind the camera. Don't be caught up in too much technical terms and jargon. Just take loads and loads of pictures, and learn.