Intermediate Photography Lesson 1 Quiz | Test Your Knowledge

Evaluative metering reads the entire scene, including the bright window, and sets exposure to render the average as middle gray. The bright window dominates the average, causing the camera to set an exposure that underexposes the person. Positive compensation pushes the exposure up to correctly render the face.

Camera meters are calibrated to render any scene as middle gray. Snow is substantially brighter than middle gray, so the meter reduces exposure to compensate, converting white snow to a gray tone. The photographer must apply positive compensation to override this tendency.

A histogram shows dark tones on the left and bright tones on the right. Data bunched on the left with nothing on the right means most tones are dark and nothing reaches the highlights, so the image is underexposed. More exposure would shift the graph to the right.

Evaluative metering averages the entire scene, including the large dark area of the unlit stage. The dark area drags the average down, causing the meter to increase exposure. This brightens the whole image, overexposing the spotlight area where the performer stands.

Exposure compensation shifts the metered exposure result up or down by the chosen amount while the camera continues to calculate and update exposure automatically as conditions change. Switching to full manual requires the photographer to recalculate and reset every time the light changes.

The histogram reveals a gap in the middle when the scene contains very bright and very dark areas with few mid-tones: a classic high-contrast or HDR situation. No single exposure can place both the brightest and darkest tones within the sensor's recordable range simultaneously.

Expose to the right means setting exposure as bright as possible without clipping highlights, so the histogram sits toward the right edge. The shadows receive more light, so they carry less noise once the image is darkened back down in raw processing. It only works with raw files and with careful watching of the highlights.

The meter reads the predominantly dark scene and adds exposure to render it as middle gray, turning the black cat gray in the process. Applying negative compensation reduces the exposure, pushing the dark tones back toward true black and revealing the texture in the fur.

Spot metering reads only a small circle of the frame, often a few percent, so it measures the subject alone. That makes it the right tool when the subject is much brighter or darker than its surroundings, such as a spotlit performer or a backlit face. Evaluative metering would be pulled off by the surroundings.

Bracketing at -1, 0, and +1 provides a range of exposures centered on the meter's reading. In a scene where one exposure may be clearly better, the bracket increases the chance of capturing it. The three frames can also be merged to retain detail across a wider dynamic range than any single frame records.