I finished Bryan Peterson's "Understanding Exposure" book and went outside to try his "metering off blue sky" technique. Initially I thought this was just bonkers. I mean, how are you meant to get a correct exposure by pointing your camera up at the sky instead of at the subject you are wanting to photograph?
I put my cheapo 50mm 1.8 on my 30D and decided to have a wander around the garden and give it a go. And amazingly, it does actually work.
The thing about Bryan Peterson's book is that it very simply describes how to take a pic in manual mode. First, decide what aperture you want (i.e the depth of field on the pic). Then get a meter reading to determine the shutter speed. If you cant get a fast enough shutter, increase the ISO (or use a flash).
So I knew I wanted a very shallow DOF, with a blurry background, so set the aperture to 1.8. I found a suitable flower, pointed the camera up at the blue sky, set the pointy exposure meter in the viewfinder to be in the middle by twiddling the shutter speed, then took the shot (autofocus on the bobbly bits in the middle of the flower in this case).
I took quite a few pics using this method. Granted, you can just leave the camera on aperture priority mode, but if you are taking a pic of a white flower against a dark background the automatic metering can end up overexposing the white flower.
Anyway, very enlightening. I'm doing much more manual mode shots as a result of reading the book and I'm understanding more about what I'm trying to achieve as well.
Here's the pic...
Tobers
I put my cheapo 50mm 1.8 on my 30D and decided to have a wander around the garden and give it a go. And amazingly, it does actually work.
The thing about Bryan Peterson's book is that it very simply describes how to take a pic in manual mode. First, decide what aperture you want (i.e the depth of field on the pic). Then get a meter reading to determine the shutter speed. If you cant get a fast enough shutter, increase the ISO (or use a flash).
So I knew I wanted a very shallow DOF, with a blurry background, so set the aperture to 1.8. I found a suitable flower, pointed the camera up at the blue sky, set the pointy exposure meter in the viewfinder to be in the middle by twiddling the shutter speed, then took the shot (autofocus on the bobbly bits in the middle of the flower in this case).
I took quite a few pics using this method. Granted, you can just leave the camera on aperture priority mode, but if you are taking a pic of a white flower against a dark background the automatic metering can end up overexposing the white flower.
Anyway, very enlightening. I'm doing much more manual mode shots as a result of reading the book and I'm understanding more about what I'm trying to achieve as well.
Here's the pic...

Tobers