Does Gray Matter?

Most of the people who take up on photography, basically know what gray matter to camera exposure, and even when you taking up a course, the lecture will tell you to either carry a gray card or use your skin as a gray card to identified the exposure value at that time.

Yes, all the camera exposure today is using mid gray as a guide for the camera to judge the exposure value, but that is not the definite exposure technical or knowledge.

Try this:
First, set your camera setting to either P(program), A(aperture priority) or S(shutter priority)
a) point your camera to a total white card and frame it till the white fill your viewfinder, shot one picture. b) point your camera to a total black card and frame it till the black fill your viewfinder, shot one picture. = The result images you got is a mid gray images, no matter white or black card.

try another one:
a) point your camera to a total black&white checked box card and frame it till the black&white checked box fill your viewfinder, shot one picture.
= Now, you get exact what your eyes see images, black&white checked box.

The conclusion is, your camera exposure system will adjust the combination of shutter & aperture value to balance whatever value receive by the camera sensor and average it to a mid gray value exposure reading. That is what we so call "normal exposure".

Therefore, pre-visualization become the most important skill for you to land the correct exposure on your pre-visualized image.

Before that, The most basic exposure value, they is three initial level:
A)High Key
- total exposure value tend toward high light and mid gray, no prominent dark gray and black.
B)Med Key
- total exposure value distributed over the whole images, highlight, mid gray and shadow.
C)Low Key.
- total exposure value tend toward dark gray and black, no prominent highlight and light gray tone.

High Key, Average and Low Key Histogram sample:


and below is the difference of camera program exposure and after pre-visualized manual adjustment exposure:

A) High Key Images


B) Average Images


C) Low Key Images


now, what is the exposure in your mind when you plan to take a picture?

Mastering Exposure
For anyone who wanna take up on photography, you may being told that "with to day technology, you can take a lot of picture to get the right exposure, even you can't get the right one, you can make a good exposure by today advance technology".

True or false? Is up to you. But the true is if you can't master the exposure. Your career in photography will stuck someway. Cause you're dealing with art, beautiful art is not luxury, is necessary.