Outdoor Photographer Magazine Book Review
"Farzad offers simple solutions to the sometimes complicated light metering issues of the modern equipment."
Dick Watkins: Nature Photographer Magazine
"Using simplified text, drawings, and examples, Farzad makes this difficult subject (Exposure) comprehensible"
Elinor Stecker-Orel: Popular Photography Book Review
"Farzad's wealth of creative analogies should certainly alleviate the confusion all beginning photographers have in understanding exposure"
Book Description
World’s first book written to illustrate the on-camera spot metering technique for 35mm, Digital, and Medium Format photographers: All types of metering systems used in different cameras (with the exception of the on-camera spotmeter operated by a skilled photographer) use a "cookie-cutter" approach to photographic exposure. What this means is the camera meter measures the various tones of your subject, and then averages all of the tones in order to come up with an overall exposure. Sometimes the overall exposure works and sometimes it doesn't. With this approach, the ball is in the camera's court and in many instances the photographer has no hand in the final look of the image. With on-camera spotmetering, the photographer uses a "tailored" approach to find the correct exposure for a very specific subject. With this approach, the skilled photographer interprets the spotmeter readings from the subject and establishes the correct exposure that captures the desired image (what the eye sees) on film. The consistency and flexibility of the narrow-angled spotmeter makes it the most powerful and versatile exposure tool in existance today. The only catch in using a spotmeter is that the photographer must have the skill to use this powerful tool correctly and effectively. The Confused Photographer's Guide to On-Camera Spotmetering does just that! It is simple, easy-to-follow, and uses a common-sense teaching approach to the material. With more than seventy full-page illustrations, it is designed to get the beginner and the intermediate photographer started in a couple of days. I assume that you have a camera with a built-in spotmetering (partial metering) feature. I also assume that you have a ninth grade education and are willing to learn. To facilitate your learning process, I have included a two page cheat sheets for each of the following cameras: Canon EOS 10D Digital Slr, Canon EOS 20D Digital Slr, Canon EOS 3, Canon EOS A2/A2E, Canon EOS Elan 2E, Canon EOS Elan 7E, Canon EOS Rebel 2000, Canon EOS Rebel Ti/300V, Canon PowerShot G3 Digital, Canon PowerShot G5 Digital, Minolta Maxxum 5, Minolta Maxxum 7, Minolta Maxxum 9, Minolta Maxxum StSi, Nikon CoolPix 990 Digital, Nikon CoolPix 995 Digital, Nikon CoolPix 4500 Digital, Nikon CoolPix 5700 Digital, Nikon Coolpix 5000 Digital, Nikon Coolpix 8700 Digital, Nikon D70 Digital Slr, Nikon F4, Nikon F5, Nikon F100, Nikon N50, Nikon N55, Nikon N60, Nikon N6006, Nikon N65, Nikon N70, Nikon N75, Nikon N80, Nikon N8008s, Nikon N90/N90s, Pentax *ist, Pentax *ist-D Digital SLR, Pentax 645N Medium Format, Pentax MZ-S, Pentax PZ-1P, Pentax ZX-5N, and Sony DSC-F717 Digital. If your camera is not listed here, you will still be able to learn the technique and apply it successfully.
From the Publisher
The reality of life is that there is not a single light metering system in the world that can give you a correctly exposed image for every given subject. If you do not believe this, set your expensive camera to its most advanced metering system ever invented and take pictures of a black surface and a white surface. When you look at the resulting negative (or slide) you will be disappointed. Cameras of today, very much like the cameras of forty years ago, are incapable of recording extreme tones such as a black and a white surface. What you are going to get from this crude experiment is a medium gray image tone. To add insult to injury, you will have absolutely no clue which one of these resulting images correspond to the original subject. As this experiment demonstrates, there is not a single metering system that, without your help and intervention, can capture what your eye sees and what your mind wants to capture. Of all metering systems available to the photographer, only one can give a consistent and predictable reading to the photographer EVERY TIME! Once equipped with this knowledge, the photographer can use his or her knowledge of spotmetering to override this reading to capture the desired image. The major difference between a skilled photographer and an unskilled one is that the latter never questions the camera's readings. The skilled always interprets the spotmeter's reading according to the subject tone, and if necessary, overrides the reading to capture desired image. The Confused Photographer's Guide to On-Camera Spotmetering is the first book ever published that deals with the new millennium's standard 35mm as well as digital cameras. The Confused Photographer's Guide teaches the photographer to use the spotmetering/partial metering feature of the camera to determine the correct/desired exposure every time. Unlike other reflective metering systems (including average, center-weighted, and matrix, and others), in which! the unskilled photographer is at the mercy of the camera's vision, with spotmetering the skilled photographer has full control over the final image. The book uses color slides as a training tool to get the point across. As you may know, with slide film "what you take is what you get." Since slide film is positive, the inexperienced photographer can determine his or her exposure flaws quickly and effectively. If you have never used slide film before, think of it as the training wheels of your exposure skills. Once you have mastered the technique, you can take off the wheels and start applying the technique to color negative film, to black and white negative film, and to digital film. The second edition of the Confused Photographer’s Guide includes digital footnotes as well as a section about digital photography; in this section, you will learn how to use the camera's spotmetering feature (with special reference to Nikon CoolPix 990/995) to get the desired image tone on your monitor.
From the Author
Please read and answer "yes" or "no" to the following questions: 1) Did it ever occur to you that your camera has a mind of its own and does not necessarily sees, feels, and captures what you had in mind? 2) Are you using your camera as a slot machine and keeping your fingers crossed for a good picture? 3) Do you feel a dent in your pocketbook as your trash cans fill with your camera's poorly exposed color slides or pictures? 4) Do you consider yourself to be a creative and/or demanding photographer, but your lack of exposure skills prevents you from reaching your full potential? 5) Is your photographic life filled with lost opportunities? If you answered "yes" to any of the above questions, then this book is for you.
From the Back Cover
Take charge! Don't let the camera play Russian Roulette with your exposures!
Great leaps in exposure control seem to happen every thirty years or so. The early 1930s gave birth to the electric luminance meter, the early 1960s gave birth to the off-camera spotmeter, and in the early 1990s on-camera spotmeters, that are the most versatile light measurement tools ever invented, became an integral part of mainstream cameras. Unfortunately, due to the lack of any simplified literature on this subject, very few photographers can use this powerful feature effectively. This book, through its simplified, practical, and easy-to-follow illustrative approach, teaches the application of this concept to the creative and the demanding photographer. After reading this book, the photographer will be able to determine the correct exposure for any subject that can be metered and enables the photographer to previsualize the resulting image before taking the picture. To help many photographers, this book includes cheat sheets for some popular cameras including Nikon N90, N70, N6006, Pentax PZ1p, ZX-5N Canon EOS Rebel series, EOS Elan II E, Minolta Maxxum 700si, and 500si.
About the Author
Bahman Farzad is a Freelance Photographer and a Systems Engineer. He also teaches photography at Birmingham School of Photography as well as University of Samford (at Sundown). A graduate of the University of London, he holds two Master's degrees in Engineering and Computer Science. He has won numerous awards in photography and graphic design and has had articles and photographs published in many photographic magazines including American Photo, Popular Photography, Petersen's Photographic, and Darkroom and Creative Camera Techniques.
Excerpted from The Confused Photographer's Guide to On-Camera Spotmetering by Bahman Farzad. Copyright. All rights reserved
Why spotmetering?
Exposure, by definition, is the determination of the amount of light to reach the film in order to produce a correct image. In other words, to have a correctly exposed image we have to have the exact amount of light to enter the camera. Remember that light is the most important element of any photograph. Without it we have nothing. With too much of it you have an overexposed and washed-out image. With too little of it you have a dark and underexposed image. In neither case can we have an image that would truly represent the subject. Now let us try a simple experiment. Step outside, and point three different brands of cameras at the same scene. It is possible that the three cameras show exactly the same exposure. It is also possible that you will get three different exposures. Another possibility is that two of them show the same exposure and the other shows a different exposure. In none of these cases can one be totally sure which of the cameras is indicating the correct exposure. "Meter over mind" scenario
Most cameras use some type of logic circuit to determine a subject's exposure. Each of these designs is good at capturing certain types of images. Considering that we live in a mass-produced world, no one can come up with a metering pattern that fits your exact subject every time. Since this is a book about spotmetering, I will not bother you with different patterns, complex math, and their confusing details. The bottom line is that with all of these metering systems, it is the meter that determines the final exposure and not the unskilled photographer. "Mind over meter" scenario
A spotmeter is a very narrowly angled meter capable of giving an exact exposure from a simple subject. Examples of simple subjects are a piece of white paper, a uniformly lit white wall, snow, or a portion of the blue sky. Usually this exact exposure is changed at the discretion of the skilled photographer before the picture is taken; the photographer manually overrides the meter's reading to create his or her own exposure to create the desired image. This is the "mind over meter" scenario. Spotmetering, unlike broad-angel metering contained on many cameras, will always provide you with a consistent exposure. This consistency will give the skilled photographer the starting point, or the base that he or she needs to create the desired image. To understand how our on-camera spotmeter functions, we must educate ourselves with camera basics and general exposure. In the following sections, I have tried to explain all I can to build this foundation for you. Since some of the elements are interrelated, you may have to read this section more than once to grasp the concept. As simple as spotmetering is, you have to understand its foundations before you can apply it effectively.
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