Basic Training: Controlling Exposure (page 2)

Since video doesn't handle contrast very well, another thing you can do if you have dark and bright elements, say a backlit person standing on a brightly-lit beach, is to throw EXTRA light onto the dark subject, to raise the dark values closer to the highest bright ones. Huh? Get out some lights or a reflector, and light the person on the beach so that her darkest color value is closer to the beach's darkest color value. This will help keep the contrast difference in that magic number of 100 values.

Multiple variations of shutter speed/gain/aperture will give you the proper exposure. Depending on what you're shooting and how you want it to look, you'll need to know how to adjust these three values in order to get the ones that benefit your shot - whether it be action-freezing sports or a light night cow-tipping excursion.*

*We do not endorse cow tipping. It annoys the cows, it's dangerous, it's trespassing and you'll step in something.

Contributing editor Kyle Cassidy is a visual artist who writes extensively about technology.

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