border or no border

[Steve Eisenberg]

I can't say I use bracketing very often. But when faced with a high contrast subject I will. If I wasn't dealing with an animal, I'd get a reading off a grey card, press the "exposure lock" button (the *asterisk* button), recompose and shoot. But with wildlife, you may have limited opportunities, so set up for bracketing (in this case), and throw away the pictures that don't work out (that's why I love digital cameras). It's fun to fool around with bracketing, you might be pleasantly surprised with the results. Sometimes intentional over or underexposure can really make a picture great.


As far as the histogram goes, you're right to prefer a right-leaning histogram. If it was too dark, you would expose noise when making it brighter. But I would bet that your histogram has hit the far right edge, which would tell you that there is pure, featureless white in the photo. What you generally want in a histogram is an even spread of tones with a hump in the middle. But there is no perfect histogram, it's just anther tool in the toolbox.


BTW, grey cards are mighty handy for white balance too!

[ultima16888]

i for one like the picture with border(but maybe not exactly the way it was executed.. i mean c'mon it's a picture of a cat.. i'm a cat owner... and i know they belong with the borders picture.. =)


if i were u i'll let my cat create his own border... he loves punching holes through paper with his tiny teeth. i mean, if a picture can reflect the personality of the photo subject, why not let the photo itself physically reflect the character of your cat... we are not shooting company ceo here. just my two cents.

[ulidder]

haha. your comments are very much appreciated . I like what you said about reflecting personality in the picture. I am going to keep that in mind. And you are right it is a cat . I was aiming for a perfect potrait. Like it cares I personally also think that each picture tells a story of something or somebody. Well not always, but most of the times.

[ulidder]

Thanks for the very useful info on bracketing Steve. I live in Victoria, BC, Canada and all the photography shops (we have 3) are out of gray cards. Can you believe that? I am taking some intro photography classes and the instructor asked us to get some. I think I will get one online


You are right, some of the histogram for this picture was on the right. I am trying to also learn LR. I will play around with the settings.


This forum is awesome. Thank you everybody for sharing your comments and experiences .

[Steve Eisenberg]

I love my Lastolite Ezybalance grey card (got it through Amazon). Weatherproof and folds up!