Understanding Exposure (Revised Edition)

Getting the correct exposure can, at times, be difficult. The automatic modes on most cameras can do a reasonable job of giving you settings for a properly exposed picture, but most times this is not the “correct” exposure. It doesn’t give you any creative control over depth of field or shutter speed. Understanding Exposure seeks to give the reader an understanding of how exposure works and how you can use the camera’s manual mode to get the best results.

The book begins with the Photographic Triangle of aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. These settings combine to determine how the photograph will be exposed. According to Understanding Exposure most lighting situations have six combinations of these settings that will be properly exposed. The difficulty comes in choosing the most “correct” of these combinations.

There are chapters on aperture and shutter speed which explain how each works and how they affect the final image. In each chapter there are short sections with each one explaining a single concept. Example photographs follow with a description of how the photo was taken and the final camera settings the author used. I found these examples to be one of the best aspects of the book.

I found the chapter on light to be the most valuable. Determining where to point the camera to get the best light reading is often a problem. The sections on “The Sky Brothers” and “Mr. Green Jeans” gives extremely helpful guidelines for many of these different types of lighting. The author also discusses the different situations such as front-lighting, side-lighting, etc. He gives valuable advice for getting the best exposure every time.

Overall, I enjoyed the book and found it very informative. It had a lot of information I’ve already been able to put into use. I would recommend it to any other novice to intermediate photographers.

Final Rating: 7 out of 10