Day 23: In Your Closet

This won't be an obvious choice for today's theme.  I went into my closet and thought, "Thirty years from now, what am I going to want a picture of?"  I don't have many timeless things in my closet- there's no wedding dress or even prom gowns.  But I do keep this little tiara on a shelf in there.  It's the first gift Nick ever gave me.  He went to Disneyland with his family when we were dating, and bought this for me, which references one of the very few inside jokes we had at the time.  When he gave it to me, I was essentially speechless but thought, "If I don't marry him, I'm an idiot."

Day 22: Clothing

Samoan Sunday Best

Shot in Av mode, using the pop-up flash as fill light, but I was a little too far back to have it do a lot.

1/200s
f/4.5
ISO 160
50mm lens

Day 21: Where You Sleep

50mm 1.8 lens

f/2.5

1/100s

ISO 800

White Balance: Cloudy

Day 20: Seasonal

Back to my own handy, dandy 50mm 1.8 lens.

1/100s

f/2.8

ISO 200

White Balance set to cloudy (6000K)

Day 19: Best Friend(s)

1/200s
f/5.0
ISO 400
Shot in Av mode, with Canon speedlight angled and using bounce card, set to ETTL,
exposure compensation (bias) to +1/3
focal length 60mm with borrowed canon 24-105L 4.0 lens.

Day 18: Something New

1/60s
f/2.2
ISO 400

Something new because it was Nick's first time making sushi (with the skipjack tuna he just caught), and something new for me because I haven't dabbled much with food photography.

Day 17: Memories

Memories

f/4.5

1/250s

ISO 200

I wanted to try for some back lighting.  I still shot in Av mode (I think because I am lazy, not that I can't do manual.)  However, with back lighting, you have to take charge and let camera know you're smarter than it is.  I had my exposure compensation set to (+1/3) because the sand is lighter than the 18% gray the camera is looking for.  So I've told the camera this scene is a little light, but there's not a way to tell it that it's back lit.  

Enter the magic of exposure lock.

1/800s

f/8.0

ISO200

If you leave it to auto exposure, this is what you end up with.  With all the light and dark spots, your average is still 18% gray, but nothing is right.

On my canon, the exposure lock is * button, next to the auto focus point selection button, and doubles as the (-) button during photo playback.  When you use it, you are telling the camera to meter according to what you have in your viewfinder now, not what you have in your view finder when you press the shutter button.  

So for this scene, I put a scene of sand and some bushes in the view finder, intentionally not using any of the overly bright sky, then pressed the * button.  Then is moved my camera and composed the scene how I wanted.  The result was much more like the scene my eye was seeing than the automatic exposure is, and I will take a totally overexposed sky over the automatic dark mess any day.

So, in short, when you push the * button, the camera calculates the exposure and sets the ISO, Aperture, and shutter speed, and doesn't change even if you recompose the scene.  While exposure is locked, you see * in your view finder.