Daniel Haggett

London based Lighting Cameraman / DoP

Exposure Cheat Sheet:

3 Tools To Take Your Shooting

To The Next Level
How to ensure perfect exposure
Mastering exposure is essential if you want to get the best-looking pictures
possible out of your camera.
If you get it wrong, youre essentially throwing information away.
Too often people look at the viewnder and think "that looks about right".
But this wont always work.
There are too many variables.
For example, external light might reect onto the screen, the viewnder could be
set up incorrectly or you may not be used to the brightness of the viewnder.
Video cameras have tools to take out the guesswork
so use them.
www.danielhaggett.com

Lets take a look at three of these dierent devices - zebras, the waveform monitor
and the histogram.
They all tell you exactly what the camera is seeing.
But you dont need to have them in your viewnder the whole time.
Assign them to a button you can easily access.
Then you can ick them on and o when you want to check the correct exposure.

Zebras
Zebras can be set to 70, which represents mid-grey.
If youre lming a white persons face, you want some of the face to be covered
with the zebra pattern.
For very fair skin, more of the face should have a zebra pattern.
For darker skin, only a very small amount of the face will have the zebra pattern.

www.danielhaggett.com

Waveform monitor
The bottom of the monitor is 0% black and the top section is 100% white.
Outside of this range, the camera records no information.
In some cases this is ne.
Maybe youre shooting inside and youre happy to lose the information outside
through the windows.
In other situations, you may want to change your exposure so certain items sit
inside the acceptable range.
The image bellow is from the waveform monitor on a Canon C300.
The far left of the image is black shadow - represented on the waveform on the far
left.
The highlights peak at around 95.
There are two main areas of detail:
i) The brightest white areas in the sky.
ii) The lower detail from 10-40. This is the dark landscape of the houses and trees.

www.danielhaggett.com

Histogram
The histogram has 0% black to the left and 100% white to the right.
The higher the graph peaks in an area, the more information in that range there is.
If you lm an interview, alter the exposure
until the skin tones sit around the 70%
mark on the histogram.
This image represents a landscape
picture.
Most of the detail is in the lower midtones.
The sky shows some highlights to the left of the histogram.

What if you dont have any of these functions on

your camera?
You can also use a light meter.
Light meters are accurate and have the added advantage of being mobile.
So you can leave your camera on the sticks and take your light meter to the exact
area you want to measure.

Practice makes perfect

Whatever kind of camera you have, youre likely to have at least one of these tools.
Play around at home.
Try exposing for your hand and see what happens.
Get used to reading these monitors.
Then you can guarantee youre getting the best shots possible.
www.danielhaggett.com