Digital Focus: Punch Up the Color

Your Digital Camera's Secret Exposure Control

By and large, digital cameras all tend to have the same problem--a mediocre exposure meter that seems to bleed all the excitement out of your pictures.

What am I talking about? Well, try this: Flip through a magazine. Look at a calendar. Glance at some postcards. Whether you're looking at photos of a fire-red rose or the deep, silky black shadows in a sunset silhouette, they all have one thing in common--vibrant colors that leap off the page. You might conclude that the photographer was some sort of genius, because you tried to take the same shot and all you got were murky, dull hues.

Chances are, the photographer who took those great photos is no rocket scientist--and I'm going to show you how to get the same results by tweaking the exposure meter on your digital camera.

Exposure Meters 101

The exposure meter is an important part of your digital camera. It measures the light entering the camera lens and calculates two key factors: how long to leave the shutter open and how large to set the aperture. It's that mix of shutter speed and aperture that adds up to a properly exposed picture.

The process is similar to the way your old 35mm film camera works--but with an important twist. Most film cameras divide the viewfinder into a bunch of regions and set the exposure by carefully noting how much light comes in from as many as a dozen different places in your scene. Most of the time, it's a very reliable way to properly expose the picture. Most digital cameras, in contrast, take a single measurement--an average, essentially--of the light falling across most of the shot.

As a result, a digital camera's exposure meter is easily fooled, and that's where your pictures can go wrong. A picture that's slightly under- or over-exposed will have dull, uninteresting colors. If you are taking a picture of a black dog against a field of freshly fallen snow, for instance, the exposure meter might recoil from all the bright white snow and increase the shutter speed too much--turning Blackie into an anonymous dark blob, devoid of features. I'm assuming, of course, that Blackie isn't usually an anonymous dark blob, devoid of features.

So take control! In this situation, you could activate your camera's spot meter. The spot meter only measures a pinpoint of light in the very center of the viewfinder--where Blackie happens to be patiently waiting for a photo followed by a dog treat. The spot meter will measure the light falling on the dog and properly expose the picture. What about the snow? Well, you guessed it--it might end up being a bit bleached. But that's okay, since the dog is the star of this picture. You can mitigate this effect by getting closer, filling the frame with the dog--but obviously there will be times when you want to stay farther away for the sake of the picture's composition.

You get the idea. If you're taking a wedding picture in a grassy field, the dark grass could cause the camera to err by slowing the shutter speed and over-exposing the white wedding dress. A spot meter on the dress could solve that problem too.

Where's the Spot Meter?

On many digital cameras, you'll find it buried in the camera's menu system somewhere in the manual exposure options. Other cameras conveniently place a spot meter button right on the camera body for easy access. Some inexpensive, all-auto digital cameras don't have metering alternatives at all. Sounds like a good time to upgrade.

And don't forget that you've got a digital camera--which means you can eyeball your picture in the LCD display right after you take the shot. You're not burning film, so experiment. Take the picture with the normal metering mode and again with the spot meter, and keep the one you like best.