Exercise - Control the Strength of a Colour

Looking at colour and exposure is important as they have a profound and interrelated effect. In this exercise the idea is to look at the range of variations in colour produced by using a varying exposure. As I shoot in RAW and use Lightroom as an editor I discovered that although I had used a variety of exposures the RAW editor had actually minimised the effect of this. I also found that my camera (if left to its own devices) also counteracted the varying exposure by altering the ISO to compensate. So - several tries later, ISO set to a fixed amount (100), f/5.6, and with varying exposure times I came up with this range. The actual picture is a fairly close up shot of a deep blue pottery vase.

Original exposure - 1/60 sec.

This is the original exposure and probably the best. There is a good range of deep colour here and it is fairly accurate to the actual vase.

Decreased exposure - 1/125 sec

This looks much darker off line and when printed. The colour is very dense and less detail is visible.

Increased exposure - 1/30 sec

Here the vase looks much lighter, it makes an interesting picture - but is less true to the original.

I also took 4 other intermediate exposure, the differences did not show well on line, but were definitely present.

Learning points.:

1. Varying exposure alters more than just the strength of the colour, It also effects what we perceive in the details.
2. Controlling exposure needs more than thinking about the shutter speed.
3. RAW editors do a lot of changes automatically!