Bracketing — Get The Best Exposures You Want!

Photographer's Reflection by Ben Stephenson

I remember when I was new in the field of photography; I often used to wonder what people meant when they said I need to make sure the exposure sign on your screen is green, always. Who decides what exposure is good? I should decide it as a photographer or the camera decides it which leaves me as a dependent photographer.

The reality is camera just tells you that a particular exposure is correct on these external lighting. But it is just a facilitator; the decision always is of the photographer. Experience teaches you this.

For a beginner, bracketing is a good tool to find out what exposure settings work best for you. Let me explain in a simple manner. For example, you are taking a picture of sunset (it turns out be my favorite subject), your camera tells you that shutter speed of 1/60 and aperture of f/9 gives you a perfect exposure. But you feel if the clouds and things around the sun are a bit darker, the sun will come out brighter and it will enhance the color of the sun as well. What do you do? You take a picture and at f/9 as your camera told you and also take 2 pictures one with f/8 and one with f/10. So, you now have 3 pictures with different exposure settings. Get it developed and decide which one you want. This is called Bracketing. Most of the photographers use this on outdoor shoots, as they cannot afford to go back to that location just because they feel later on that one f-stop lower or higher could have made a difference.

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