When looking at the formal title for this book, Exposure And Lighting: For Digital Photographers Only, you may wonder about the "For Digital Photographers Only" portion. Isn't light and exposure the same for film as well as digital photographers? According to the authors, it isn't. With traditional film cameras you have a limited number of shutter speeds, f/stops, and ISO settings. With digital cameras, you have many more options available to you, as well as other sophisticated features built into the camera, so the rules have changed.
Exposure And Lighting focuses its efforts on these differences and attempts to help you bring out the best from your digital camera. The book is divided into 15 chapters further divided into four sections. There is also an appendix that lists the contributing photographers to the book.
Part 1, "Painting With Light" focuses on the nature of light and how, as a photographer, you record the light reflected from a scene and how you can manipulate what you want to bring out by deciding what to include and exclude. Then you learn of the color of light and how humans perceive color. This goes into how we perceive light and how the camera sees light. Discussed also is white balance and working with gray cards.
Part 2, "What's Your Exposure" is all about exposure. It begins with balancing the elements of exposure by defining over and under exposures and how to determine the best exposure. Then you will learn how to measure the light by using a light meter. You will learn about both external, or hand-held meters, as well as the internal camera meter.
You will also learn about creative exposure choices. Here the authors get into the Zone System and how to use it within the realm of digital photography. They also get into controlling exposure by using shutter speed. They also go into how to understand shutter speed's effect on exposure. Then they work toward your understanding of aperture's effect on exposure and how you can use it to manipulate the image. Finally they describe dealing with digital film by using image preview and analysis, ISO Settings, and digital noise, as well as in-camera processing and file formats.
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