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PROJECT 1 - 

EXERCISE 1.1: THE INSTRUMENT

‘Take three to four exposures of the same scene. Don’t change anything on the camera and keep the framing the same.

Preview the shots on the LCD screen. At first glance they look the same, but are they? Perhaps a leaf moved with the wind, the light changed subtly, or the framing changed almost imperceptibly to include one seemingly insignificant object and exclude another. Time flows, the moment of each frame is different, and, as the saying has it, "you can’t step into the same river twice".

Now bring up the histogram on the preview screen. The histogram is a graphical representation of exposure – the camera’s sensitivity to light. As you page through the images you can see small variations in the histograms. Even though the pictures look the same, the histogram data shows that in a matter of seconds the world changes, and these subtle differences are recorded by the camera. If you refine the test conditions – shooting on a tripod to fix the framing, moving indoors and closing the curtains to exclude daylight – still the histogram changes. Probably some of the changes are within the camera mechanism itself; still, the camera is a sensitive enough instrument to record them.
Add the sequence to your learning log with the time info from your camera’s shooting data as your first images for Part One.’
I used a tripod to keep the framing the same for this exercise. To glance at, these photos look identical but with closer examination when you scroll through the photos on my camera, you can spot differences in the shots straight away. The river is moving and creating diffrent shadows. If you zoom in the cars move on the bridge in the background and there are birds flying across the sky.
The differences in the histograms are only slight but again, when scrolling through you can see the histogram change. Each photo was taken only a few seconds apart.
I’d really like to re-visit this exercise to see if I can create exposures that have a clearer contrast in the levels on the histograms.
histogram 1.png
24/2/19 @ 18:01:23pm
histogram 2.png
24/2/19 @ 18:01:25pm
histogram 3.png
24/2/19 @ 18:01:27pm
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