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All grays are not the same

Auto exposure is a wonderful feature, but you need to know something before you use it.
CHC-grays

Hello, My Camera Craving Colleague!
 
I have a bit of a magic trick for you today!
 
OK, it’s not really magic but it is rather eye-opening and helpful especially if you’re taking photos for your business.
 
Here’s the main point – On Auto Exposure, your camera wants to see gray. Now I know that’s might not sound incredibly useful but take a look at this.

What you’re looking at here is three different colors (or shades) from six different panels. There’s three on top and three on the bottom. At the top, the first is a black envelope, the second is a gray cutting mat, and the third is a white envelope. I’ll get to the bottom three in a sec.

When side by side, the auto exposure on my camera phone does a pretty decent job separating the tones of the three. Notice I said, “tones.” The camera doesn’t see color, it sees shades or tonalities or color, not the colors themselves.  

So when it comes to setting the exposure of the scene, your camera (or the sensor, more specifically) sees the various tones and makes a general exposure balancing the highlights, the darks and the midtones into what it thinks is a properly exposed photo. The problem is that if the tones are NOT equal, things are going to appear off. Why?  Because, as I mentioned earlier, the camera wants to see GRAY.

How do I know this? I’m glad you asked.

Let’s look at the three images at the bottom. Instead of taking a photo of all three in one shot, like I did with the top three panels, I took a closeup of each of the three colors (black, gray and white). Notice anything odd?
 
If you’re answer is, “Chris, all three kinda look the same,” then you are correct. When shot individually, all three tones are pretty much the same, VIOLA! No, again, it’s not magic but it does matter when you’re taking photos and you’d like accurate exposure. 
 
I think it’s worth mentioning a third time, the camera wants to see gray.

So, if you’re taking a photo of something white, and your camera wants to see gray, it will UNDEREXPOSE the shot to make it gray. Conversely, if you’re shooting something black and again, your camera wants to see gray, it will OVEREXPOSE the shot make this happen.

If your subject is gray or a neutral tone, your exposure should be pretty spot on on the first click.

There’s nothing wring with your camera, it’s just dumb and its your job to make the adjustments so its properly exposing your subject. 

This is why the real creativity isn’t in the gear or the software, but in the person using them. 

Of course, there’s a whole other, more scientific discussion when it comes to color (is the dress blue or gold?), but we’ll save that for another time. Now, just remember that you CAN control the exposure of your photos even with a camera phone. I highly recommend playing with this feature so your photos can look as accurate as possible.

In the meantime, if you have any questions or need some help getting set up for some photos, give me a shout.

Talk soon!

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Chris Humphrey

I love local business. Sure, it might be because I run one myself, but there's something amazing about everyday people turning their passion into a profitable venture that supports themselves and their families that I really dig. And when you combine my love for marketing with this love for local business, you get a site like this that wants to help small business entrepreneurs do their very best to crush it by creating content to connect with their customers.
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