Monday 4 April 2011

Colour: Project - What makes a colour

Exercise: Control the strength of colour

Aim:  The aim of this exercise  is to discover the effect on colour from altering exposure. 

Approach and results:

I chose to use an old phone box for this exercise.  All these shots were from the same position with similar light.  This cannot be guaranteed despite taken the pictures as quickly as I could as the cloud cover was continually changing.  All shots were at 1/400th of a second.  The apertures were f3.2, f3.5, f4.0, f4.5, f5.6; f4.0 being the original camera meter reading.  I spot metered on the red to ensure that this was accurate.  The 1/2 stop under exposed shot is not only stronger in colour but, to my mind, a more accurate coluor representation.  The more overexposed shots start to become 'red/orange' rather than red.




 











Learning points:

This exercise was not as simple to complete as first though due to the changing conditions.  The first 3 pictures look very similar but the full size jpgs do not.  Shrinking for the web has not helped any differences stand out.
Slightly underexposing strengthens colour in an image whilst giving an accurate representation of that colour.  Large areas of a single colour can confuse the camera's meter.