Camera manufacturers design cameras to capture an image so that 18% of the picture will be neutral gray.  This is not by accident.  Statistically, a large percentage of pictures will contain 18% neutral gray and everything will look just perfect.  However, when you photograph a scene that is not 18 percent neutral gray, the picture will either be over exposed or under exposed.  There are two classic examples.  Objects in a night scene will not be as dark as they are in the actual scene.   And when taking a picture where there is a lot of snow, the snow will not appear to be white.

This is an example of a 18% neutral gray image, a mix of light and dark areas

This is an example of an image with a predominance of dark areas

This is an example of an image with a predominance of light areas

To some extent this problem can be corrected post capture in software programs such as Lightroom or Photoshop, but it is always your best plan to capture an picture as correctly as possible in camera.

Depending on if you shot in manual mode or one of several automated capture modes, the ability to correct the problem in camera is fairly simple.  In manual mode, you either over expose by one stop when taking a picture of snow or under expose by one stop when taking a  picture of a night scene.  For all of the automated capture modes, you simply adjust the expose compensation setting to be under exposed by one stop for a night scene and over exposed by one stop for a snow scene.

The great thing about digital photography is that you can take multiple pictures if you’re not sure how much you should over or under expose a particular picture.  When in doubt, take more pictures and pick the correct one later.

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Have you ever got a print back from the lab or a print shop only to find that the head of your eight year go has been cut off at the shoulders?  How does this happen?

The answer can be found in a better understanding of actual image size versus the actual size of the paper on which the image is being printed.  When you take a pictures with your camera, the image is captured with a specific aspect ratio.  In order words, so many pixels wide by so many pixels high.  Issues start to occur when the aspect ratio of the printed page is different from the aspect ratio of the image.  Please consider the following images.

Original image

Sized to 8×10

Sized to 4×6

The original image and the 4×6 have the same aspect ratio, however; the 8×10 is wider which leads to the white space to the left hand side of the image.  I have outlined the page size in red so that you can see the image size  in relationship to the page size.  These are not actual sizes, but you get the idea.

The problem can become even worse if you crop your image and do NOT maintain the aspect ratio of the original image.  For example if you crop the image to a 5×5 and then print on 4×6 paper, you will get white space on the top or bottom or both as I did here.

However, that is not the biggest problem.  The biggest problem is how most labs print images.  They try to cover the entire page even if the image size does not match the aspect ratio of the paper.  The result is that a portion of your image is actually cut off.  See the example below which really destroys the picture.

So what can you do?  Some labs will allow you to check the image aspect ratio to the print aspect ratio enabling you to adjust the image to print what you want to see.  However, short of that, your best defense is to save an origional image and then make a copy and crop for each size that you which to print.  This way you should get actually what you are expecting every time.

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