a couple of photos

The Zones

So this is the final clue to the mystery of taking photos!! It's the zones! First of all, you need to determinate if you want to work with a time or aperture priority. If you want aperture priority, choose your favorite aperture and fix it, otherwise do the same with your exposure time. Supposed that you want aperture priority and that you are using a 100ISO, measure the lights in your scene. Your light meter tells you that, to reach the middle grey in the darkest area of your photo, you need to setup your camera at f/8 and 1/30s. To make that middle gray become a III zone gray, you need to speed up your shutter at 1/125s. Now you take the highest light exposure value, and you read in your light meter the value f/8 and 1/250s. It means that, to put lights in the VII zone you must slow down the shutter to 1/60s. At this point, setting up your camera at f/8 and 1/125s, your highest light goes into the VI zone. Got it? Ok so let's try another example..

If a photo is mainly dark the camera will automatically overexpose the photo, so the white parts of the photo will be REALLY over exposed, so you need to underexpose the photo; i.e. the camera meter will automatically read 30 f/16 so you need to close the diaphragm and increase the shutter speed a bit so it should read 60 f/8.

looking through the lens