Say you are taking a picture of your child skiing down a slope. A student asked me this the other day.
So I produced a kid on a hill and shot that:
OK, it was a white piece of paper with a scribble looking not very much like a skier. But still. The camera thinks my white sheet is gray (that’s the assumption built into reflective light meters) and produces a gray picture. The histogram will be “in the middle”.
If you now use “exposure compensation” (the +/- button) and turn it up to +2, you get something that looks much more like it:
And if the bump in the histogram is not yet close to the right edge, you can go even higher.. like +2 3/4:
And more and we bump against the right edge and lose detail, so we stop there.
Next time you shoot your kid skiing down a hill, and it’s all white, remember that. “Your picture looks grey unless you tell the camera otherwise”.
We don’t have snow here. What would the ‘etc’ be for? White walls?
Beaches!
(And indeed, white walls as well. See? You’re a photographer)