Adobe Photoshop

[matt_xyz]

Originally Posted by Badllarma

Ok no problem about the degree I'll try and explain a little differently.

Have you ever used one of the those garden hose guns you can attach to your garden hose? So if you twist it one way you get a very narrow shot of water coming out and if you twist it the other way you get a much wider shot of water coming out?

Right so your standing at your back door step with the hose gun in your hand in front of you is a " A Typical" English garden you've got a grass lawn, a soil boarder, some plants the kids red football lying on the grass little Freds plastic yellow tractor on the grass as well.

So you twist the hose gun to it's narrowest and fire it down the garden, what did it hit? The lawn, the football, the tractor or just the soil it will have only hit one or two of those items as it's a narrow beam.

Now twist the hose gun the other way to it's widest setting and fire it at the same scene again what did you hit? My guess is everything

So getting back to photography the narrow beam would have give you a very tight light meter reading E.G if you hit the red football this would be the part of the scene your exposure will be for.

One the other hand with the wider spread you will get a average reading of the entire scene Hope this helps

yes, that's how I was trying to explain it above. The beam is forming a cone wth the tip of the cone coming from the camera and the base of the cone on the subject. A cone with a narrow base has sides that are only 1 degree from the straight beam. A cone with a wider base may have sides that are 5 degrees or more from a straight beam. So the greater the number of degrees the greater the size of the surface area from which a reading is being taken. I think.

Matt

[Hobjob]

Originally Posted by Chris Hammond

BTW I will be trying to source a local camera club following your advice.

Thre is an active camera club in Ipswich with a digital
sub-group. Very friendly on phone, but I got no further
due to other committments.

Cambridge must have something too?

[Badllarma]

Hi Chris the only reason the degree rather than a percentage is used is that is what the lightmeter manufacture uses to show the the qualty of there spot meter reading so if one say it offers 3 degrees and the other 1 degree you know the one that gives you 1 degree offers a much more precise measurement and that is all.

The degree as such has no real photographic meaning

[pressld2]

Originally Posted by Chris Hammond

Now I think I fully understand that, it's a nice analogy, but isn't that really reinforcing what I said about the relative term needing to be 'percent' rather than 'degree'?

I'm sorry to labour the point, but I really do find much of the written media relating to photography to be rife with such ambiguity.

Hi Chris,

The spot meter really is measuring the light from one degree of arc but I agree that the concept is quite difficult both to explain and to visualize. I'll have a go though...

Imagine you are standing and holding the light meter pointing straight in front of you. Now, standing on the same spot, turn around through one complete revolution. The light meter has just swept round a full circle - 360 degrees. The "1 degree" spot meter simply means that when you are standing still and not revolving the light meter is measuring 1 degree of that circle.

It's important to think of it in degrees because the width of that 1 degree will be larger or smaller depending on your distance from the subject. If your subject is just 30 centimetres away then the circumference of the circle your light meter would sweep when you turned around is 188.5 cm. Therefore 1 degree (1/360th) means that your light meter is measuring an area of the subject that is just half a centimetre across. But if your subject is a kilometre away then the circumference of the circle is over 6 kilometres and the 1 degree that the light meter is measuring is 17.5 metres across.

In practical terms this means that if you are photographing a bird that is just a few feet away then your light meter is measuring a couple of feathers, whereas if the bird is a hundred yards away then your light meter is measuring the entire bird and quite a bit of the environment around it too.

I hope this has helped a bit.

Dave P.

[Digifrog]

Hi Chris

I've avoided any kind of college work for photography and in particular Photoshop. You see there are aspects of Photoshop, for example HDR and Blending Modes that you can be taught, but then it's another thing to use this knowledge to get the effects that please you. For example, at present I am trying to achieve the goal of perfecting HDR, to get naturalistic imagery that please me. Seeing other peoples work with HDR is what inspires me. I take that inspiration and chase the desired effect. For HDR I would say (Flickr'ites) nikon4fs and bristol_bound do it best.

So with that I study tutorials (there are plenty for PC & CS2) on Youtube, some are pretty bad, but the good ones really do point you in the right direction. Then there are text based tutorials on the web. I'm sure by looking you can pick up what you need to know without forking out £100's on a course. Of course it's great to be shown first hand, but most of the time it's at a cost. Or if you know someone who is great not only at processing, but also who processes to the same degree as you would like.

This link may also help...

Photoshop User TV

It's a podcast with I think 3 tutorials a week and a bunch of older ones to look at. It is better to watch and learn, so all the best, I'm still trying to get the hang too.

Scott