Page 20 - NyghtVision Boot Camp One Fill Edition

Question Five: What is the Volume of Light?

In many respects this is the most important of the v Often, the volume of light is high when we are wor-
five questions. king in an open area on a very sunny, cloudless day.
If when the volume of light is low, the blackest and
Why? Because - as we shall see when we talk more whitest spots are closer together, when the volume of
about how a digital camera works - the volume of light is high, the opposite is the case.
light is the single most important factor governing It isn’t the volume of light that is good or bad. It is
image quality.
what we DO with it that is. There are times when a
What is the volume of light and how do we know low volume of light can produce stunning images.
when it is enough to create a good image? These Imagine, for example, the soft shadows of a room
aren’t easy questions to answer. Volume of light is washed by the warm evening light through curtains.
literally how much light fills the space between us Just as there are times when working in a field on the
and the objects around us. longest day of the year under a cloudless sky can pro-
duce incredible images.
v When the amount of light is “soft” or “low” or
extremely diffuse, the volume of light is often low. The goal is always to balance the volume of light
In this situation, the “difference” or “distance” bet- across a scene. Often, photographers light the sub-
ween the brightest and darkest areas is usually far ject in an attempt to address this problem. That just
less than when the volume of light is high. doesn’t work. Again, more about this later.

20 Boot Camp, Part 1