Perfect Exposure (Jim Zuckerman's Secrets to Great Photographs) [Paperback]

Jim Zuckerman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 30, 2002 | Series: Jim Zuckerman's Secrets to Great Photographs

Get the right exposure with every picture you take! Even the most experienced photographers second-guess themselves when it comes to exposure. Now Jim Zuckerman provides the know-how you need to expose your pictures with precision and confidence every time - even without automatic light meters. Zuckerman provides instruction and advice to help you shoot successfully in any lighting situation. You'll learn how to recognise when light meters are ineffective, then select alternatives to obtain incredible results. He covers everything from working with snow, backlighting and fill flash to macro subjects, extreme contrast and more. Beautifully illustrated with more than 200 of Zuckerman's own equisite travel and nature photographs, this must-have reference enables you to master all the technical aspects of exposure, then create your own artistic effects!

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jim Zuckerman is the author of Secrets of Great Digital Effects published by David & Charles, Secrets to Colour Photography, Techniques of Natural Light Photography, and The Professional Photographer's Guide to Shooting and Selling Nature and Wildlife Photos. He is a contributing editor to Peterson's Photographic Magazine, and his images, articles, and photo features have been published in numerous book and magazines. Jim lives in Northridge, California. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Writers Digest Books; 1 edition (November 30, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1582971269
• ISBN-13: 978-1582971261
• Product Dimensions: 10.4 x 9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #972,004 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

134 of 139 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars More Inspirational than Instructive, May 4, 2003

By 

L. Sidhu - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Perfect Exposure (Jim Zuckerman's Secrets to Great Photographs) (Paperback)

This is an interesting book with some of the most beautiful photography imaginable. Zuckerman is clearly a master photographer and the books meets its goal of teaching photographers how to achieve "perfect exposure."

For each chapter, there is an introductory text that is brief and concise and most of the teaching is actually done through the caption text of numerous gorgeous photographs. Zuckerman guides one through the obligatory discourse on the weaknesses of automatic metering and then into various situations that a photographer may find him or herself.

Throughout the book, Zuckerman discusses his approach to obtaining exposure. And, there in lies the major weakness of the book - the approach is his. Although a very sound and effective approach, Zuckerman's "secret" is the reliance of a handheld meter. In the end, the book can become little more than a repetition of the idea that if you use a handheld meter, you can obtain good exposure.

This is in sharp contrast to Bryan Peterson's "Understand Exposure" which actually teaches the reader the principles of exposure and how to use those principles to obtain good exposure REGARDLESS of the equipment being used.

This book, however, has two saving graces: 1) the photography is amazing and does give great examples on how to deal with various exposure situations, and 2) the chapter on finding medium grey in various situations. The first provides the inspiration and the second provides information that is rare to find in books on exposure.

Overall a decent book that one would not regret purchasing; however, I would recommend purchasing it along with Peterson's "Understanding Exposure" rather than as a stand alone text on exposure.

82 of 85 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The search for Photographic Exposure Midtone Holy Grail!, June 3, 2004

By 

- "pcchoong" (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Perfect Exposure (Jim Zuckerman's Secrets to Great Photographs) (Paperback)

Zuckerman, an educated master photographer, takes an unassuming, non-technical, pragmatic approach to show readers how to achieve the perfect photographic exposure on film in capturing an image. As such, this book is aimed primarily at film-camera audience although the same principle applies equally to digital camera. There is no discussion on the topic of print development exposure and all brilliant and superb colour outdoor nature and travel photographs used as illustrations were captured with his favorite medium-format SLR camera, a Mamiya RZ 67-II (you can check this out at http://www.mamiya.com/assets/zuckerman/RZ67. Exposure with studio lighting is not covered in this book.

Having explained how and when a built-in TTL (through-the-Lens) reflected light meter (by definition) in an SLR camera may fail, Zuckerman jumps straight to the important concept of a "middle tone" (mid-tone or medium gray or 18% gray) upon which such TTL light meters, and for that matter, all light meters, is based in obtaining a "normal" exposure, as opposed to a "correct" or what the author terms as "perfect" exposure. This is definitely not a unique approach of Zuckerman, as some may imagine. It is just common sense exposure based on how the meter works when factory-set once you understand how the 18% gray relates to exposure measurement. This is followed by a judicious survey of the classic situations in which one finds difficulty in obtaining such as a correct exposure. If at all, there is a single rule-of-thumb, Zuckerman makes it clear that if you choose to meter exposure based on a "mid-tone" of a colour, everything else will fall into place (and that's Zuckerman's secret!). This is the Holy Grail one should seek as far as exposure is concerned! Getting to this even when there is little or no mid-tone is the topic of chapter 3.

In a nutshell, when you get an exposure reading from your camera's built-in light meter, often, depending on the lighting situation, you are only getting a "normal" exposure (based on the idea that the camera is exposing your subject at this middle-gray) instead of getting a correct exposure, which is what you want as a photographer! Hence, when you try to obtain an automatic exposure for tricky situations like black subject on a dark background (examples are a plenty in Zuckerman's book), the built-in exposure meter will fail as it tries to interpret a normal exposure of this by assuming a middle-gray. Consequently, you get an over-exposure in such situation and get a gray instead of black subject. Those situations that present metering problem are covered as individual topics in their respective chapters in this book (high contrast, backlight, indoor architecture, low light of extreme situations when correct exposure is more an art than a science, etc).

While it is intuitive to illustrate the concept of "middle gray" as being a series of gray ranging from black to white, doing this within the context of colour photography presents even a challenge to the author. The author did, however, make a good attempt by illustrating the location of a "mid-tone colour" in many of his colour illustrations. However, readers (especially novice photographers) will often be left with the question of what exactly constitutes a mid-tone of a series of colours of a photographic subject. It would have been great if only Zuckerman could show his chosen "mid-tone colour" for each and everyone of his colour illustrations in this book.

As a Pro, the author relies heavily on off-camera light meters (notably the Sekonic L-508) that incorporate both an incident as well as a reflected light meter in capturing almost all of the photos used in the book. Beside stating the importance and the use of incident light meter and a high-end reflected light meter (one-degree spot reading), Zuckerman does provide way in which one can perform the same precision light reading using a standard 35mm SLR on a spot-metering mode (if this metering mode is available on your particular camera model). As the spot reading angle is a function of the focal length of the lens being used, Zuckerman shows that with a telephoto lens focused on a chosen mid-tone of a subject, one can achieve the reading that rivals a precision reflected meter!

The author does not advocate the practice of bracketing an exposure or over- or under-exposure by a stop or two! Hence, there is no discussion of "zone system" exposure. Interested readers are advised to check out titles on this topic, including Les Meehan's "Creative Exposure Control" (Collin and Brown, 2001) and Bahman Farzad's "The Confused Photographer's Guide to Correct Photographic Exposure and the Simplfied Zone System" (3rd edition, 2001)which, among others, also explains the concept of 18% gray in details.

While correct or perfect exposure is important, photographic composition is an equally important skill to acquire on your path to great photography. Readers are advised to check out titles on this topic, one of which, "Photos with IMPACT" (David & Charles, 2003) by Tom Mackie is well worth your effort and money.

Overall, this book is both informative and accessible to photographers in general and novice in particular. It is filled with pages and pages of the author's enthusiasm for his subject of nature photography. This simple approach of identifying a photo-exposure situation and search for its mid-tone may not be shared by all photography enthusiasts, but the bottom line is: If you can capture great photos with such an approach, why not? You can always learn those technical details later. About the only caveat one has of this book is that this approach may take some degree of creativity out of your photography.

36 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Still a secret to me!, August 19, 2004

By 

kids_first "john" (San Jose, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Perfect Exposure (Jim Zuckerman's Secrets to Great Photographs) (Paperback)

All the pictures in this book are stunning, beautiful, and have perfect exposures. My issue with this book is that the author stresses that, in order to get a perfect exposure, one would need to find either a middle tone with a TTL spot meter, or use an incident meter to get a correct reading of the light source. Unfortunately, not all scenes have a middle tone, nor do all photographers have or need an incident meter.
One example in the book, on page 61, is a classic snow scene. There is no middle tone to be found in the picture, so the author uses an incident meter. Why can't the author simply aim the built-in TTL meter at the snow, and add 2 1/2 stops to get the snow to be pure white? In another set of pictures in pages 44 and 45, the author took exposures according to both the incident meter and the TTL meter, becuase the 2 readings did not agree. Well, can't one just trust one meter and bracket the shots?
Quite a few of these so called "exposure" books fall short on being flexible, straightfoward, and comprehensible. Hence the "secrets" the authors tried to convey still remain secrets to me.
4 pages (pages 24 to 27) in John Shaw's Nature Photography Field Guide totally unlock the secrets of exposure. Mr. Shaw's 5-stop tonality chart, which is somewhat based on the Zone system, allows one to use any tone for a correct exposure with the built-in TTL spot meter. This practical knowledge, with enough practice, give us photographers confidence in our cameras and our own ability to metering, and frees us from carrying an extra incident meter to a snowy mountain or other no-middle-tone places.
Again, the pictures are truely awesome and inspiring. It's just I did not get any feel for the 'secrets' after reading cover to cover.