Black

Black is beautiful. To make a good photograph containing large areas of black manual exposure is necessary. Using aperture or shutter priority automatic settings will mislead the exposure when the camera seeks a neutral grey; that is 18% grey. A surface with a 100 particles of light fall on to it then 18 reflected off, will be a grey colour surface as 18% grey. Often this is referred to as middle grey but it is technically wrong calling it middle grey, because it isn’t in the middle of black and white but we see it like this with our eyes. The point is that the camera seeks this in a picture when automatic exposures of reflecting light is used. Therefore pictures with a lot of dark areas (or white) are impossible to photograph without either compensating with exposure stops or shooting manually. I always shoot manually, setting the shutter and aperture with one or two test shots related on the exposure read in the camera. I could use a light meter but this method is as fast and reliable as using a light meter with a little experience. Below three examples of photos that would be impossible to shoot with automatic light measuring methods. All have big dark areas and manual setting secures they seem so also in the final photos.