Recomposing a shot?

[Jaymers]

Hi Everyone-
I purchased a new digital SLR a couple of months back and have been trying to learn as much as I can about exposure, shutter speed, iso, and composition. In all of my searching I haven't found a good explanation for what it means to "recompose a shot" and how the camera focus settings are part of this and what does it mean to use "exposure lock"? My camera is a Canon XSi 450D if this information helps at all. I look forward to learning from all of you. Thanks.
-Jayme

[Cassie Jones (1gr8muggle)]

Hi, Jayme -

Recomposing a shot means to press the shutter button halfway down while focusing on your subject, then repositioning the camera to frame the overall image differently, and then pressing the shutter release all the way. Holding it halfway will "lock" the focus on your subject.

Is this what you meant?

[Jaymers]

That's what I thought, but I wasn't sure if I was missing something. Thanks!

[hulseyfam]

What kind of picture will this give you vs if you didn't move it at all??

[dugarner]

Well, for interest's sake and for "following the rules" of good composition, you typically don't want to center your subject. But sometimes you want more than one thing in your picture in focus,or you want to be sure your subject is in focus while doing other things in the frame besides a centered head shot. You can lock your focus on the subject, say, then move the camera so that the subject is no longer in the middle of the frame.

If you didn't move the camera, or didn't use exposure lock (sometimes) the subject might be in an uninteresting spot in the frame, or (where metering is concerned) over/underexposed. I typically don't do focus recomposing, I use it more for metering.

Exposure lock would lock in the exposure the camera sees on the subject. So if you're taking a picture of, say, a bird in the sky, where the sky is bright blue and the bird is dark brown, when you point the camera at the bird, the camera will decide shutter speed and aperture to properly expose the whole frame---so you might have an underexposed bird and too-bright sky. That's where average, multi, and spot metering come into play.

If you meter on the sky, then lock and move the camera to shoot the bird, you'd get almost a silhouette effect because the camera would let enough light in to properly expose the sky, not the bird. The sky is so much brighter, it needs a much faster shutter speed and smaller aperture.

If you use spot meter on the bird, you're going to (probably) get a properly or near-properly exposed bird, but an overblown (way too bright) sky with loss of details.

So with metering, recomposing shots can be helpful in that you can trick the camera into metering for something different than your subject.

With focusing, recomposing can help you be absolutely sure your subject is in focus while doing interesting things with the composition of the subject in the frame.

HTH!

Sarah

[Cassie Jones (1gr8muggle)]

Originally Posted by hulseyfam

What kind of picture will this give you vs if you didn't move it at all??

It would give you the same subject in focus, but with different things in the background. Basically, it's just to reposition your subject within the shot.

[anke]

Do you know that Katrina is teaching a photography class at DebbieHodge.com? focus was the subject of our first lesson and we did the recomposition thingy. It really is a cool class, you should look into it!

[hulseyfam]

Originally Posted by anke

Do you know that Katrina is teaching a photography class at DebbieHodge.com? focus was the subject of our first lesson and we did the recomposition thingy. It really is a cool class, you should look into it!

I'm signing up...so excited!!!