Locking Exposure and Then Leaving It Alone
Okay. Last lesson we talked about what exposure actually means, the amount of light your photo lets in, and how your phone is making a guess about that every time you point it at something. Today we're going to take control of that guess and lock it in place.
Here's the thing about that guess. Your phone re-checks it constantly. You move the phone an inch, it re-guesses. Something walks through the background, it re-guesses. If you're trying to hold a shot steady, especially something with a bright window behind it or a dark corner in front of it, that constant re-guessing is what ruins the picture. The exposure keeps sliding around underneath you.
So you lock it. Then you leave it alone. That second part is the hard part, and I'll be honest about that up front.
How to actually do it
Tap on your screen where you want the exposure to read from, same as we did with focus a couple lessons back. On most phones you'll see a little box or circle show up, and next to it, a small sun icon with a slider.
Now here's the new step. Press and hold that same spot for a second or two. You'll feel or see something change, usually a little "AE/AF LOCK" banner at the top of the screen. That's it. You've locked it. The exposure and the focus are both pinned to that spot now, and moving the phone around won't undo it.
If you want to adjust the brightness after that, drag your finger up or down on that sun icon slider before you shoot. Up brightens, down darkens. Do that once, then stop touching it.
Try it on something simple to start. Sit at your kitchen table, tap on a coffee mug, lock it, then slowly move your phone left and right. Watch how the rest of the frame gets brighter or darker as you move, but that mug stays exactly as bright as when you locked it. That's the whole trick.
Where this actually matters
You'll feel this most with backlit stuff, somebody standing near a window, a kid on the porch with bright sky behind them. Without the lock, your phone keeps trying to expose for that bright sky and your kid turns into a shadow. Lock the exposure on their face, and the sky can do whatever it wants. Your kid stays a person instead of a silhouette.
It also matters for anything you're photographing more than once in the same light. Say you're doing progress shots of a project, same table, same window, over a few days. Lock the exposure once you've got it looking right, and you'll get consistency shot to shot instead of your phone re-guessing every time and giving you five slightly different versions of the same light.
The part where I admit I was bad at this
First time I used exposure lock, I didn't trust it. I'd lock it, then second-guess myself and tap again to "check," which of course unlocks it and starts the guessing all over. I did this while trying to shoot the sunset over the point of the mountain, kept fiddling with it, and by the time I quit messing with it the light had changed and the shot was gone. Dang.
Now I lock it and I physically make myself not touch the screen again until I've taken the photo. One problem at a time. If it looks wrong after you lock it, that's fine, just tap somewhere else and re-lock. But don't lock it and then poke at it. That's the discipline part, and it took me a while to actually believe the lock was working instead of second-guessing my own phone.
My opinion here, stated plainly: this is one of those tools that people skip because it feels like an extra step, and it's the extra step that actually gets you the shot. I'd rather take three extra seconds to lock it than take ten photos hoping one comes out.
A real quick note on quilts, because you knew I'd get there
I locked exposure on a progress photo of Edwin's quilt a while back, nothing fancy, just wanted the fabric to read true instead of getting washed out by the window behind it. Sent it to my sister the way I send her everything. She asked what pattern it was. Then she asked for the shop. We were on the phone for twenty minutes about fabric. That's the kind of thing that happens when the photo actually shows the thing instead of fighting the light. I won't pretend that conversation wasn't the best part of my week, but I also won't pretend I don't live for that. I do.
Before next time
Find one backlit spot in your house, a window with something in front of it, and practice locking exposure on the subject instead of letting the window win. See what your kid, your dog, or your dinner actually looks like instead of a shadow with edges.