White Sheet Cake

Yesterday when I was talking with Kim during my class, she was talking about the light meter on the camera and how it actually worked, as far as reading the greyscale of the focus point. Sometimes, depending on the color of what you are focusing on, the meter might read lighter/darker, even though the real amount of light in the pciture is different. Confused yet? Let me show you an example:

So, when I had my focus point on the tire (really black) the light meter kept telling me it was too dark. But guess, what? When I adjusted to allow more light, the picture looked overexposed.

Obviously focusing on something really light will give the opposite effect. So let me show you what I challenged myself with for today: a White Sheet Cake (from a Farewell Celebration for my friend Pamela, a priest who is leaving my church to be the new rector at a different church).

So the thing about the white sheet cake is when you look at the light meter, it says there's too much light because the meter is reading the level of grey (or lack thereof) at the focus point (on the white cake). So, when I adjusted my settings the pictures were still kinda dark. I finally got the hang of it and ended up with a fairly good picture (I honestly can't tell you which one I thought was the good picture b/c I took about 100 pictures of the cake). But I'm including the two pics above to give you an idea of what I'm talking about. As Kim said, you can start with the light meter, but you also have to trust your gut and go with what your eyes are telling you too.