Thanks Rob. I remember when I first started shooting RAW, I kept
turning up the exposure comp because the RAW images looked underexposed
right out of the camera. Of course I was destroying all my highlights.
It is important to stop thinking like a film photographer. Digital is
different.
Paul
On May 20, 2005, at 11:39 PM, Rob Studdert wrote:
On 20 May 2005 at 19:23, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Hi Ken,
In Don's image the whitest whites are very close to pure white and
approaching
overexposure. You can see them in the histogram as well. Because they
are such a
minor part of the image, they're only represented by the narrow line
running
across the bottom. With more exposure they would have been off the
scale. This
is a correct exposure for RAW. If he were shooting jpegs, the camera
probably
would have compensated with more brightness and a bit more exposure.
But since
he was shooting RAW, the meter cut things off at the point where the
highlights
wouldn't be clipped. Of course the midtones are all pushed down in
the scale and
have to be brightened. But that's the nature of RAW images. They are
different
than jpegs. That's the point. They give the photographer control. The
first
priority with RAW is don't clip the highlights on exposure. The
midtones will
frequently look underexposed. Don also needs to pull the shadows up a
bit to get
them off the far left just a tad. Once the midtones are brightened
and the
shadows adjusted, the image will probably need some contrast tweaking
to
separate the highs and lows a bit. But the exposure is correct.
This is a great explanation Paul. Essentially RAW files contain all
the data,
the data has to be developed in the RAW convertor in order to resemble
a slide
or print or in camera jpg file. I think the *ist Ds matrix metering
generally
does a fine job of preserving important highlight detail and balancing
the
exposure. My hand held meters (incident/reflected) don't work nearly as
effectively under scenes with great D range as the integrated metering.
Film photographers really have to get out of the digital to film
comparison
trap, there is no direct comparison, digital RAW capture a different
media with
different strengths. Also if anyone thinks that in camera JPG can
deliver
anything near the quality of PCR converter RAW images then they should
invest a
bit more time in learning how to convert file and stop stressing about
exposure
and metering.
Rob Studdert
HURSTVILLE AUSTRALIA
Tel +61-2-9554-4110
UTC(GMT) +10 Hours
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~distudio/publications/
Pentax user since 1986, PDMLer since 1998
