Thanks for collecting those, Christine. I'd already archived most of the responses for future reference but having them all together is great.
It was a top thread - thanks for starting it. Cheers Brian ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Brian Walters Western Sydney Australia http://members.westnet.com.au/brianwal/SL/ On Tue, 24 Jun 2008 13:00:58 -0500, "Christine Aguila" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: > Excellent advice for those starting out like me. Here it is for easy > printout! Cheers, Christine > > > > Paul S: > > > > I think that for street photography, the matrix metering of the K10D will > work quite well most of the time. You could spot meter a tone that's > close > to grey card reflectivity (green grass works well as do dirty > sidewalks:-), > but locking in a meter reading only works if the light is constant. > Frequently, when shooting on the street, you'll get a mix of light that > may > vary depending on which way you aim the camera. > > The matrix meter tends to expose for the highlights. I find I frequently > have to bump up the midrange and sometimes the shadows as well, while the > highlights are usually close to right on. > > In terms of visualizing, I think you're doing very well. I guess the only > recommendation I might make is to develop a certain midset. Don't look > for > something to shoot. Look for a great picture, regardless of the subject. > > > > Bob W: > > > > Rather than trying to recognise mid-tones (which you will eventually > be able to do quite easily), you might want to try incident metering > and manual exposure. In situations such as you describe, when I know > the meter is going to go haywire, I tend to switch to manual. Now with > a digital camera it's also convenient to check the histogram to get an > idea of where everything is, and to adjust exposure accordingly if you > want to shift everything further to the right. > > Some useful common midtones are pavements, grass, brick walls, > slightly faded denim, blue sky, rhino skin, bits of pigeon, > rainclouds. > > I have quite a useful book called The Perfect Exposure by Jim > Zuckerman. Mostly he just tells you to use an incident meter, but > there is a chapter in which he shows a number of colour photographs > and points out what he used as the middle tone. You might be able to > find a copy in your library. > > > > William Robb > > > > This is, I think, the best metering strategy. > Meter the brightest area of the scene that you want to hold detail and > set > it to Zone VIII > (meter it and open up 3 stops) The shadows will fall where they fall, but > usually they will fall > within the range of the sensor. > I spent years trying to meter for the shadows before I read in a Zone VI > newsletter about Fred > Picker's method. He said that rying to find the deepest shadow in a scene > can be frustratingly > difficult, but findong the brightest point is relatively easy. Now he was > a > landscape guy, not a > gentrified street photographer, so for him, the brightest part of the > scene > was usually clouds. > I would think that on the street, the brightest parts of the scene will > be > building walls and > the like. > Just remember that specular reflections are going to be blown out no > matter > what you do, so > ignore them for metering. > > > > JOC > > > > with digital, frames are almost free, bracket on 1/2 stop critical > shots with RAW and solve the probems later. > > > > Godfrey: > > > > On Jun 23, 2008, at 11:10 AM, Christine Aguila wrote: > > 1) I'm having a devil of a time with blown highlights, especially in > > challenging lighting situations. I've been trying to teach myself > > the Zone > > System--and I think I've got the gist of it. But for street > > photography, > > things get a bit rushed, so, as I've learned, I should quickly spot > > meter > > for a mid-tone, lock in exposure, then reframe, focus & shoot. > > > Digital camera exposure is different from film exposure because the > characteristic behavior of a digital sensor is fundamentally > different from film. > > - Highlight values run into the hard wall of sensor saturation when > the sensor runs out of numbers to quantize the incoming energy > level ... there's no "shoulder" or slope involved, when the energy > level received by a photosite in a 12bit sensor hits the integer 4095 > after going through the A->D converter, there is no more energy it > can report and it simply gives the maximum value. > > - The minimum exposure threshold boundary is soft: it's a matter of > the actual analog DR of the sensor vs how much noise you find > acceptable to set where you put the black point. Compared to film, > it's a much "softer" slope because you can determine from frame to > frame what you feel is important. > > That said, on average, correct exposure for both tends to be fairly > close, what you need to be conscious of is the sensor's dynamic range > given whether you are capturing in RAW vs JPEG mode, and at what ISO > sensitivity setting. > > I measured the K10D's DR with my standard test (which has built into > it various of my assumptions about what I consider a useable black > point signal/noise ratio...) and found that it provides in RAW > capture mode a range of 11 to 9 stops working range from ISO 100 to > 1600. Yes, DR decreases as ISO increases and there's not much you can > do about it. > > For this reason, the methodology I find most useful sith digital > capture, considering Zone System, is to meter for the Zone IX > highlights, not the Zone V midtones, and to consider what are the > important highlights with the sensor's dynamic range in mind. Only at > the lowest ISO settings can you cover a full 10 EV tonal range, so > you have to be ready to pick your desired highlight level and lose > the rest. For street photography, where keeping shutter speed up is > desirable to reduce subject motion, you often need to raise ISO and > live with the shorter DR. > > I don't expect that the K20D will be any different in principle > although if it does have EDR capability, well, you have a bit more > range to work with. > > Most of the time with street work, however, rather than spending time > metering for every shot, I tend to put the camera in Av, pattern > matrix mode and set the EV Compensation for +.3 to +.7 stops. I make > liberal use of the AE Lock button and play around testing until I see > the light correctly and remember what the settings and situations > were. Then I go to work. Spot mode requires a bit more thought but is > useful if you're in seriously hard, contrasty light. > > > ... What do you guys consider to be mid-tones in color? > > > > 2) I'm trying to train my eye to visualize, but it's slow going. > > Any tips > > for faster learning? > > That's very hard to articulate quickly. Depending upon your eyesight > (red-green colorblindness can affect judging colors) and whether > you're wearing sunglasses or polarizing sunglasses or not ... it all > affects how you see. Some photographers carry around a deep sepia > filter and use that to smash all the colors into something that > resembles a typical B&W spectral response so they can see the tonal > difference separate from the colors. I did that years ago. Now I just > wing it ... I know how different colors affect my eye and judge > accordingly. > > > 3) Also, I've been metering for highlights more, then using > > Lightroom to > > bump up the shadows, which seems to work, but does anyone have any > > other > > suggestions? > > > > 4) Also, virtually 99.9% of the time I have to bump up the > > "Lights" in > > Lightroom to anywhere from +10 - +39. No bid deal, but is there > > something I > > should be doing in-camera to avoid this. I wonder if the K20D, > > with it's > > EDR, eliminates this? Any thoughts. I'm actually thinking of > > making a > > develop preset to do the things I seem to do repeatedly when > > processing in > > Lightroom, but thought I'd touch base here 1st > > I rarely look very closely at the numbers in Lightroom. I have a > couple of preferred starting point for my B&W rendering work that I > put into presets. I apply one of them on import and see what it looks > like, then poke the values around to see what I get out of it. Not > very scientific, but it is based on what I've experimented with that > worked, for me, and turns out to be very quick and easy to do. I only > rarely have to switch presets or start from scratch. > > My goal in setting my camera's exposure is to obtain the most usable > data for image processing I can. That makes it simple. How I push the > values around once I have a capture with enough data in it to do the > job is pretty free form. :-) > > > > Bruce Dayton: > > > > I've found that NOT blowing the highlights works best <grin>. Seems > that you are treading into territory that has long been one of the > most important to photographers from way back. If you ever shot > slide film, the digital issues would feel similar - not exactly the > same, but the range and exactness are much the same. Print film > allowed us to get rather sloppy. > > > > Ken Waller: > > > > I haven't seen anyone mention this on this thread so I thought I'd add my > $.02 > > Don't forget your in-camera histogram. I usually check mine at the start > of > a series of the same basic shot. Check not only the RGB combo but also > the > individual Red, Green & Blue channels. I've gotten shot with blown out > reds > that weren't indicated in the combo histo. > > Bruce's advice about biasing away from the max highlight is well taken. > Its > what I've done for years of slide shooting. > > > > Bob S: > > > > You're shooting RAW PEP's or DNG's I hope. Regards, Bob S. > > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and > follow the directions. -- -- http://www.fastmail.fm - Send your email first class -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
