On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 07:34:34AM +0300, Ciprian Dorin Craciun wrote: > > > >> However my main statement that the JPEG is blown out, meanwhile > >> the RAW is somewhat underexposed still holds, as by looking at the > >> JPEG histogram you have the impression of an overblown red channel, > >> meanwhile the raw histogram says otherwise. > > > > This RAW image is pretty much perfectly exposed. Emphasis on > > _perfectly_. No clipping of highlights; trace clipping of shadows; > > data spread nicely across the entire histogram. It's a really great > > exposure -- and a very good looking plant too, by the way. > > > > An _excellent_ exposure. > > The fact that it is an excellent exposure is because I've taken > about 8 shots with various compensation levels and selected this one > afterwards by looking on my computer on how "good" the exposure was. > However in camera I couldn't have been able to decide between at least > half of these exposures.
You can spend ages trying to calculate the perfect exposure. Using incident and spot meters. Chimping the histogram and exposing to the right. Or, you could get pretty close to the right exposure, guessing as well as you can on your camera, then bracket the exposure and choose the best one afterwards. Or, if you're very ambitious, bracket, then use HDR software to improve on the dynamic range of the camera. (note, I don't mean dialing the tone mapping up to 11, getting the surreal effect) > > > > Now, I stand by my original rebuttal: toss your UniWB crud and go > > shooting. What you need is less theory and more practice. :-) > > I have a mixed feeling about this. :) There are a lot of excellent photographers that pooh-pooh delving deeply into the technical details. Many of them are photographers with decades of experience who dove head first into technicalities themselves until they became second nature. Others have just been shooting so long that they intuitively know all of the things that you are exploring about the technical aspects. Most people cannot get great shots by obsessing about the technical aspects. A lot of the time thinking about the technical aspects will just distract you from getting a great photograph. This doesn't mean that the technical aspects are unimportant, what it means is that you have to know the technical side so completely, that you can nail it without having to think about it. Between my own studies, and my teaching, I have learned that people can only work on learning one thing at a time. What's more, while they are concentrating on that one thing, not only will they suck at other things, but for a while, they will suck at that too. Then just as they are starting to improve, they will learn what they are supposed to be doing, and start noticing that they aren't doing that and it will seem that they suck even worse. Don't worry about obsessing over learning technical details, just don't forget that technical perfection is only a means to the end of great photos and not the only goal of photography. At least, technical pefection isn't the only goal of photographers that other people enjoy looking at their work. -- Larry Colen [email protected] http://red4est.com/lrc -- 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.
