Proper exposure differs based on scene, intent, specific camera/sensor capabilities, and is affected by the metering calibration of whatever measurement device you're using. For example: Most flowers and a lot of foliage reflect high in the IR range, that's what insects see, and many digital sensors are a little hot in the near-IR range too. This is why you often get a lot of clipping on the red channel with a standard measurement on flowers.
For me, the solution is always practice and experience. I experiment working with a particular subject, camera, and meter combination until I know what to expect, tweak settings based on that. Since I capture raw files only about 99% of the time, I calibrate my eye and intent to a somewhat different standard than the typical camera metering says (:: in-camera meters are usually calibrated for JPEG capture and tend to protect highlights too much, causing underexposure in the shadow regions; my most typical correction for average scenes NOT flowers is +.3 to +.7 EV compensation). But that varies a bit depending upon exactly what camera I'm using. The other thing I practice quite a lot is to observe the scenes I'm shooting and try to understand the dynamic range of the scene vs the sensor's capabilities. I want to know before I press the button what I'm willing to lose if a scene has a high contrast characteristic, and do it by intent. Another factor in proper exposure situations is the sensor dynamic range. In sunlit situations, when you can use relatively low ISO settings, you have the most DR and can rely upon latitude in processing to pull up shadows the best. In low light situations when you need high ISO settings to enable sharp captures, DR becomes more limited and you have to choose more carefully what is included, what range you're going to clip to black and what highlights you're going to lose. As Doug said, in the end "it depends" is the best answer. Along with a lot of practice and time spent studying what works for your setup, your subjects, and your intent... :) G > On Mar 9, 2020, at 8:39 AM, Larry Colen <[email protected]> wrote: > > I’m curious how people go about setting and checking exposure. My early > pentax DSLRs were really bad at metering, so I just got in the habit of > always checking the histogram. Blownout highlights really annoy me. I also > ran into an interesting metering issue with flowers and other saturated > colors, in that the metering isn’t color sensitive so that I’d blow out one > or two of the channels (usually red) while everything else had plenty of > lattitude. > > I have gotten to the point that if I’m not shooting action and running up > against the K-1s miserable buffering, I’ll just bracket nominal and under by > a couple of stops for safety, and not having to worry about it. Most of the > time the dynamic range on the later sensors is so good, that running a bit > under on the raw images is no problem at all. > > How do other people deal with this? > > > -- > Larry Colen > [email protected] -- 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.
