Everything you say is probably quite true but I find it is easy enough
to do any corrections at the PP stage so I don't get too carried away
with the technicalities. Bracketing everything is a solution but it must
shorten the life of the camera & triples the editing process, not to
mention the storage space needed.
Alan C
On 10-Mar-20 04:41 PM, Godfrey DiGiorgi wrote:
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]
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