"Exposing to the right" is over exposed, what now?
in [Photoshop]
|
From: taylor aldler on 4 Oct 2009 23:06 On Sun, 4 Oct 2009 09:47:45 -0700 (PDT), Porte Rouge <porterougeman(a)gmail.com> wrote: >On Oct 4, 11:39�am, Robert Spanjaard <spamt...(a)arumes.com> wrote: >> On Sun, 04 Oct 2009 10:17:25 -0500, Doug McDonald wrote: >> >> ... doesn't seem to be obvious to you. Instead of learning how to >> >> expose each scene properly and not rely on dumbed-down point and shoot >> >> snapshooter's suggestions (like "expose to the right", which only >> >> applies to very few subjects) or depending on your automatic point and >> >> shoot modes of your camera, you'll forever be wasting your time in >> >> editing instead of taking photos the right way to begin with. >> >> >> This is what you get for taking to heart the lame "one size fits all" >> >> dumbed-down snapshooters suggestions made by all point 'n shooters and >> >> armchair photographers on the net. >> >> > This sounds like the P&S troll. >> >> > "Exposing for jpeg" which is what he proposes is NOT the absolute best >> > way to use a more capable camera like a dSLR. >> >> > That is, indeed, to expose for the highlights, putting them just under >> > the clipping value, and save as raw. Fix later in the raw->jpeg >> > conversion. >> >> Your method is not the absolute best way either. There is no absolute >> best way. >> >> -- >> Regards, Robert � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �http://www.arumes.com > > Do you have more to say about which way you set exposure and when? >I am genuinely interested in how you decide to set exposure. At this >point I actually use both, "expose to the right" and light meter, for >the "fine art" shots. I can't see a difference, I was just curious in >a CD versus vinyl sort of way. > >Porte There IS NO ONE RIGHT WAY. Not even a cut 'n dried dozen right ways. Each and every photograph requires a unique way to expose it properly. No automated metering system in the world will ever get it right for you. Unless you are like most people, a point 'n shooter, wanting some tech-head in a computer lab trying to decide your exposures for you the rest of your life. The metering recommendation designed and programmed by someone who's never taken one photo in their life. Or even worse, if you depend on the advice of all those armchair photographers that infest the net and newsgroups. Those desperately pretending to be photographers, laughing to themselves when they find out they managed to convince someone to do as they told you to do, never having held even one camera in their own lifetime. And you all fall for it like the fools that you are. This is why I find a live-view display (EVF or LCD) so valuable today. I can instantly see that I have to lower the exposure of a sunrise or sunset by as much as 2.5-3.0 EV stops to properly capture the intense colors and dramatic cloud contrasts. I can instantly see why I have to overexpose the scene on the water by up to 1.5 EV steps or more and let all those highlights on the water go out completely. I can instantly see that in order to capture the moon's features while it's rising above that mountain peak that I'll have to underexpose by 4 or more stops, ambient light depending. If you are depending on your metering system, depending on some lame-assed one-size-fits-all amateur's recommendation of "always expose to the right", and all the other inane nonsense of theirs, it will only keep you glued to your editor trying to desperately repair what you failed to do right in the first place. Never getting it quite right in editing, ever, no matter what you do. RAW file or not. I shoot with RAW files and I NEVER use that lame beginner snapshooter's recommendation of "expose to the right". Photography (digital especially) may be greatly depending on science, but it is all art. 100% art. There's no one right color of oil-paints, no one right medium, no one right brush, no one right way to create a brush-stroke. ... Get your heads out of your collective tech-head's asses.
From: Porte Rouge on 5 Oct 2009 11:35 On Oct 4, 11:06 pm, taylor aldler <tald...(a)nospam.org> wrote: > On Sun, 4 Oct 2009 09:47:45 -0700 (PDT), Porte Rouge > > > > <porterouge...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > >On Oct 4, 11:39 am, Robert Spanjaard <spamt...(a)arumes.com> wrote: > >> On Sun, 04 Oct 2009 10:17:25 -0500, Doug McDonald wrote: > >> >> ... doesn't seem to be obvious to you. Instead of learning how to > >> >> expose each scene properly and not rely on dumbed-down point and shoot > >> >> snapshooter's suggestions (like "expose to the right", which only > >> >> applies to very few subjects) or depending on your automatic point and > >> >> shoot modes of your camera, you'll forever be wasting your time in > >> >> editing instead of taking photos the right way to begin with. > > >> >> This is what you get for taking to heart the lame "one size fits all" > >> >> dumbed-down snapshooters suggestions made by all point 'n shooters and > >> >> armchair photographers on the net. > > >> > This sounds like the P&S troll. > > >> > "Exposing for jpeg" which is what he proposes is NOT the absolute best > >> > way to use a more capable camera like a dSLR. > > >> > That is, indeed, to expose for the highlights, putting them just under > >> > the clipping value, and save as raw. Fix later in the raw->jpeg > >> > conversion. > > >> Your method is not the absolute best way either. There is no absolute > >> best way. > > >> -- > >> Regards, Robert http://www.arumes.com > > > Do you have more to say about which way you set exposure and when? > >I am genuinely interested in how you decide to set exposure. At this > >point I actually use both, "expose to the right" and light meter, for > >the "fine art" shots. I can't see a difference, I was just curious in > >a CD versus vinyl sort of way. > > >Porte > > There IS NO ONE RIGHT WAY. Not even a cut 'n dried dozen right ways. Each > and every photograph requires a unique way to expose it properly. No > automated metering system in the world will ever get it right for you. > Unless you are like most people, a point 'n shooter, wanting some tech-head > in a computer lab trying to decide your exposures for you the rest of your > life. The metering recommendation designed and programmed by someone who's > never taken one photo in their life. Or even worse, if you depend on the > advice of all those armchair photographers that infest the net and > newsgroups. Those desperately pretending to be photographers, laughing to > themselves when they find out they managed to convince someone to do as > they told you to do, never having held even one camera in their own > lifetime. And you all fall for it like the fools that you are. > > This is why I find a live-view display (EVF or LCD) so valuable today. I > can instantly see that I have to lower the exposure of a sunrise or sunset > by as much as 2.5-3.0 EV stops to properly capture the intense colors and > dramatic cloud contrasts. I can instantly see why I have to overexpose the > scene on the water by up to 1.5 EV steps or more and let all those > highlights on the water go out completely. I can instantly see that in > order to capture the moon's features while it's rising above that mountain > peak that I'll have to underexpose by 4 or more stops, ambient light > depending. > > If you are depending on your metering system, depending on some lame-assed > one-size-fits-all amateur's recommendation of "always expose to the right", > and all the other inane nonsense of theirs, it will only keep you glued to > your editor trying to desperately repair what you failed to do right in the > first place. Never getting it quite right in editing, ever, no matter what > you do. RAW file or not. I shoot with RAW files and I NEVER use that lame > beginner snapshooter's recommendation of "expose to the right". > > Photography (digital especially) may be greatly depending on science, but > it is all art. 100% art. There's no one right color of oil-paints, no one > right medium, no one right brush, no one right way to create a > brush-stroke. ... > > Get your heads out of your collective tech-head's asses. Is the live view a JPEG generated by the camera?
From: Charles on 5 Oct 2009 17:44 >> Porte > For me, digital is the opposite of film in exposure emphasis. > In film, you expose for the shadows, while in digital you should expose > for the highlights. > You can't print underexposed shadows on a film negative but you can burn > in overexposed highlights since the negatives tend to hold some > information in that area. > You can't print overexposed highlights in a digital image but you can > tease out information from underexposed shadows in digital processing. > You can't treat your entire image the same way, so you need to apply > techniques similar to dodging and burning in the digital realm using area > adjustments of an image and the various tools/techniques available in > image editors. Exactly! The clipping that occurs in digital photography is rather harsh .... all scene details more luminous than the clipping (saturation of the sensor) point are gone, gone, gone. You can't tease them out with any amount of post-processing, regardless of how heroic or exotic. I fail to understand why such a basic concept is so hard to understand. Film does not "clip" in the same manner and some folks just don't seem to get it. There are curves with soft knees and then there are curves with very sharp knees. They are very different (in terms of useful output) when the input data approaches and exceeds them. A soft knee means that there is compression of the data and that means that a correction that employs decompression can restore the data, at least to some extent. So, expose to the right if you can afford lost high-lites ... and I do mean to emphasize LOST. Like a hair-cut, clipped is gone.
From: Doug McDonald on 5 Oct 2009 18:10 Charles wrote: > > So, expose to the right if you can afford lost high-lites ... and I do mean > to emphasize LOST. Like a hair-cut, clipped is gone. > > The point is to expose to the right if you can't afford to lose low light detail, just be careful to avoid sensor overload where you don't want it. It works just fine, unless you are an idiot P&S troll that just wants to depend on P&S to do his job. Doug McDonald
From: Floyd L. Davidson on 5 Oct 2009 19:23
"Charles" <charlesschuler(a)comcast.net> wrote: >>> Porte >> For me, digital is the opposite of film in exposure emphasis. >> In film, you expose for the shadows, while in digital you should expose >> for the highlights. Actually, since film is a negative, the two are in fact actually the same. Expose for the brightest range of the *recording* *mechanism*. That just happens to be the dark areas of a scene with film (where the negative is clear) and the bright areas of a scene with an electronic sensor (the highest voltage output). >> You can't print underexposed shadows on a film negative but you can burn >> in overexposed highlights since the negatives tend to hold some >> information in that area. >> >> You can't print overexposed highlights in a digital image but you can >> tease out information from underexposed shadows in digital processing. >> You can't treat your entire image the same way, so you need to apply >> techniques similar to dodging and burning in the digital realm using area >> adjustments of an image and the various tools/techniques available in >> image editors. > >Exactly! The clipping that occurs in digital photography is rather harsh >... all scene details more luminous than the clipping (saturation of the >sensor) point are gone, gone, gone. You can't tease them out with any >amount of post-processing, regardless of how heroic or exotic. I fail to >understand why such a basic concept is so hard to understand. Digital clipping is almost never "saturation of the sensor". Unless you are shooting at the base ISO clipping is saturation of the Analog-Digital-Converter (ADC) by sensor output that is greater than the maximum ADC input. >Film does not "clip" in the same manner and some folks just don't seem to >get it. There are curves with soft knees and then there are curves with >very sharp knees. They are very different (in terms of useful output) when >the input data approaches and exceeds them. A soft knee means that there is >compression of the data and that means that a correction that employs >decompression can restore the data, at least to some extent. That is easy enough to do with digital too, though obviously "expose to the right" does not do it. And it should be noted that technically such a compression curve adds a "noise" to the image! People get all excited about digital "noise", but rarely understand what it is, or that such things as the supposed "latitude" of film constitutes a significant addition of noise to an image. (Technically it is a "distortion".) >So, expose to the right if you can afford lost high-lites ... and I do mean >to emphasize LOST. Like a hair-cut, clipped is gone. False. If you apply the philosophy of "expose to the right" there will be no loss of highlights, unless of course you *want* to blow some of them away. And that is commonly the exact desire for such things a light sources, reflections, etc. -- Floyd L. Davidson <http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson> Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) floyd(a)apaflo.com |