Comments on: Proper Exposure With a Digital Camera

By: David Marx

David Marx — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 04:59:01 +0000

Dear Ron,

When shooting in manual mode I always use the spot meter. I can’t remember though if I metered the medium blue part of the sky in the background (medium blue in color = medium gray in black and white) or if I metered the snow and eventually opened up by about two stops. For truly expert advice on metering may I recommend Tim Cooper’s awesome DVD on Perfect Exposure For Digital Photography, The Zone System of Metering & Shooting.

–
David

By: Ron Payne

Ron Payne — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 15:37:24 +0000

I know I’m reading this a year after it was posted but on this most excellent presentation, did you say exactly how and/or where your took your reading? Was it spot or average? If it was spot, what did you read?

Thanks.

Ron

By: Scott

Scott — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:48:08 +0000

You’re absolutely correct. When it’s gone, it’s gone. If you lose detail in all three color channels in a photo, then there is nothing to recover (either on the high end or the low end).

For a long time, however, I was worried about “blinkies” (blown out areas on the LCD on the back of my camera) that I would see. Over time, I learned exactly how far I could push things without actually losing detail in those areas. Even on photos with highlight-warnings, I was able to view full detail in those areas (when shooting in raw).

I encourage everyone to experiment on some non-vital images.

-Scott

By: Photog

Photog — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 20:33:52 +0000

Scott,

While it’s true that todays sensors capture far more detail in highlights than in shadows, this has nothing to do with blown out areas of a photograph, where detail is completely lost. It’s far easier to blow out a photograph and lose a lot of highlight detail than it is to drastically underexpose and lose as much shadow detail.

For example, when taking group portraits outdoors, it’s better to leave with an underexposed photograph with some clipped shadows than it is to have the faces blown out.

If you capture all the highlights WITHOUT clipping them, then yes… you’ll have more detail and “higher quality pixels”. I think the point of the article was that, if you have to swing too much one way or the other, it’s safer to underexpose.

By: obn

obn — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 21:49:17 +0000

Hi Scott, thanks for the clarification. The only benefit of underexposure is having a faster exposure. I’m shooting RAW only and will have in mind the facts presented here from now on

Kind regards, Oliver

By: Scott

Scott — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:41:00 +0000

Obn,

I was told this for a long time, too. However, it ends up that the facts are quite a bit different. Today’s chips capture far more data on the highlight end than on the shadow end.

The article you referenced is untrue, unfortunately. Recovering data from the shadows results in very poor-quality pixels; those filled with noise and digital artifact.

This is particularly true when shooting Raw images. If one is shooting in JPEG, the tone curve applied to the image as it is processed in the camera can clip highlights and shadows from an image that would have been perfectly usable as a raw file. That’s one of the reasons it’s so difficult to determine from the preview on the back of the camera. Even if you are shooting in raw, you are looking at a JPEG preview on that little screen showing a JPEG image’s contrast.

-Scott

By: obn

obn — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 20:52:14 +0000

This article is very interesting to me because I heard the opposite before. So far I thought that slightly underexposing your picture has two advantages:
First, in dark conditions the critical exposure time can be decreased and secondly the current CMOS chips of digital cameras capture more detail in the darker end than on the bright side so that it might be easier to get overall detail when handling an underexposed picture.

Nice setting I found by a quick web search: http://www.petapixel.com/2009/06/09/underexposing-vs-overexposing/