exposing to the right and highlight control

[usayit]

Though in film you expose to the right, in the digital world, one will *generally* get better results if they expose for the highlights. This prevents blowing out important parts of the picture.

I do exactly that.... For most cases, 0 and for high contrast (high noon sun) I'll underexpose by 1/3 to 2/3. In my observation, underexposing on a digital camera by 1/3 to 2/3 is not enough to ruin the IQ or bring noise in the shadows but it does wonders for preventing blown highlights.

Know your camera sensor or film and the light that is falling on the subject. Some cameras work well to retain details in the shadows as well as IQ.... others not...

 

[SilverGlow]

The idea that one should "expose to the right" is a complete fallacy. Correct exposure is correct exposure, end of story. If your camera's meter is giving you the wrong reading then it's the meter that's the problem, not exposure itself.

Sorry but you are dead wrong when it comes to shooting digital raw. The worse thing a raw shooter can do is expose "right on"....far better image quality if one exposes to the right judiciously blowing highlights in compositional elements that don't matter (never on the subject). Then during post processing the shadows get normalized back to the left...and the benefits are (1) much less noise (2) wider dynamic range (3) more subtle image details in the shadows.

It is wrong to have a mindset of never having any blown highlights in a picture. The price of exposing the subject in the best way may well be judicious blowing of highlights that don't matter. The only highlights that must never be blown are those on the subject.

Until digital and yes, even film provide wider DR, we all will have to compromise highlights in many pictures.

It is a fallacy to expose raw "correct" and "right on".

 

[SilverGlow]

I was sold on slight over exposure for a while but I have begun to notice that after making raw adjustments there can be un-correctable color problems. The closer you nail your exposure the less likely these problems will be, and the only real solution is exposing (exactly) for the highlights and using fill flash for the shadows. This can work fine for portraits but with landscapes or wildlife I would think that you would have to start with ideal lighting conditions and even then you might need several exposures and heavy post.

Color issues can be easily mitigated when exposing raw image to the right by adjusting the white balance as the very first thing you do when you run the image through the raw converter. I do this and I never have color issues. What can further mitigate color shifts is to post processin 16+ bit color depth, because the math required for the post processing program to do it's magic will show less rounding errors the deeper the bit depth is; less combing, and less digital artifacts too.

 

[SilverGlow]

Though in film you expose to the right, in the digital world, one will *generally* get better results if they expose for the highlights. This prevents blowing out important parts of the picture.

I could not disagree more....in digital raw shooting, as a policy it is far better to expose to the right. Exposing digital raw "correctly" or intentional under exposure can often increase noise, and bye, bye shadow detail. Often exposing for the highlights in digital raw means blowing the shadows, good bye detials there...and in the shadows there are far, far less tonal graduations then the far right highlightes, meaning loss on the far left is more detrimental....composition depending of course.

 

[djacobox372]

Switch to film in those situations... seriously, I hardly ever shoot digital in extremely contrasty lighting scenarios, there just isn't enough latitude.

When using film you can also use a trick that involves preexposing the film, slightly on a white card... this will increase the detail in the shadows without blowing out the highlights... ansel adams goes over it in his book the negative.

With digital you can try to bracket your shots, and hope the animal and/or your hand doesn't move much between shots.

 

[Overread]

bracket shots with wildlife?
I think I would need a 1D series camera for that and a heck of a lot of luck to pull it off - even a sleeping animal would introduce motion blur at the right range and angle. Silver thanks for your input - though it pains me that many of my highlight cases are where they hit the animal (subject) rather than the background - I guess its either fill flash or darker shots. Shifting to film would be interesting, but I have no experience of shooting as such (and more importantly no film camera )