The next ISO

EchoingWhisper · Feb 11, 2012

When will gamma/brightness/tone curve be put side by side with ISO?

With the increasingly low read noise of sensors, its a good idea to increase gamma/brightness/tone curve (which normally could only be applied in post) instead of ISO to preserve the highlights.

Increasing gamma/brightness/tone curve would prevent the blowing out of the highlight with a little trade off in noise (just a bit on a low read noise sensor, more on high read noise sensors - but I still prefer to preserve the highlight and get more noise than to get less noise and lose the highlights - because noise can be reduced in post, but highlights cannot be recovered.) while increasing ISO would give you a bit of advantage in noise.

When will the camera manufacturers start to give you choice for gamma/brightness/tone curve side by side with ISO in exposure?

analog.universe · Feb 11, 2012

If you shoot RAW, the curve happens in post anyway. If you shoot JPG, then you have the in camera jpg controls that affect gamma (not sure what Nikon calls theirs).

Overread · Feb 11, 2012

*moving to beyond the basics*

EchoingWhisper · Feb 11, 2012

analog.universe said:
If you shoot RAW, the curve happens in post anyway. If you shoot JPG, then you have the in camera jpg controls that affect gamma (not sure what Nikon calls theirs).

I do know that, but if they allow us to increase more if we decided not to increase ISO, then we'd have more choice.

Overread · Feb 11, 2012

Surely just increasing the brightness setting for in-camera JPEG editing would be a similar process as what your outlining?

Rephargotohp · Feb 11, 2012

I had said something similar to this in a Blog post last year. There is a huge disconnnect between how our eyes see mid-tones to how our camera records them

Patrice · Feb 11, 2012

Based on some of the posts we see on this forum there is a lot of confusion among new photographers about ISO settings, can you imagine what the beginner section would look like if cameras came with buttons for gamma, brightness and tone?

EchoingWhisper · Feb 11, 2012

Overread said:
Surely just increasing the brightness setting for in-camera JPEG editing would be a similar process as what your outlining?

Yeah, but if you don't up ISO in the camera, the picture will just come out dark in the LCD screen, and would prevent us from reviewing the images.

EchoingWhisper · Feb 12, 2012

Patrice said:
Based on some of the posts we see on this forum there is a lot of confusion among new photographers about ISO settings, can you imagine what the beginner section would look like if cameras came with buttons for gamma, brightness and tone?

That's not a good excuse to not put a useful feature into a camera.

mjhoward · Feb 12, 2012

I'd much rather process my images on a large CALIBRATED screen with keyboard and mouse than a 3" low res screen with a 'joystick' and ok button.

Garbz · Feb 12, 2012

EchoingWhisper said:
When will the camera manufacturers start to give you choice for gamma/brightness/tone curve side by side with ISO in exposure?

Nikon have done this for about 6 years. You can load custom curves into the camera from the computer and then select them when you want. But really I don't know why you would want to. The last thing I need is yet another feature on my camera that doesn't work because I shoot RAW to obtain the best quality photos I can.

The Olympus E-5 ticks me off for that reason. The dramatic tone feature is great. In camera tonemapping! But only works on JPGs. I shoot RAW+JPG on that camera because of it.

EchoingWhisper · Feb 12, 2012

Garbz said:
EchoingWhisper said:

When will the camera manufacturers start to give you choice for gamma/brightness/tone curve side by side with ISO in exposure?

Click to expand...

Nikon have done this for about 6 years. You can load custom curves into the camera from the computer and then select them when you want. But really I don't know why you would want to. The last thing I need is yet another feature on my camera that doesn't work because I shoot RAW to obtain the best quality photos I can.

The Olympus E-5 ticks me off for that reason. The dramatic tone feature is great. In camera tonemapping! But only works on JPGs. I shoot RAW+JPG on that camera because of it.

No, I mean, you increase brightness instead of increasing ISO. This way, you'll avoid blown highlight.

Garbz · Feb 13, 2012

Under expose and edit in RAW is really your only solution

What you're proposing isn't possible without RAW files (or 16bit TIFF files but then who wants to shoot 200MB images and not have RAW data), and as such any provided setting in camera becomes irrelevant as most RAW processors won't acknowledge them.