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Edward Fielding

9 Years Ago

Underexpose, Overexpose Or Bracket?

What is your general Modus operandi for exposure? Just "let the camera do it", always underexpose, always overexpose or always bracket? How concerned are you about "blinkies" vs. noise?

What subjects do you purposely over or under expose? For example sunsets can be underexposed to great effect.

Include in your response if you shoot JPG or RAW.

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Alexey Stiop

9 Years Ago

Always RAW - storage is cheap. Most often overexpose slightly except for blue hour/night. When not sure or for HDR - bracket. Back of your camera will tell you the story most of the time, except of course when shooting sports and wildlife with no time to chimp.

 

Loree Johnson

9 Years Ago

Depends what I'm shooting. For landscapes, I almost always bracket. With wildlife, bracketing isn't an option, so I tend to lean toward underexposing. I would rather clean up a little noise than have blown out areas which cannot be recovered. Either way, RAW.

 

Sebastian Musial

9 Years Ago

What Loree said.

 

Rich Franco

9 Years Ago

WHEN I think of it, most exposures are to the right, 1/3-1/2 over,since it seems easier to recover highlights than shadows and noise. I only ever shoot HDR,when there is a room with a "view",and the dynamic range is too great,even for a RAW capture, then I'll -2,+2 and right on!

To me, a stop over or under in RAW, is like a 1/3 or 1/2 on the old negative film, hardly noticable,

Rich Franco

 

Mike Savad

9 Years Ago

it depends on the scene, i shoot many things as an hdr. so it's mostly bracketing for me. if i see it didn't expose right i would expose for the grass or something midtone range and try again.

---Mike Savad

 

Adam Jewell

9 Years Ago

Shoot both, usually bracket and use whatever looks best often an HDR blend. Usually just use the JPGs but have all the raw files for later use.

 

Kevin Annala

9 Years Ago

Raw. I expose for the highlights and get it as far right as I can without losing detail, or "blowing out" the highlights. This increases leverage on the shadows. If shooting a sunrise, or sunset with deep colours I might shoot towards the middle or left, and then take a separate exposure, or bracket to get the dark areas back. Most of the time I process a single shot, however it can be a fine line at times. Sunrise / set silhouette shots I go a bit under. In the end, there is no single method, I use what works best depending on the situation, mood, or look I am going for. I always shoot with print output in mind.

Keep in mind that when shooting RAW, the histogram on the back is displaying JPEG and there is a bit more room in the actual RAW file.....with the cameras I'm shooting with anyways.

 

Edward Fielding

9 Years Ago

Tell me if I'm wrong but basically if your shadows are too dark, then you are not capturing any detail there. I think the "blinkies" showing potential blown highlights scares a lot of people into underexposing. Lightroom and RAW gives you two stops over and under to recapture blown highlights or reveal shadows (it there is any detail there to reveal).

Shooting JPEG gives you less wiggle room.

 

Bradford Martin

9 Years Ago

Always Raw. I am with Alexy. Slight overeexposure without blowing out the highlights. Tiny bit of blinkies in the highlights OK. Noise? Whats that? If the subject is not moving and it is not HDR then I autobracket 1/2 stop. My exposures are usually spot on. They taught me well at iStock to not rely on Raw for exposure changing. I don't like to see any combing in the histogram from changing exposure in processing. I shot pushed slide film for 10 years and that is very demanding and expensive so digital in Raw is easier. I like to be within less then 1/3 of a stop. For my own prints then 1 stop is the max and that is rare. I will underexpose to get shutter speed if I have to.

 

Murray Bloom

9 Years Ago

I shoot RAW and usually slightly underexpose (1/2 stop, maybe a full stop sometimes). It avoids blown highlights, and Photoshop is phenomenal with pulling detail out of shadows. Here's an example that I use a lot for such discussions, and when I speak at camera clubs:

Sell Art Online

Photography Prints

You can see how much detail I was able to pull out of the dark areas, while not losing highlight detail.

 

Edward Fielding

9 Years Ago

"Blinkies" can be effected by the contrast setting on your camera. Turn your contrast all the way down on your LCD settings.

It can also be effected if you are running in sRGB instead of aRGB.

In other words, not all "blinkies" or overblown areas are really there on the RAW, its just in the compressed file shown the the back of the camera.

 

Phil Lowe

9 Years Ago

I do just the opposite of one of the posters here who said they underexpose. I shoot Raw + JPG and overexpose by 1-2 stops. Highlight detail is much easier to recover than killing noise in dark areas of the frame caused by trying to lift shadows. I use Lightroom for 99% of my raw post-processing.

I use Canon 7D and Canon 5D MkIII, occasionally using a Nikon D610 or D7100 for landscapes (24mp).

 

Thomas Zimmerman

9 Years Ago

The correct answer to that question is shoot the correct exposure for the scene. Not high, or low, but dead on.

If the dynamic range of the scene be that I will need to manipulate things in post, I bracket exposures.

If that isn't possible, my particular camera does better at recovering highlights than pushing shadows, so I will expose for the lesser part of the scene hoping to pull back the highlights.

 

Harry Torque

9 Years Ago

As for many others, for me it depends.

With chromes in the studio I use first digital and then polaroids to dial in the exposure. Trannies have very little leeway on the exposure, so you have to get it right in the camera.

For general travel photography I rarely bracket, I found that it was just too much work in post. So I shoot with aperture priority and check histogram if the scene has tough lighting. Today's digital cameras have a lot of headroom, dynamic range and enough bits so that you can get excellent results if your exposure is slightly off.

For low light and other photography using a tripod, I bracket the hell out of it, usually with the intention of doing exposure blending in post. Same with scenes with wide dynamic range, as Thomas mentioned above.

Blinkies in highlights are usually no problem, as cameras are quite conservative with that. Also, Lightroom can recover data from highlights if only one channel is blown out - this of course is not an optimal solution, but I bet no one can tell.

 

Edward Fielding

9 Years Ago

In the studio I use a hand held light meter and take a lot of shot "bracketing" by changing the intensity of the lights.

I agree Harry, blinkies look scary so I suspect a lot of people starting out end up under exposing. I see it all the time on Facebook. Dull, dark, underexposed landscapes straight out of the camera.

 

Bill Swartwout

9 Years Ago

For landscapes I watch the histogram and expose to get the top of the curve just left of center. For tighter subjects, such as individual flowers, I underexpose slightly (1/3 to 2/3 stop), based on spot metering. I also shoot in both JPEG and RAW. I use some sequences in "photo pages" for some of our travel websites where I don't need large images. Then I always have the RAW images to work with for the real "keepers." As mentioned above - storage is cheap - and you can't get back what you do not have.

~ Bill
~ USPictures.com

 

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