I couldn't agree more! Excellent video. Ansel Adams photography series taught that the negative (or raw file in today's world) is not the end result and that its purpose is to capture as much information as possible. The print is the end result and having a negative (raw file) with the most information allows you to adjust the print as you see fit; if it lacks information your are limiting what your end results can be. The principle still applies today.
Hey Ken, I just purchased the Nikon DX 17-55 2.8 G you recommended, it's now the third lens I've gotten from your advice. I love it! In fact, _I got it cheaper in my local camera store than any where on line!!!_ You still gotta love those brick-and-mortar establishments!!!
I know. It's amazing. I like it that there is some weight to it, not cheap, light, and flimsy like my now retired 18-55 DX G VR lens. I you could, can you answer this one question, perhaps in a video or in writing: As a Nikon owner/user, what is the advantage of purchasing/buying into the Fujifilm system?
I started in the 70s with film. I think this gives me an advantage in understanding what he is saying. A thin negative is bad and you will never be able to produce a great image with it because the detail is lost. But if you have the details captured through a proper overall exposure, you now have the option to dodge/burn in the darkroom to bring them out. Digital is the same concept, just a lot less smelly.
I agree with this video. I shoot with a MFT camera, so I always try to get as much light as possible with my exposure. I call it ETTRBC (Expose-To-The-Right-Before-Clipping).
Easiest way to maximise dynamic range, put natural live view on, Highlight alert on, find where alerts begin, then decide how much highlights you will allow to get blown out. That way you're always getting the best sensor saturation and signal to noise ratio. If you're using a fuji OVF just do same thing with histogram.
This is exactly what I learned shooting with my z6 and godox speedlight; that it's much better to overexpose slightly than it is to dial down the exposure and blow out the image. Great lesson, Ken!
Back in the days when I shot 35mm slide film I always used a separate light meter and incident light readings. It was more reliable than the camera's meter (CW back then) and funnily enough quicker because you were not distracted by the camera's meter changing its read out if you changed the framing. I rarely shoot slide film nowadays, preferring the colours I get from digital, but I have come to rely on the matrix meter - which is fine for many of my shots, but no all. I frankly have never liked spot meters (personal preference here - the changing meter reading is even more distracting!) so I think it is time to switch my DSLR to manual and dig out the old Sekonic with it's lumisphere ! Another advantage of separate lightmeters, which I have forgotten since I got lazy, is if you have one with dial rather than digital readout you can see ALL of your exposure options at a glance. Also, if you use them often you get pretty good at guessing the correct exposure to start with especially so in normal daylight conditions. Any thoughts Ken?
I started doing ETTR some time ago with my Sony camera. I have video background, so the whole light metering systems in still cameras were always something I didn't quite get - I'm more used to tools like zebra, waveform, histogram etc. Anyways - I found out that ETTR is totally easy to perform with the zebra set to 109%. It's somewhere around where the actual white clipping in RAW happens (2-and-something stops over). I figured I'd share that - it's fairly easy even for beginners to comprehend
Watched a fair few films now.. I think your info is bang on ...from a non ego perspective. Straight up ...no BS ...big respect and love your way man.
6 ปีที่แล้ว +2
This reminds me of film days and "expose for the shadows, develop for the highlights" - work with all the detail you can get from even the limited film DR.
It's so useful to have worked with film and understood Ansel's zones. People turned the zone system into a religion which wasn't his intention at all; it was just a tool. Where we exposed for the shadows and developed for the highlights, now we're exposing for the highlights, opening up X amount to place the highlights in the correct zone, and dicking around with the shadows in Lightroom. How I loved to avoid the company of the Zonebies - folks with one perfectly Zone system photo in a 5x7 frame on their living room wall. With Tri-X or Agafapan 25 I got beautiful stuff processing five rolls at a time by exposing at ISO 200 and under-developing in Rodinal.
I've been shooting film, (mostly tranny) for longer than I have been using Digital, techniques like slightly under exposing slide, is not really what your talking about, however, I always expose for what I actually see at the moment of exposure, which means shadow/highlights get even/balanced in my exposures. I agree with what you're saying here, killing sensor saturation is bad news, limited pull back. I still prefer optical viewfinders to electronic, although they are improving. The D850 vf being my favourite, but since I still shoot 8x10 and some medium format, I keep mostly the same MO for both film/digital. It's astounding to me how much shit you can get away with these days with digital, but for the life of me, I cannot comprehend why you would want to spend 40 mins correcting a single image on screen, when 40 seconds or less, would have got it 95% done when you were taking the shot.
I did a photo walk with a reported big You Tube photographer here in Dallas, TX a couple of weeks ago and when I heard him say "Shoot to your edit", I magically had an emergency that I had to leave for and leave the photo walk :-) I was done
The most important fact about light metering is something that you have mentioned in a seemingly minor adjunct "... your light-meter turns everything into gray ...". This is what one has always to bear in mind. Therefore in old days we were using hand light-meters and gray-cards. This is "mittleres Grau" - medium gray, with a reflection of about 18%. So if you have a landscape full of snow - which ist white - und you trust your automatic, the camera will underexpose the picture and if you want to have an evening mood, the automatic will overexpose and change your evening into an afternoon. Since the days we were shooting slides nothing has changed: The dynamic range is in many cases insufficient to cover all highlights plus all shadows, so one has to choose what one likes - a beautiful blue sky and a much to dark landscape or a beautiful landscape with a possibly rather boring sky, that is no longer intensive blue ... technically however with today digital photography it is much easier to recover details from to dark shadows as it is to rescue parts of a picture that are burnt out because of overexposure. This is why I always prefer to underexpose if necessary. ... But highlights should be highlights and not gray ...
Interesting. I can see some exceptions... exposing to the right (ETTR) demands more exposure, either more time, aperture or iso. Sometimes ETTR will result in increased exposure time (which might contribute to camera movement blur) or pushed ISO which will add more noise. Sometimes in low light, hand held, I think it can be preferable to expose the highlights correctly the way you want the shot to be, so that you don't have to increase ISO or exposure time. I have to say that using a D810 with nearly 15 EV stops of dynamic range, I have much less problems with "darker" areas than I do with overexposed shots, so I'm usually more afraid of cliping highlights. I also use the viewfinder which has no histogram. I will however try this technique and use the histogram when shooting landscapes with a tripod.
Thank you Ken for this valuable tip. The main gist as I gather it is: "you should expose as much as you can without blasting the highlights to hell, ..... dropping levels down in computer is as easy as hell." Now how about if I shoot indoors with flash, the principle would be the same, right?
tip - i've found those blown highlight/gamut warnings in camera and in the editors are done with printing in mind... you'll lose that upper 5% or whatever when you print them off, but it'll still be there in the digital files. and i'm pretty sure you can adjust the threshold in your editor.
i never mentioned or advocated BLOWING highlights and trying to pull them back.....rather AS MUCH sensor saturation as possible rather than making the shot OUT OF CAMERA look like you want the final product. sensor saturation has NO downsides......if people WANT mostly dark pics, its insanely easy to do that AT COMPUTER.
Okay, I get it - ETTR and fill-flash for stuff that moves, gradated filters for stuff that doesn't, and multiple exposures HDR'd in Photoshop when it's really gonna stick around.
Thank you for this explanation. You are right. Everyone talks about exposing to the right but I have not heard nor read this explanation. Also thanks for your efforts to clean up your language. I do appreciate that very much. For me it makes the videos better.
you cant tell the difference between -1EV brought up a stop at 100-1600 with d750, anything past 3200 is a different story though, so i agree its better to slightly over-expose in some scinareos. 6400 +1EV brought down 1-stop in post looks almost identical to 12800 +0EV kept as-is. it alldepends what you are shooting and what you can handhold. the ETTR trick is a thing of the past if you ask me, more important for film. if you have minimum shutter set to 1/125th and you cant hold anything lower, without adjusting aperture the only thing left to adjust is ISO - 6400 at 1/125th (+1EV then brought down in post) looks the same as 12800 at 1/250th (0EV) so the only benefit of ETTR in this scinareo is you can use a faster shutter (but at the end of the day you are limited to whatever your sensor can churn out). to get the most out of your sensor - don't under-expose at high iso. the probability of high dynamic range lighting indoors is low, outdoors however? more likely, plus you have more latitude to work with at lower iso. so I'd say shoot 0EV/-1EV outdoors and 0EV/+1EV indoors. im an AV shooter (using AE-L when indoors if light is consistent)
Well, if you under expose you can recover shadows by about 5 stops these days with something like a D850. But if you over expose your highlight you can only really recover about a 1 to 2 stops while losing a lot of saturation. So you have to decide what highlights are important to you. I usually aim to underexpose when I'm not sure since cameras are better at recovering shadows than highlights.
IF you shoot raw yes,......but the point is sensor saturation has NO downsides......if people WANT mostly dark pics, its insanely easy to do that AT COMPUTER. well i wasnt advocating burning out the highlights.
Most newer cameras have a stop or two of highlight recovery. Maybe overexposing the highlights by a couple of stops would get the most out of the camera or allowing the histogram to climb the right wall a little. Underexposed shadows are noisy as hell. If you expose just for the highlights then your meter is trying to make white 18% gray which will underexpose the image. Unless we are using a D500. There is hardly any highlight recovery at all with that camera.
Presumably, though if you use shoot RAW plus JPEG and ETTR, the JPEGS will be unusable other than for checking composition as they'll appear over-exposed? (Sorry for being late to the party)
This is especially important for Canon shooters, since the Canon highligh recovery is AMAZING but the shadow recovery is absolutely garbage, especially compared to the Sony sensors (Sony, Nikon, Fuji)
Thank you, that's super important information. I knew about ETTR and used it, but I underestimeted the importance of getting sensor saturation as much as possible. Many pro-photographers in their videos doesn't talk about that fact, sometimes it looks like they also don't know about it. Так тримати! :)
"Hot spot" ? focal/DOF issue? Sometimes you just can't get everything in focus. Using a larger lens with extension tubes may help, or focus a bit away from the top of the ey
I am about to go to Slovenia (2morrow) and I only had just read about ETTR and then saw this video! (thanks). I also have a X-H1. I read that the DR of X-H1 is 12 stops and I note you can change DR settings. I read that our in camera histograms only read information from a Jpegs rendering. So while they are very useful. They tend to not give us the data for RAW frames. By how many stops can I go over the histograms recommendations in our Fuji X-h1. Assuming a base ISO ? Thanks Again. Ken
Excellent But spot metering can be dangerous you have too choose carefully your reference, compensate for the brightness, compensate for reflectance. F 16 rule or using an old incident lightmeter is generally more simple. Camera lightmeters works often right with high lights between 90 and 100 %. I must say that i prefer to expose like i did with slides, a time when you should care not to make holes in lighLights and accept deeeep darks : )
Hay Theo. Nice video. I set zebra to 100%, Ignore it and expose for subject as bright as I can get away with,. How does ISO VS under exposure effect denamic range and where is the line when you CAN'T use additional light or a tripod on a moving subject, like a live show for example?
Hey Ken, Would you consider the Nikon - Coolpix P900 16.0-Megapixel Digital Camera to be a great camera for zooming in on objects, if so fine, if not, what is the most powerful, and clear lens available for me to purchase? And would it be Nikon Camera, or something else?
I use spot-metering, on that part what i wont to be white, then i correct the expousion by 3 stops , so i go from zone 5 to zone 8 and that is almost white
Quick thought, when you say ETTR I would hope to think you mean adjusting Shutter, Aperture and External Lighting as needed and NOT cranking up the ISO as a means of getting to the right. For me, I consider ISO and Photoshop to be in the same category of AFTER the shot has been taken processing. I'd be willing to be your less informed viewer aren't aware of this. Set the settings to the effect you want to create and ADD the light to create the exposure, not simply crank up the ISO.
you got me thinking Ken stop it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! now i want to leave work and go shot so I can wrap my head around what you just said :-/ :-) damn you !!!!!!!!!!!
With a D850 using a Sekonic L758 spotmeter, how many stops do I open up. The meter's second iso button can be set for that adjustment. With the D810, it was 2.3. Thanks, Hamish
I expose for the subject (spot), the rest I don't care how it looks in most cases [unless my intention is landscape, in which case I expose 1/3rd of a stop over Nikon's highlight metering exposure (the one with the little star)].
But what about blowing out your highlights as my D500 is likely to do? This is why I stop down my exposure compensation 1/3 stop to keep from over exposing my D500. Especially on a bright sunny day? I think you had a video as to this technique.
well i wasnt advocating burning out the highlights. Point is sensor saturation has NO downsides......if people WANT mostly dark pics, its insanely easy to do that AT COMPUTER. As for camera DR.....you can determine that easy by increasing exposure comp from SPOT METERING off your compositions own highlights.
just got myself a fujica 35mm and a sekonic 208 twin good point tho about over exposing a tad evan for the film shooter it makes it easier in the dark cave
Thanks for the vid! I agree that ETTR is a highly useful method. By the way, how evenly distributed are tonal values across the entire tonal range of the sensor, as viewed in postprocessing? I have some doubts that the distribution is even (e.g., skin tone values might on purpose have greater tonal bit resolution than shadows or very highlights). Do you have insight on experience with the tonal distribution in different cameras?
Thanks; well I meant a kind of by-design unevenness that might be completely intentional to optimize the cameras for the type of shooting people do most typically. BTW, I shoot raw and raw only. ;) For example, there are some sources claiming that sensors capture light in a linear fashion, simply by "counting" photons. However, for a human to see the image anywhere close to natural, a gamma correction needs to be applied (human eye's response to light is logarithmic): www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/gamma-correction.htm wwwimages2.adobe.com/content/dam/acom/en/products/photoshop/pdfs/linear_gamma.pdf www.covingtoninnovations.com/dslr/Curves.html#P1 The thing I wondered about was whether some camera manufacturers actually tried to trick this on the sensor level by making it not count the amount of light in a linear fashion, but perhaps already corrected - not necessarily in a gamma fashion, perhaps an arbitrary function instead. ... if I had the tech to do it effectively, I'd probably do it to optimize for greater color resolution where I need it most... 14-bit color per channel is not exactly plenty and if I stretch an image in post after having applied a color profile (e.g., using X-Rite ColorChecker Passport), I can usually see posterization (tonal layering) in the skin tones and it simply looks awful (at least on the screen) - even the GFX does that, just like any Nikon or a Canon. At these times, I wish I had a 16-bit Phase instead of a DSLR (which is so over-the-top expen$ive that it is out of question for me to get one any soon). The reason I brought up this question is that if a sensor's response was heavily nonlinear, it could derail the ETTR for a number of applications - suddenly you wouldn't have the best tonal resolution where most desired, but off by some margin.
There seems to be a trend for deliberately underexposing a RAW image by maybe 4 - 5 stops due to some cameras allegedly having 'ISO invariant' sensors. What's your take on that?
Yes I guess so! Am I correct in thinking that the exposure to the right of the histogram gathers way more data than the darker tones? If so, then it makes sense to ETTR.
So nobody just uses a shot as it was captured and always post processes it? If so, that's fine but at what point does photography end and digital manipulation begin, or are they now all one?
N9olan Ah, thank you for the perspective. Are you saying that a real photographer in the age of film did all the things expected in software today, but did it in the dark room? If so, that makes the idea of post processing much less arduous.
That's what the JPG format is for - SOOC. RAW on the other hand goes a step further. If you shoot RAW you have to post process your image no way around that. I always shoot JPG+RAW get the best of both worlds if you choose so.
Art Pics Thanks, I was just getting some of this as you were typing your comment and you went even further with it. And here I thought I was done once the shutter was released.
If you have a 35mm or 50mm nikon i wouldn’t say no i got myself an xpro1 with a nikon to fuji adapter but i realised my only lens was so full of fungus that it was not funny now i only have my x20 that i can use and my xpro1 is on my desk 😥 i bought that 50mm in a thriftshop 2 week ago
The problem with WYSIWYG is it is only showing you what the image looks like through the LCD/EVF, not what will actually be captured. This is particularly true if the EVF or LCD is too bright or too dark, or if ambient conditions change your perception of that displayed image. I have a friend who uses their EVF to set their exposure every time. Often the histogram comes out vastly underexposed. By that I mean there is barely any information beyond two thirds of the histogram. Clearly his EVF is too bright. So basically every image be takes is far from saturating the sensor. I'll always place the histogram on screen to gauge exposure rather than rely on the EVF. I'm not suggesting that WYSIWYG doesn't have some benefits but it's also clear that it isn't perfect in predicting captured exposure either.
I was told this at uni and I always do it and it really helps. To expose, close both eyes really tight or put your hand over your eyes for 3 seconds, put your eye to the view finder then open it. Wait for your eye to adjust, then set your exposure. Always do this and learn your display the same way you learn a pair of speakers in terms of how it compares to other things and what is correct. It just takes practice and experience.
Hey, Thanks for this important information. Dumb question, as a Fuji XT2 shooter how do I work out what the camera's maximum dynamic range is? I too, seem to be dialing down on the EV. I back the graph of the histogram off from the right so there is a tiny gap between the actual graph and the end of the hitstograms display. Am I doing it wrong?
Thanks, Ken. (1 & 3/4 Stops). I mainly shoot landscapes. So if I understand you correctly use 'spot metering mode' (I have mine set to Multi) and using the single foucus point selector select an area that's bright like the sky? Then adjust my exposure using the histogram.
I feel like I knew this and I still typically meter for the highlights. How bad is that!! Let this video be the hammer that gets it through my thick skull.
Theoria Apophasis it's getting through!! Believe me. This video is very much appreciated. I've recently entered the mirrorless game (Fuji X-T1) and I think I fell victim to making it look pretty in-camera without thinking too much about the consequences for the image on a deeper level. I will adjust my process and use my head a bit more when working out how best to achieve what I'm after. On a bright note, at least I shoot RAW :-)
sensor saturation has NO downsides......if people WANT mostly dark pics, its insanely easy to do that AT COMPUTER. you should expose as much as you can without blasting the highlights to hell, ..... dropping levels down in computer is as easy as hell.
I have found my D850 has blinkys making it look like have lost the highlights, but the raw files still has detail...I guess you are looking at JPG on the back of the camera...Freaked me out until I figured that out :0
Seems like I am always dancing on the knife's edge. I am either sneaking just under the line of blown highlights, or I'm agonizing over the lowest ISO I can use and still stop the action without losing dynamic range and turning people into plastic. ...Shooting the Amgen tour tomorrow; another fine waltz through the mine field, I bet. ;)
Oh yeah, and good advice...I need to get back to using spot meter and doing the math...used to always do that back when I shot 4x5...Kinda got out of the habit. (like a naked nun ;)
Is it invalid to use a 'quickie' version of the Zone System, where I visually note the level of the brightest area of the frame, find something one stop (or zone) lower and meter for that?
![The Wall Song ร้องข้ามกำแพง | EP.215 | พาเวล นเรศ - พูห์ กฤติน | 17 ต.ค. 67 [1/5]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/IUzrjuf60P4/mqdefault.jpg)
one of the few TH-cam photographers that actually knows his shit ... love your stuff ken!
I couldn't agree more! Excellent video. Ansel Adams photography series taught that the negative (or raw file in today's world) is not the end result and that its purpose is to capture as much information as possible. The print is the end result and having a negative (raw file) with the most information allows you to adjust the print as you see fit; if it lacks information your are limiting what your end results can be. The principle still applies today.
Hey Ken, I just purchased the Nikon DX 17-55 2.8 G you recommended, it's now the third lens I've gotten from your advice. I love it! In fact, _I got it cheaper in my local camera store than any where on line!!!_ You still gotta love those brick-and-mortar establishments!!!
youd be NUTZ not to love that lens man......absolutely Fing impossible :P
I know. It's amazing. I like it that there is some weight to it, not cheap, light, and flimsy like my now retired 18-55 DX G VR lens.
I you could, can you answer this one question, perhaps in a video or in writing: As a Nikon owner/user, what is the advantage of purchasing/buying into the Fujifilm system?
Absolutely right and of you need every more dynamic range bracket.
I started in the 70s with film. I think this gives me an advantage in understanding what he is saying. A thin negative is bad and you will never be able to produce a great image with it because the detail is lost. But if you have the details captured through a proper overall exposure, you now have the option to dodge/burn in the darkroom to bring them out. Digital is the same concept, just a lot less smelly.
I agree with this video. I shoot with a MFT camera, so I always try to get as much light as possible with my exposure. I call it ETTRBC (Expose-To-The-Right-Before-Clipping).
Easiest way to maximise dynamic range, put natural live view on, Highlight alert on, find where alerts begin, then decide how much highlights you will allow to get blown out. That way you're always getting the best sensor saturation and signal to noise ratio. If you're using a fuji OVF just do same thing with histogram.
This is exactly what I learned shooting with my z6 and godox speedlight; that it's much better to overexpose slightly than it is to dial down the exposure and blow out the image. Great lesson, Ken!
Back in the days when I shot 35mm slide film I always used a separate light meter and incident light readings. It was more reliable than the camera's meter (CW back then) and funnily enough quicker because you were not distracted by the camera's meter changing its read out if you changed the framing. I rarely shoot slide film nowadays, preferring the colours I get from digital, but I have come to rely on the matrix meter - which is fine for many of my shots, but no all. I frankly have never liked spot meters (personal preference here - the changing meter reading is even more distracting!) so I think it is time to switch my DSLR to manual and dig out the old Sekonic with it's lumisphere !
Another advantage of separate lightmeters, which I have forgotten since I got lazy, is if you have one with dial rather than digital readout you can see ALL of your exposure options at a glance. Also, if you use them often you get pretty good at guessing the correct exposure to start with especially so in normal daylight conditions.
Any thoughts Ken?
I’m tellin ya, that portable Fireplace is the shit!! 👍👍
I started doing ETTR some time ago with my Sony camera. I have video background, so the whole light metering systems in still cameras were always something I didn't quite get - I'm more used to tools like zebra, waveform, histogram etc.
Anyways - I found out that ETTR is totally easy to perform with the zebra set to 109%. It's somewhere around where the actual white clipping in RAW happens (2-and-something stops over). I figured I'd share that - it's fairly easy even for beginners to comprehend
Watched a fair few films now.. I think your info is bang on ...from a non ego perspective.
Straight up ...no BS ...big respect and love your way man.
This reminds me of film days and "expose for the shadows, develop for the highlights" - work with all the detail you can get from even the limited film DR.
The amount of information you share, FOR FREE, is amazing. Thank you, sir
Oh lord, I always did the exact opposite... I’ll totally experiment around this advice. Thanks
It's so useful to have worked with film and understood Ansel's zones. People turned the zone system into a religion which wasn't his intention at all; it was just a tool. Where we exposed for the shadows and developed for the highlights, now we're exposing for the highlights, opening up X amount to place the highlights in the correct zone, and dicking around with the shadows in Lightroom. How I loved to avoid the company of the Zonebies - folks with one perfectly Zone system photo in a 5x7 frame on their living room wall. With Tri-X or Agafapan 25 I got beautiful stuff processing five rolls at a time by exposing at ISO 200 and under-developing in Rodinal.
I've been shooting film, (mostly tranny) for longer than I have been using Digital, techniques like slightly under exposing slide, is not really what your talking about, however, I always expose for what I actually see at the moment of exposure, which means shadow/highlights get even/balanced in my exposures. I agree with what you're saying here, killing sensor saturation is bad news, limited pull back. I still prefer optical viewfinders to electronic, although they are improving. The D850 vf being my favourite, but since I still shoot 8x10 and some medium format, I keep mostly the same MO for both film/digital. It's astounding to me how much shit you can get away with these days with digital, but for the life of me, I cannot comprehend why you would want to spend 40 mins correcting a single image on screen, when 40 seconds or less, would have got it 95% done when you were taking the shot.
I did a photo walk with a reported big You Tube photographer here in Dallas, TX a couple of weeks ago and when I heard him say "Shoot to your edit", I magically had an emergency that I had to leave for and leave the photo walk :-) I was done
The most important fact about light metering is something that you have mentioned in a seemingly minor adjunct "... your light-meter turns everything into gray ...". This is what one has always to bear in mind. Therefore in old days we were using hand light-meters and gray-cards. This is "mittleres Grau" - medium gray, with a reflection of about 18%. So if you have a landscape full of snow - which ist white - und you trust your automatic, the camera will underexpose the picture and if you want to have an evening mood, the automatic will overexpose and change your evening into an afternoon. Since the days we were shooting slides nothing has changed: The dynamic range is in many cases insufficient to cover all highlights plus all shadows, so one has to choose what one likes - a beautiful blue sky and a much to dark landscape or a beautiful landscape with a possibly rather boring sky, that is no longer intensive blue ... technically however with today digital photography it is much easier to recover details from to dark shadows as it is to rescue parts of a picture that are burnt out because of overexposure. This is why I always prefer to underexpose if necessary. ... But highlights should be highlights and not gray ...
Interesting. I can see some exceptions... exposing to the right (ETTR) demands more exposure, either more time, aperture or iso. Sometimes ETTR will result in increased exposure time (which might contribute to camera movement blur) or pushed ISO which will add more noise. Sometimes in low light, hand held, I think it can be preferable to expose the highlights correctly the way you want the shot to be, so that you don't have to increase ISO or exposure time. I have to say that using a D810 with nearly 15 EV stops of dynamic range, I have much less problems with "darker" areas than I do with overexposed shots, so I'm usually more afraid of cliping highlights. I also use the viewfinder which has no histogram. I will however try this technique and use the histogram when shooting landscapes with a tripod.
Thank you Ken for this valuable tip. The main gist as I gather it is: "you should expose as much as you can without blasting the highlights to hell, ..... dropping levels down in computer is as easy as hell." Now how about if I shoot indoors with flash, the principle would be the same, right?
tip - i've found those blown highlight/gamut warnings in camera and in the editors are done with printing in mind... you'll lose that upper 5% or whatever when you print them off, but it'll still be there in the digital files. and i'm pretty sure you can adjust the threshold in your editor.
i never mentioned or advocated BLOWING highlights and trying to pull
them back.....rather AS MUCH sensor saturation as possible rather than
making the shot OUT OF CAMERA look like you want the final product.
sensor saturation has NO downsides......if people WANT mostly dark pics,
its insanely easy to do that AT COMPUTER.
New to digital photography.....thank you for this information. I did not know this.
Okay, I get it - ETTR and fill-flash for stuff that moves, gradated filters for stuff that doesn't, and multiple exposures HDR'd in Photoshop when it's really gonna stick around.
You have no idea how much I needed to hear this. Thanks, man.
sensor saturation has NO downsides......if people WANT mostly dark pics, its insanely easy to do that AT COMPUTER.
Thank you for this explanation. You are right. Everyone talks about exposing to the right but I have not heard nor read this explanation. Also thanks for your efforts to clean up your language. I do appreciate that very much. For me it makes the videos better.
I'm guilty for creating shadows in camera. But I've been getting better at exposing better.
you cant tell the difference between -1EV brought up a stop at 100-1600 with d750, anything past 3200 is a different story though, so i agree its better to slightly over-expose in some scinareos. 6400 +1EV brought down 1-stop in post looks almost identical to 12800 +0EV kept as-is.
it alldepends what you are shooting and what you can handhold. the ETTR trick is a thing of the past if you ask me, more important for film. if you have minimum shutter set to 1/125th and you cant hold anything lower, without adjusting aperture the only thing left to adjust is ISO - 6400 at 1/125th (+1EV then brought down in post) looks the same as 12800 at 1/250th (0EV) so the only benefit of ETTR in this scinareo is you can use a faster shutter (but at the end of the day you are limited to whatever your sensor can churn out).
to get the most out of your sensor - don't under-expose at high iso. the probability of high dynamic range lighting indoors is low, outdoors however? more likely, plus you have more latitude to work with at lower iso. so I'd say shoot 0EV/-1EV outdoors and 0EV/+1EV indoors. im an AV shooter (using AE-L when indoors if light is consistent)
Well, if you under expose you can recover shadows by about 5 stops these days with something like a D850. But if you over expose your highlight you can only really recover about a 1 to 2 stops while losing a lot of saturation. So you have to decide what highlights are important to you. I usually aim to underexpose when I'm not sure since cameras are better at recovering shadows than highlights.
IF you shoot raw yes,......but the point is sensor saturation has NO downsides......if people WANT mostly dark pics, its insanely easy to do that AT COMPUTER.
well i wasnt advocating burning out the highlights.
So how do you manage not clipping the highlights?
@@joh24 push your histogram to a point where the image does not clip the highlights ETTR is great, i always do it.
Excelent tips, Ken! Salutations from Brazil!
This is one of the TOP eight videos you've made in terms of important information.
Which are your other favourites?
Most newer cameras have a stop or two of highlight recovery. Maybe overexposing the highlights by a couple of stops would get the most out of the camera or allowing the histogram to climb the right wall a little. Underexposed shadows are noisy as hell. If you expose just for the highlights then your meter is trying to make white 18% gray which will underexpose the image. Unless we are using a D500. There is hardly any highlight recovery at all with that camera.
Presumably, though if you use shoot RAW plus JPEG and ETTR, the JPEGS will be unusable other than for checking composition as they'll appear over-exposed? (Sorry for being late to the party)
This is especially important for Canon shooters, since the Canon highligh recovery is AMAZING but the shadow recovery is absolutely garbage, especially compared to the Sony sensors (Sony, Nikon, Fuji)
Thank you, that's super important information.
I knew about ETTR and used it, but I underestimeted the importance of getting sensor saturation as much as possible.
Many pro-photographers in their videos doesn't talk about that fact, sometimes it looks like they also don't know about it.
Так тримати! :)
it seems that about the only time I have enough natural light is when the wind is blowing my subjects back and forth. I know, macro flash...
Hot spot on bug eye is the problem I'm having with this. any suggestions?
"Hot spot" ?
focal/DOF issue? Sometimes you just can't get everything in focus. Using a larger lens with extension tubes may help, or focus a bit away from the top of the ey
I am about to go to Slovenia (2morrow) and I only had just read about ETTR and then saw this video! (thanks). I also have a X-H1. I read that the DR of X-H1 is 12 stops and I note you can change DR settings. I read that our in camera histograms only read information from a Jpegs rendering. So while they are very useful. They tend to not give us the data for RAW frames. By how many stops can I go over the histograms recommendations in our Fuji X-h1. Assuming a base ISO ? Thanks Again. Ken
about a stop and 3 quarters, same as XT2
Excellent
But spot metering can be dangerous you have too choose carefully your reference, compensate for the brightness, compensate for reflectance. F 16 rule or using an old incident lightmeter is generally more simple. Camera lightmeters works often right with high lights between 90 and 100 %.
I must say that i prefer to expose like i did with slides, a time when you should care not to make holes in lighLights and accept deeeep darks : )
Hay Theo. Nice video.
I set zebra to 100%, Ignore it and expose for subject as bright as I can get away with,.
How does ISO VS under exposure effect denamic range and where is the line when you CAN'T use additional light or a tripod on a moving subject, like a live show for example?
Learn the ZONE system! That is what Ken is talking about here.
Hey Ken, Would you consider the Nikon - Coolpix P900 16.0-Megapixel Digital Camera to be a great camera for zooming in on objects, if so fine, if not, what is the most powerful, and clear lens available for me to purchase? And would it be Nikon Camera, or something else?
waw, i like this guy, tx Ken
I use spot-metering, on that part what i wont to be white, then i correct the expousion by 3 stops , so i go from zone 5 to zone 8 and that is almost white
This is so true. Take control of your image.
Quick thought, when you say ETTR I would hope to think you mean adjusting Shutter, Aperture and External Lighting as needed and NOT cranking up the ISO as a means of getting to the right. For me, I consider ISO and Photoshop to be in the same category of AFTER the shot has been taken processing. I'd be willing to be your less informed viewer aren't aware of this. Set the settings to the effect you want to create and ADD the light to create the exposure, not simply crank up the ISO.
I only expose for the highlights in street, occasionally landscapes (occasionally) : )
ettr will work only when you have enough light
doing that for night photography would be stupid
❤️❤️❤️keep up the good work ,u are a real G xxx
you got me thinking Ken stop it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! now i want to leave work and go shot so I can wrap my head around what you just said :-/ :-) damn you !!!!!!!!!!!
i suck, yes
Yes you suck Knowledge but whats cool you share it as well :-)
I would love to see you apply your talents to astrophotography.
Don't jump off a cliff!!. I love your videos and they make so much sense.
Absolutely spot on Video. Well explanation on how to use ETTR and Spot Metering ...
That X-H1 looks like the baby of mr and mrs GFX.
With a D850 using a Sekonic L758 spotmeter, how many stops do I open up. The meter's second iso button can be set for that adjustment. With the D810, it was 2.3. Thanks, Hamish
ISO is not exposure, use the lowest ISO possible.....profile your D850 like i did for DR and upload it to your 758
I like the idea of thinking about photos as if I were shooting video in a log profile.
Shoot & preview as flat as possible. Colour grade it later.
I love your videos, and I get a lot out of them. People get there feelings heart to easily, I say keep the honesty coming.lol
I expose for the subject (spot), the rest I don't care how it looks in most cases [unless my intention is landscape, in which case I expose 1/3rd of a stop over Nikon's highlight metering exposure (the one with the little star)].
But what about blowing out your highlights as my D500 is likely to do? This is why I stop down my exposure compensation 1/3 stop to keep from over exposing my D500. Especially on a bright sunny day? I think you had a video as to this technique.
well i wasnt advocating burning out the highlights. Point is sensor saturation has NO downsides......if people WANT mostly dark pics, its insanely easy to do that AT COMPUTER.
As for camera DR.....you can determine that easy by increasing exposure comp from SPOT METERING off your compositions own highlights.
wut's the histogram for the fire on the monitor? Would it look like the fire?
There is a way to turn off exposure preview on Fujifilm cameras. I turned mine off because it was causing a lot of frustration and bad habits.
just got myself a fujica 35mm and a sekonic 208 twin good point tho about over exposing a tad evan for the film shooter it makes it easier in the dark cave
Thanks for the vid! I agree that ETTR is a highly useful method. By the way, how evenly distributed are tonal values across the entire tonal range of the sensor, as viewed in postprocessing? I have some doubts that the distribution is even (e.g., skin tone values might on purpose have greater tonal bit resolution than shadows or very highlights). Do you have insight on experience with the tonal distribution in different cameras?
IF RAW, thats dependent on the SNR captured at the time and your cameras native DR
Thanks; well I meant a kind of by-design unevenness that might be completely intentional to optimize the cameras for the type of shooting people do most typically. BTW, I shoot raw and raw only. ;)
For example, there are some sources claiming that sensors capture light in a linear fashion, simply by "counting" photons. However, for a human to see the image anywhere close to natural, a gamma correction needs to be applied (human eye's response to light is logarithmic):
www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/gamma-correction.htm
wwwimages2.adobe.com/content/dam/acom/en/products/photoshop/pdfs/linear_gamma.pdf
www.covingtoninnovations.com/dslr/Curves.html#P1
The thing I wondered about was whether some camera manufacturers actually tried to trick this on the sensor level by making it not count the amount of light in a linear fashion, but perhaps already corrected - not necessarily in a gamma fashion, perhaps an arbitrary function instead.
... if I had the tech to do it effectively, I'd probably do it to optimize for greater color resolution where I need it most... 14-bit color per channel is not exactly plenty and if I stretch an image in post after having applied a color profile (e.g., using X-Rite ColorChecker Passport), I can usually see posterization (tonal layering) in the skin tones and it simply looks awful (at least on the screen) - even the GFX does that, just like any Nikon or a Canon. At these times, I wish I had a 16-bit Phase instead of a DSLR (which is so over-the-top expen$ive that it is out of question for me to get one any soon).
The reason I brought up this question is that if a sensor's response was heavily nonlinear, it could derail the ETTR for a number of applications - suddenly you wouldn't have the best tonal resolution where most desired, but off by some margin.
There seems to be a trend for deliberately underexposing a RAW image by maybe 4 - 5 stops due to some cameras allegedly having 'ISO invariant' sensors. What's your take on that?
yes, and there is ZERO advantage to doing that !
Yes I guess so! Am I correct in thinking that the exposure to the right of the histogram gathers way more data than the darker tones? If so, then it makes sense to ETTR.
So nobody just uses a shot as it was captured and always post processes it? If so, that's fine but at what point does photography end and digital manipulation begin, or are they now all one?
N9olan Ah, thank you for the perspective. Are you saying that a real photographer in the age of film did all the things expected in software today, but did it in the dark room? If so, that makes the idea of post processing much less arduous.
That's what the JPG format is for - SOOC. RAW on the other hand goes a step further. If you shoot RAW you have to post process your image no way around that. I always shoot JPG+RAW get the best of both worlds if you choose so.
Art Pics Thanks, I was just getting some of this as you were typing your comment and you went even further with it. And here I thought I was done once the shutter was released.
sensor saturation has no downsides......if people WANT mostly dark pics, its insanely easy to do that AT COMPUTER.
Theoria Apophasis Something tells me I'm going to be blowing out my pics for a while now.
before you jump off the cliff, toss me one of those nice cameras you have. great advice , thank you.
I just shoot bracketed at all times, never miss an exposure.
your burning logs on you monitor: screensaver or video? I like it.
If you have a 35mm or 50mm nikon i wouldn’t say no i got myself an xpro1 with a nikon to fuji adapter but i realised my only lens was so full of fungus that it was not funny now i only have my x20 that i can use and my xpro1 is on my desk 😥 i bought that 50mm in a thriftshop 2 week ago
The problem with WYSIWYG is it is only showing you what the image looks like through the LCD/EVF, not what will actually be captured. This is particularly true if the EVF or LCD is too bright or too dark, or if ambient conditions change your perception of that displayed image. I have a friend who uses their EVF to set their exposure every time. Often the histogram comes out vastly underexposed. By that I mean there is barely any information beyond two thirds of the histogram. Clearly his EVF is too bright. So basically every image be takes is far from saturating the sensor. I'll always place the histogram on screen to gauge exposure rather than rely on the EVF. I'm not suggesting that WYSIWYG doesn't have some benefits but it's also clear that it isn't perfect in predicting captured exposure either.
I was told this at uni and I always do it and it really helps.
To expose, close both eyes really tight or put your hand over your eyes for 3 seconds, put your eye to the view finder then open it. Wait for your eye to adjust, then set your exposure.
Always do this and learn your display the same way you learn a pair of speakers in terms of how it compares to other things and what is correct. It just takes practice and experience.
Hey, Thanks for this important information. Dumb question, as a Fuji XT2 shooter how do I work out what the camera's maximum dynamic range is? I too, seem to be dialing down on the EV. I back the graph of the histogram off from the right so there is a tiny gap between the actual graph and the end of the hitstograms display. Am I doing it wrong?
you can determine that easy by increasing exposure comp from SPOT METERING off your shots highlights.
which on the XT2 is about 1 and 3/4 stops
Thanks, Ken. (1 & 3/4 Stops). I mainly shoot landscapes. So if I understand you correctly use 'spot metering mode' (I have mine set to Multi) and using the single foucus point selector select an area that's bright like the sky? Then adjust my exposure using the histogram.
Ken, is there a huuuuge difference between 12bit and 14bit Raw?
nope, but there is in fine tonal detail. however,
Good points.
Right on Ken!
Double thumbs up to this video
Yes - I liked the video; sensor saturation baby 👍
A camera that has 4 ADC's per channel. HDR every shot. Or oversample to increase bit-depth, hmm...
2 words, auto bracketing
I feel like I knew this and I still typically meter for the highlights.
How bad is that!!
Let this video be the hammer that gets it through my thick skull.
sensor saturation has no downsides......if people WANT mostly dark pics, its insanely easy to do that AT COMPUTER.
Theoria Apophasis it's getting through!! Believe me. This video is very much appreciated. I've recently entered the mirrorless game (Fuji X-T1) and I think I fell victim to making it look pretty in-camera without thinking too much about the consequences for the image on a deeper level.
I will adjust my process and use my head a bit more when working out how best to achieve what I'm after.
On a bright note, at least I shoot RAW :-)
Makes sense.
So, should you spot meter the mid-tones?
sensor saturation has NO downsides......if people WANT mostly dark pics, its insanely easy to do that AT COMPUTER.
you should expose as much as you can without blasting the highlights to hell, ..... dropping levels down in computer is as easy as hell.
Is that a Yes?
Sounds a lot like common sense. Do the doctoring in post-production.
Bright tip...pardon the pun
I have found my D850 has blinkys making it look like have lost the highlights, but the raw files still has detail...I guess you are looking at JPG on the back of the camera...Freaked me out until I figured that out :0
spot meter the highlights and know how much you can go above it based on teh DR of your camera
Seems like I am always dancing on the knife's edge. I am either sneaking just under the line of blown highlights, or I'm agonizing over the lowest ISO I can use and still stop the action without losing dynamic range and turning people into plastic. ...Shooting the Amgen tour tomorrow; another fine waltz through the mine field, I bet. ;)
Oh yeah, and good advice...I need to get back to using spot meter and doing the math...used to always do that back when I shot 4x5...Kinda got out of the habit. (like a naked nun ;)
D850 got plenty of headroom, the D500 is sensitive as hell about highlights
By that, do you mean it has little room for over-exposing too much? I assume that applies to the D7500 too since it has the same sensor?
I want to send you the best coffee and chocolate you ever have, if you give me your post address.
By the way very educative video , thank you
ohh bless you. but i dont eat chocolate actually :)
Theoria Apophasis
Alright , take care.
Is it invalid to use a 'quickie' version of the Zone System, where I visually note the level of the brightest area of the frame, find something one stop (or zone) lower and meter for that?
😁😁😁