Good discussion of exposure and Expose to the Right

[Basil]

I thought this was a good explanation of why, if you over or under expose with a digital camera, it is better to "expose to the right" (so you don't have any blown out areas) since it's easier to recover detail in the shadows, but impossible to recover detail that is over exposed (blown out). I often tend to under expose a bit so I don't lose details in the highlights, then recover most of not all of the detail in the shadows in Lightroom.

 

[DrEntropy]

Interesting that the title is "Expose FOR the Right" and when he talks about it, he emphasizes "Expose TO the right".

Niggling detail, I know. But the "FOR" might have been a bit more explanatory if he'd instead used "Expose FOR the WHITE". Difference being "to the right" is a reference specifically to the histogram, whereas "for the right" is going to confuse a lot of folks who are unfamiliar, methinks.

Glad he said film is completely different, the opposite, but this film shooter DOES own a computer and DOES understand the differences between film and digital. HARUMPH!

I do like his presentations, tho. Good explanations for folks wanting to get deeper into imaging. Still hunting his vid on balancing fill-flash with background "exposed to the right" (or rather for the white). The shot of bride & groom 3/4 length with fill flash IMHO is a bit too "hot" with the fill light. ½ to 1 stop less on the flash output would have been less artificial looking, to my mind. But that over-emphasis seems to be the trend for such images, "Bride Chasing" is a business, BTDT. And the PPoA reward trend followers.

 

[GregW]

Boy am I'm late to the conversation. I thought this guy should not be doing photography videos. He misspoke so many times it really affected his credibility in my opinion. Maybe he was joking about only wrapping his head around the histogram thing, I don't know. I'd wait at least a week for absorption before attempting to teach something.

First off, Sitting at your computer at home is way too late to expose anything. The shot is done, you drove away. He should have talked about live histograms and making adjustments before the shutter is pressed. My D610 doesn't have a live histogram, I can only see it on playback.

Second, he doesn't go into how to meter for the highlights. In Ansel Adams' zone system there were 9 or 10 stops from black to white. Whites with texture fell in zone 8 or 3 stops over middle grey (zone 5). A camera meter always measures zone 5. SO you could say the dynamic range of the films Ansel was using was 9 (or 10). My aging D610 has a dynamic range of 12 stops. Does that mean I can safely capture textures in white 5 stops over the meter reading? Dunno, I have never really tested that.

Thirdly, he goes on to talk about dynamic range of the Fuji as 200 or 400. That would infer the camera can record 400 stops of information, completely wrong. What I guess is Fuji's DR200 and DR400 may use selective ISO settings on different parts of the photo or it does an HDR conversion in-camera.

Bonus round. In his shot of the groom with the blown out background, he said he metered for the blacks. Since it is a portrait, he should be exposing for the middle tones of the face. That shot looked a little overexposed to me, at least the face was. Jacket looked pretty good though for a grey suit.

 

[GregW]

...fill flash IMHO is a bit too "hot" with the fill light. ½ to 1 stop less on the flash output would have been less artificial looking, to my mind. But that over-emphasis seems to be the trend for such images, "Bride Chasing" is a business, BTDT. And the PPoA reward trend followers.

I agree but would add that a warm gel or a bounce card would have been better. The flash's color temp is just off from the rest of the photo.

 

[Basil]

Boy am I'm late to the conversation. I thought this guy should not be doing photography videos. He misspoke so many times it really affected his credibility in my opinion.

Well, of course I really am a neophyte. Most of what he said made sense to me, but I'm as far from a pro as you can get. I do agree the commnt about setting the Fuji Dynamic Range to 200 or 400 confused me and I'm sure he didn't mean to imply that the Fuji cameras have a DR that huge.

Setting that confusing bit aside, I do know that if I overexpose the highlights in my 5D MarkIV I can not, no matter what I do, recover the detail in those highlights after the fact. Once they are lost in camera, that's it, they are gone. Conversely, if I expose FOR those highlights, so that I have the desired amount of detail there, then the blacks can get crushed a bit but I can usually bring up the shadows in Lightroom and recover the detail in the shadows. That's why, if I can expose for the sky or bright background without killing my shadows, that's usually what I do.

As for how to meter for the highlights, I'm "guessing" he assumed most people already understand how most digital cameras do metering. He stated up front that, once you go down the rabbit hole of exposure, it could become a much longer video and he wanted to just ht some key points.

I think I looked at this as just a basic discussion of exposing to the left vs exposing to the right and to that end I thought he was mostly on point.

First off, Sitting at your computer at home is way too late to expose anything.

As long as I haven't blown out my highlights I can almost always recover the shadows and get a nice, balanced overall exposure after the fact. Lightroom has cool tools. that I really love, such as "Sky Masking", which masks just the sky and allows you to adjust pretty much anything to your desire (+/- exposure, highlights, shadows tone, contrast etc, and those adjustments only affect the sky. You can also, "invert" the mask so that your adjustments affect everythign but the sky (i.e., the foreground and subject). That's just the tip of the iceberg. If I'm shooting a sunset, for example, I can't get perfect exposure in the foreground and the sky unless I'm shooting in-camera HDR (which I do sometimes). Otherwise, as I said, I usually try to get the sky right with no blown out highlights so it looks good, then I recover the shadows in post. I usually look at my histogram and see what the blacks and highlights are doing (is anything blown out or any blacks completely crushed).

For your bonus round, I too thought the subject looked a bit over exposed, but then he was just making a point about exposing for blacks vs whites I think.

 

[DrEntropy]

Boy am I'm late to the conversation. I thought this guy should not be doing photography videos. He misspoke so many times it really affected his credibility in my opinion. Maybe he was joking about only wrapping his head around the histogram thing, I don't know. I'd wait at least a week for absorption before attempting to teach something.

Not too late, and you've pretty much spiked th' ball IMHO. His malaprops confuse and he was too unconcerned to make a do-over, instead "fixing" it in post-production with text overlay. *sheesh*

He's shooting his bread-n-butter stuff by formula from what I can tell. Not that that's wrong, it puts him in the good graces of the PPoA ("See! I'm an award-winning Professional!") and sells wedding and portrait jobs. He's likely attended and seems to be conducting "seminars", PPoA sponsored gigs to teach others how to "sell,sell, sell!" Pardon my cynicism, but it's born of experience. And I've got th' coffee mug to prove it!

SO you could say the dynamic range of the films Ansel was using was 9 (or 10). My aging D610 has a dynamic range of 12 stops. Does that mean I can safely capture textures in white 5 stops over the meter reading? Dunno, I have never really tested that.

Adams' Zone System was based on what silver-based emulsions of the time could handle, and a brilliant way of explaining how to manage it. With digital sensors, DR can be a lot more subtle in defining the "steps", hence the ability in post to draw out shadow detail digitally. But it's still black-to-white. I think five stops over is optimistic at this point, but maybe sensor development will make it possible soon. And I doubt you need to try it for proof.

Thirdly, he goes on to talk about dynamic range of the Fuji as 200 or 400. That would infer the camera can record 400 stops of information, completely wrong. What I guess is Fuji's DR200 and DR400 may use selective ISO settings on different parts of the photo or it does an HDR conversion in-camera.

Bonus round. In his shot of the groom with the blown out background, he said he metered for the blacks. Since it is a portrait, he should be exposing for the middle tones of the face. That shot looked a little overexposed to me, at least the face was. Jacket looked pretty good though for a grey suit.

Yup. In that circumstance it's all about the FACE!

I agree but would add that a warm gel or a bounce card would have been better. The flash's color temp is just off from the rest of the photo.

I may be guessing here but IMO he's looking like a solo act. Or he should have had a "grip" who anticipates and had a big enuff bounce card to the ready for a shot like that... but a second body cuts into th' margins. See: "The Ferengi Rules of Acquisition" >devil's advocate<

 

[GregW]

The beauty of the zone system was you could place both your highlights and shadows in an acceptable range. I dabbled with it briefly but found it too complicated for my tastes. I had to do a series of exposures at different ASAs to get a contrast base. Since I like shooting a variety of films, I'd need full tests (and notes) for each type. I probably would have lost my mind trying it with Kodak IR, the black voodoo of film.

 

[GregW]

I may be guessing here but IMO he's looking like a solo act.

You're probably right, or he had a lousy assistant. I had helped my girlfriend with some wedding gigs. When we were covering the dance floor, my job was to range the people Cari was photographing. I'd call out 6 feet or 8 feet and she would adjust flash power.

 

[Basil]

The beauty of the zone system was you could place both your highlights and shadows in an acceptable range

I am aware of Adam's Zone system and understand the concept. One of the things that cool about the latest Lightroom is that you can do what is called luminance masking. You basically select an area of the photo that has a certain luminance, then you can adjust the range of the luminance that gets masked and make adjustments only one areas that are within that range of luminance. You can then selct another area with difference luminance.

 

[DrEntropy]

I am aware of Adam's Zone system and understand the concept. One of the things that cool about the latest Lightroom is that you can do what is called luminance masking. You basically select an area of the photo that has a certain luminance, then you can adjust the range of the luminance that gets masked and make adjustments only one areas that are within that range of luminance. You can then selct another area with difference luminance.

Digital tech pretty much tosses Adams' Zone System into a cocked hat. The time and effort it took in a darkroom (with keeping Zone System parameters in mind) to achieve the images has been superseded by post-production software, 100-fold.

 

[DrEntropy]

You're probably right, or he had a lousy assistant. I had helped my girlfriend with some wedding gigs. When we were covering the dance floor, my job was to range the people Cari was photographing. I'd call out 6 feet or 8 feet and she would adjust flash power.

My point. Assisting a shooter means anticipating things. Weddings are always a wild card, and being on top of what comes next, planned or impromptu, makes for good coverage.

As a young teen, I learned to be a fair "grip" for a wedding photog... have I mentioned I hate doing weddings?

 

[DrEntropy]

As to heavily over or under exposures, the jokes were:
Over exposed you got a shot of a polar bear in a snow storm at high noon. Under was a black cat in a coal bin at midnight.

 

[Basil]

As to heavily over or under exposures, the jokes were:
Over exposed you got a shot of a polar bear in a snow storm at high noon. Under was a black cat in a coal bin at midnight.

The thing about today’s digital cameras is if you over expose, the lost details can’t be brought back in LR, but very often details can be recovered in the shadows, which I think was the point of the video, all other malaprops aside.

 

[GregW]

Take a look at this video.

 

[Basil]

Take a look at this video.

That was a very good explanation of the histogram and, I’m happy to say, it aligns with my understanding of the histogram. When he says you cannot tell if an image is over or under exposed by looking at the histogram ONLY, is something I’ve understood for a while now. I always consider what I’m shooting (the scene) in interpreting the histogram. Starting around 9:30 he talks about clipping the blacks vs the whites. “Which one is better depends on the image.” Of course he is 100% right. He goes on to say “but in general, you’d rather want to clip the blacks than the whites.” Which, in practice I find to be true. (Not always, but generally). If I’m shooting landscapes, and I see that I have a lot of clipping of the whites, I have learned that if I lose the details (in the clouds for example) I can not get that detail back. When I adjust exposure using for example exposure compensation, I always look at live view with the histogram to make sure I’m not going too far. But I have found it’s a lot easier to recover detail the shadows than to recover details in the whites that are clipped.

I always (almost) shoot RAW and know that the dynamic range of the RAW image is actually better than what is reflected in the histogram, which is based on the JPG image that is seen on the back screen.

This was one of the better descriptions of the histogram I’ve seen. Thanks for sharing. I’ll probably follow this guy on YT now.

 

[DrEntropy]

This was one of the better descriptions of the histogram I’ve seen. Thanks for sharing. I’ll probably follow this guy on YT now.

His video on crop vs. full frame was influential in my decision to go with the DX (crop-sensor) format. The guy is good at presenting useful information.

 

[GregW]

I'd bet Wolf had a career as a TV weather man.

 

[DrEntropy]

You may be correct. Green screen familiarity.