New camera, lots of pics

[WildBillsBlueC6]

Bill,

I guess it depends on what you are trying to preserve (shadows) or highlights, but generally I would agree with the above while pointing out care should be taken to not blow highlights (set camera to flash for this if available). Most cameras also now show rgb histograms (older cameras did not, so you couldn't tell if you were blowing out a given channel).

 

Once you lose (white) highlights you can't get them back, so learning to do what Bill said "getting the light to the very right edge of the histogram but not beyond" is key.

 

Warm regards,

Mike

 

What you want to do is preserve as much shadow detail as possible without out blowing out the highlights. Get the biggest dynamic range possible. This is why using RAW is important because it will use 12 or 14 bits of data while jpg only uses 8 when trying to preserve details.

 

My camera's have the RGB histograms so that is how I think, I also have the camera set up to flash blown out details in the preview images. That way I can't miss knowing if I have blown something out and can make changes and shoot again.

 

Here some web sites that do a better job at presenting what I was trying to say about ETTR.

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/expose-right.shtml

http://schewephoto.com/ETTR/index.html