NikonGear'23
Gear Talk => Processing & Publication => Topic started by: Nikkor Shooter on January 22, 2020, 17:10:00
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It was serious business, not a fuss. in film times but it is now!
With digital recording technologies, dynamic range latitudes
are so great that as long as you consider the histogram and
the EV button on your camera as your best friends at capture,
exposure is NO MORE the ultimate criteria but rendition is.
It hurts me painfully when ever I hear/read: "good" exposure",
"well exposed" etc. How can they know how it was exposed?
I say that it is not with the exposure that the mastery lies but
with the rendition of a capture.
What do you say?
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If you know how to capture photons right and develop your RAW to a pleasing result noone will have trouble with your choice.
An ISO invariant sensor might give you the chance to use a shorter exposure time to freeze motion and later pump up exposure in post processing.
As long as you know what you are doing, do as you know!
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Beginners sometimes find this subject confusing since the word "exposure" is used to describe more than one thing. On the one hand it relates to the amount of light reaching the sensor, in which case it does not depend on ISO, and it cannot be changed in post processing. On the other hand it is used to described the "brightness" of the output. Here ISO and/or post processing are relevant.
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photographers capture details and tonality. I am not sure if tonality suffers if you pump up exposure in post...
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Frank, John, thanks for your thoughts! :)
There are things that are relevant prior to SR, in post or both.
DR and tonalities, for example, can be affected both ways as
prior to SR, when neglected, they won't be available in post.
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I say that it is not with the exposure that the mastery lies but
with the rendition of a capture.
What do you say?
I agree, unless the original exposure is far enough off that it fails to capture wanted detail, either in light or dark areas. It was different...more difficult... in the pre-2007 (Nikon D3) era.
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When I talk about Exposure watching an image; I talk about my perception of the light in the scene as presented; High to low.
Often very different for display and print,,,,
Some scenes present themselves nicely dark some high key, some HDR, some do well in several versions of that. It is completely up to the artist and then it's up to the 'customer' to judge if it is something they like to pay for.
Rendering is IMHO not only exposure it is also soft, hard, sharpness tonality etc.Some subjects or genres lend themselves to certain of these criteria.
Who is the customer,,, that is the question to ask yourself - If there is no direct 'customer' then there are now right answer to neither Exposure nor Rendering ;)
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As a publishing photographer working mainly in the E6 spheres,
there was nothing else than exposure, it made it or it killed it.
Nothing else than exposure because after that it was either the
bin or the publisher's desk. This was the right time to make all
that fuss about exposure.
Today, exposure is only getting it in the ball park: the histogram.
— things are really getting interesting once up in the converter's
window. From the strict readout of the recorded data with trans-
lated dynamics to the most sophisticated PP, everything is possi-
ble IF the recorded quality is comfortably within the histogram.
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::) I still find myself unwittingly (no one ever accused me of having any wits) thinking in terms of reciprocity failure when it is gain x pixels I should be mindful of. Curiously enough, my images are generally well "exposed" if not subjectively dreadful. I have also come to appreciate that there were images I once produced in-the-box, utilizing classic media, that today I cannot reproduce digitally unaided by post-processing software before I would even think of showing my captures, much less producing prints.
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It was serious business, not a fuss. in film times but it is now!
With digital recording technologies, dynamic range latitudes
are so great that as long as you consider the histogram and
the EV button on your camera as your best friends at capture,
exposure is NO MORE the ultimate criteria but rendition is.
It hurts me painfully when ever I hear/read: "good" exposure",
"well exposed" etc. How can they know how it was exposed?
I say that it is not with the exposure that the mastery lies but
with the rendition of a capture.
What do you say?
Never used EV as it changes speed aperture ISO based on an algorithm. Just change it manually. And I very rarely bother to look at the Histogram whether in camera or monitor.
I hope you do realize that in camera histogram is a Jpeg rendition which is basically rubbish and I am yet to meet anyone who can read a histogram besides looking for blown bits.
If you wish to be anal about it, then invest in a Sony BVM RGB ref monitor and check the color ramp. Obviously the feed should not be RGB but component.
But it would be a waste of money and time and a steep learning curve,
All modern cameras bake in Jpegs and more importantly bake in RAW as well. The alternative is to shoot FLAT RAW and process to your heart liking......which is not a technical issue related to the knowledge of the operator but a subjective issue to do with colour........and colour evaluation is not the same to all races and eye Photoreceptors. What a Caucasian person see is not the same as seen by another type of people.
Dark pupils withstand bright light better that light pupils same for colour....etc.
What a load of bull that blue is cold and red is hot. Go tell that in the lower hemisphere people.
Remember white clothes v black v red at funerals based on social location norms. Color is subjective and the scientific part does not take that into account.
It is a falacy, that we all see the same colour and appreciate the same colour. Same as taste.....smell....etc
So good Exposure......for whom?
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Never used EV as it changes speed aperture ISO based on an algorithm.
No, it doesn't, Ethan, under the right setup, it will only
affect the metering and consequently the ISO.
I hope you do realize that in camera histogram is a Jpeg rendition which is basically rubbish and I am yet to meet anyone who can read a histogram besides looking for blown bits.
I can read an histogram but use it only to protect the whites.
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No, it doesn't, Ethan, under the right setup, it will only
affect the metering… nothing else.
I can read an histogram but use it only to protect the whites.
I'm not sure what you mean by the "right setup" here. I shoot a Nikon D3300 in aperture priority mode. If I dial in +1 EV exposure compensation the shutter speed (exposure time) is doubled - as desired.
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I'm not sure what you mean by the "right setup" here. I shoot a Nikon D3300 in aperture priority mode. If I dial in +1 EV exposure compensation the shutter speed (exposure time) is doubled - as desired.
I should have added "and the right body" cause they all don't share
the same menu nor the same features.
When I dial in a compensation value, aperture and speed stay as they
are, the ISO is taking it.
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When I dial in a compensation value, aperture and speed stay as they
are, the ISO is taking it.
So you are controlling output brightness rather than the amount of light collected by the sensor ?
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So you are controlling output brightness rather than the amount of light collected by the sensor ?
John, I don't follow you!
My approach means to control the amount of captured light
in order to have better data in the converter.
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If you dial in compensation and the aperture and speed stay the same then the amount of captured light stays the same. Whether or not the ISO changes is irrelevant. ISO has no effect on the amount of light captured - if the aperture, shutter speed and scene luminance stay the same.
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John is absolutely correct.
However, I do push my cameras' ISO settings because i find it helpful to let the camera do the preliminary brightening so I can actually see a JPG preview in the LCD on the back of the camera and also in the Finder and file-browser before I actually process my RAW NEFs in ACR.
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(http://www.kodiakmedia.at/2020/02/Screenshot%20.jpg)
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I should have added "and the right body" cause they all don't share
the same menu nor the same features.
When I dial in a compensation value, aperture and speed stay as they
are, the ISO is taking it.
I guess it does vary. Both the D7100 and the D3200 behave differently. On the D7100 (and the D3200 as far as I've bothered to test it), exposure compensation never varies the ISO unless it is set to Auto ISO. In A mode it only varies the shutter speed. In S mode, only the aperture. In P mode, it varies aperture first and then shutter speed when it runs out of apertures. In M mode it varies nothing at all except the meter recommendation.
When Auto ISO is on, it varies only ISO in M mode, and in other modes changes ISO last, after other options are used up. So it will change shutter speed down to 30 seconds in A mode, aperture to the extreme in S mode. In P mode it will do aperture, then shutter, then ISO. The D3200 and others of its ilk use the compensation button with the control wheel to change aperture in M mode, and thus allow no compensation in that mode even with Auto ISO.
I'm a little surprised if other cameras do it differently, as this setup seems nicely predictable. With the rather noisy DX cameras I have been using I'd be unhappy if the compensation cranked up the ISO without warning, especially on the D3200, which informs the user of Auto ISO choices only in the post shot EXIF file.
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I guess…
I see you've done your homework, Matthew! :)
When shooting wildlife, typically with the 600 ƒ4 + D850 combo,
It is for me critical to control both aperture — systematically at ƒ8,
and the shutter speed — depending on the action.
I am often dialling in a EV -4 in situations where I needed absolutely
to protect the whites.
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I used to shoot slides (E6 or Kodachrome) and, as others said, exposure was everything. The Canon T90 was a perfect camera for that purpose, thanks to the multispot metering: I could measure 8 different spots on my subject, check that they were in the +/- 2 EV range compared to 18% grey, and forget about the rest.
With DSLRs and especially my current Df, I still find it desirable to have 1) a properly exposed subject; 2) if possible, no blown highlight, in that order. The reverse order would be relevant to e.g. single-shot HDR shooters.
So techniques like "Exposure to the right" (popular with earlier generations DSLRs and noisy sensors) do not serve my purposes, while exposure principles dating back to film times are still somewhat relevant to me, albeit much less critical than during my slides time.
Significantly, in PP, I do not fiddle much around with exposure compensation (usually, at most +/- 1/2 EV), while I'm using lots of it when shooting (using the full range: +/- 3EV). With modern sensors, you could do the contrary, i.e. not caring while shooting and do lots of corrections in PP. It's just that I like to "catch the atmosphere", so the overall brightness of the scene and the brightness of the subject are essential and if I do not settle these at shooting time, I have the impression that I did not do a proper job. You may call me old-fashioned :)