Forum Index > Photography Talk > "Expose to the Right" May Be Wrong
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hiker1
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PostWed Dec 18, 2013 12:13 am 
Another good article by Bob Johnson, this one on intentional overexposure, and how it's becoming less important.

falling leaves / hide the path / so quietly ~John Bailey, "Autumn," a haiku year, 2001, as posted on oldgreypoet.com
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GaliWalker
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PostWed Dec 18, 2013 12:24 pm 
Thanks, that's a nice article. Personally, I never really got sold on the "exposing to the right" mantra, because I could never be sure that I wasn't blowing out some highlights, which weren't easily visible on my camera's screen, especially in sunny conditions. There's nothing I hate more than overexposure in my images! mad.gif

'Gali'Walker => 'Mountain-pass' walker bobbi: "...don't you ever forget your camera!" Photography: flickr.com/photos/shahiddurrani
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IanB
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PostWed Dec 18, 2013 7:05 pm 
Even for a photography novice like myself, who'd never even heard of "expose to the right," that was a very well-written and educational article. Thank you for posting the link.

"Forget gaining a little knowledge about a lot and strive to learn a lot about a little." - Harvey Manning
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Relax
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PostWed Dec 18, 2013 7:39 pm 
GaliWalker wrote:
Thanks, that's a nice article. Personally, I never really got sold on the "exposing to the right" mantra, because I could never be sure that I wasn't blowing out some highlights, which weren't easily visible on my camera's screen, especially in sunny conditions. There's nothing I hate more than overexposure in my images! mad.gif
Why they make, and people use, histograms and EVF's ... Quite useful things. Once you learn your camera, you automatically learn to "dial" in extra highlight compensation when shooting so one does not have to fiddle with RAW and blown highlights.

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joker
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PostWed Dec 18, 2013 8:39 pm 
I'd be somewhat surprised if GaliWalker did not know about and use his camera's histogram; I interpreted his post as suggesting that in sunlight it's hard to even check this on his camera's screen (of course one can always pick up a trick from the large format crowd and use a dark cloth over one's head to have a clear view...). ETA: So the advice in the article is aimed at relatively newer cameras with lower-noise sensors. However, even these cameras do have more noise in the less exposed areas, so all other things being equal, more exposure will lead to lower noise. But all other things aren't equal (whether with newer or older digital cameras) unless perhaps you are using artificial lights and can just crank up the light to get increased exposure. You are going to have to open up the aperture or reduce the shutter speed to move the histogram to the right. Which may cause even more problems for you than the noise you'll get in the shadow areas - you have to think out the tradeoffs. If you crank the ISO setting up to nmove the histogram to the right, you're still going to have the same number of photons landing on the sensor and you'll just be amplifying the noise a bit to increase your exposure this way - thus gaining nothing. So I've never been a fan of a blanket "expose to the right" rule even with older digital cameras that have higher noise levels than the latest gear. On the other hand, I'm a big fan of using RAW for my own photos - I would not confound the question of "exposing to the right" with use of RAW versus JPEG. For those who are always happy with how their camera processes the image, or who don't like to "fiddle" a bit (or are a "shoot and dump the whole lot w/o taking care to edit them down to just the good shots" type...), JPEG is a fantastic option. I have taken to shooting in RAW+JPEG so I get both, but usually don't make use of the JPEG...

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GaliWalker
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PostWed Dec 18, 2013 8:44 pm 
joker wrote:
I'd be somewhat surprised if GaliWalker did not know about and use his camera's histogram; I interpreted his post as suggesting that in sunlight it's hard to even check this on his camera's screen
Yes, that's what I meant. I love my camera, a Canon 5D, but it's getting a bit outdated now. One of the things it lacks is a good quality, large sized screen. Making out the end of the histogram or the blinking parts denoting overexposure, on a sunny day, on the dinky screen, can be challenging sometimes.

'Gali'Walker => 'Mountain-pass' walker bobbi: "...don't you ever forget your camera!" Photography: flickr.com/photos/shahiddurrani
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Sore Feet
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PostWed Dec 18, 2013 9:13 pm 
Expose to the Right is a concept that was (is) much more universally accepted when shooting film. With digital it's a very, very situational idea. In the approximately 12 years I've shot digital, I've more often than not found myself exposing LEFT than anything else, largely because I'm often shooting around scenes where there would be a small amount of virtually guaranteed blown out highlights if not (flowing water, reflections on lakes, bright sky during sunsets, etc), and if I'm shooting a waterfall, I'm much more concerned about not blowing out the water than I am in retaining detail in the shadows which should look dark anyway. As the author of the article elludes to, knowing the capabilities of the camera is key. I've found with the camera's I've shot with over the years that the sensors Canon uses seem to be a lot more forgiving with highlight recovery than do Nikon / Sony sensors. In converse, attempting to pull detail out of underexposed mid-tones or shadows on a Canon image is basically guaranteed to produced noisy, muddied, splotchy and poorly colored areas of your image, while with Nikon (at least the D600 in my personal experience, but I've heard similar results are possible with virtually all their current lineup) you can bring out an immense amount of detail and faithful color from underexposed shadows, but recovering highlights that are nearly blown out is a lot more unforgiving. For these reasons specifically, I used graduated neutral density filters very often when I shot with my Canon 40D, because it would allow me to expose for the foreground without blowing out the sky. With my D600, I haven't yet encountered a situation where I've absolutely had to use a GND to get a quality exposure in one shot.

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joker
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PostWed Dec 18, 2013 10:19 pm 
I would not say "universally accepted" even with film. Certainly not at all with slide film - if anything the tendency there is to err toward underexposure in order to get increased color saturation. With negative film, you certainly don't want to get any highlights in which you hope to get nice tonal resolution up into and certainly not beyond the shoulder of the film's tonal response curve.

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iron
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PostFri Dec 20, 2013 12:41 am 
Sore Feet wrote:
while with Nikon (at least the D600 in my personal experience, but I've heard similar results are possible with virtually all their current lineup) you can bring out an immense amount of detail and faithful color from underexposed shadows, but recovering highlights that are nearly blown out is a lot more unforgiving.
ahh, the reason i hated my d7000...

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joker
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PostFri Dec 20, 2013 12:36 pm 
This discussion leaves me wondering if anyone has published a digital-sensor equivalent to those film response curves such as the one I posted above. You would obviously not be plotting density versus exposure, but as sore feet's post suggests, there's not a clean straight-line response from the lowest exposure level that produces a color value above 0,0,0 (r,g.b) through to 256,256,256 (or whatever the given camera's highest color value is), and the slopes are also different from camera-to-camera. I've not thought through exactly how such a plot should appear (or set of plots for each color?), but I presume some such useful visualization could be created. Does anyone know whether anyone is creating and posting such a thing anywhere? This would be a nice way to see what sore feet is describing.

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Cyclopath
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PostMon Dec 23, 2013 1:07 pm 
Digital is a lot like slide film. Both tend to be unforgiving of over-exposure. I think noise is the most common reason people "expose to the right," but it isn't the only one. You get richer color gradiations that way, too, for the same reason that article mentioned when it alluded to math and the linear vs logarithmic ways of dealing with exposure. But it really depends on the situation. If there's something really bright and you want to avoid blowing it out, then you can't expose to the right. To shoot the Milky Way, for the best results you should over-expose the image, then pull it down in post. You'll capture more stars this way, and richer tones in the galaxy. At least that's what's worked for me. Fortunately, you're not paying per-shot so you can usually bracket and choose the best one later. Actually you do pay per-shot with digital, the currency is your time.

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Bedivere
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PostTue Dec 24, 2013 1:10 am 
Cyclopath wrote:
I think noise is the most common reason people "expose to the right," but it isn't the only one. You get richer color gradiations that way, too, for the same reason that article mentioned when it alluded to math and the linear vs logarithmic ways of dealing with exposure.
This. I try to EttR whenever I can. As long as the highlights aren't blown I don't have any trouble recovering detail. In fact, it kind of blows my mind how much detail can be recovered. Of course there are a lot of situations where it just isn't a viable technique so you just have to live with the noise.

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