Snappin053 Loc: Southern Vermont

Hello Toby, keep these tutorials coming I really enjoy them.

imagemeister Loc: mid east Florida

My .02,

Where I come from, since the dawn of the digital era, most people I know were underexposing to ensure acceptable highlight detail - then along came raw and the ETTR B.S. - I do not shoot raw so I do not worry about ETTR - and tend to be on the underside especially if I am concerned about highlights.

If I were to shoot the scene you posted, I would be using a SONY with EVF and JPEG, if there were not a lot of action to be stopped, I would try to use the in camera HDR rapid 3- exposure combination - but if there were critical action to be stopped, I would use a HDR sensor ( full frame) and lean towards underexposure - as you have done here.

bdk Loc: Sanibel Fl.

and thats why I bought and why I love my d810 ....

Jimmy T Loc: Virginia

Very interesting Toby, thanks for sharing you knowledge with us.

kymarto Loc: Portland OR and Milan Italy

I will never shoot jpg--just too limited in processing options re: color and luminance correction. I always shoot raw and work in 16 bit.

imagemeister Loc: mid east Florida

yes, I know the mind set ....

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

Great example! There is indeed a good deal of useful information in the lower reaches of the dynamic range that can be recovered with little noise.

Just for grins, I looked up the recommended exposure for a brightly lit street scene at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposure_value At ISO 100 it recommends an EV of 7-8. That is an EV of 9-10 for ISO 400.

An EV of 9-10 equates to an exposure of 1/30 at f/4-5.6 so your -3 EC (1/30 @ F/4.5) is actually the exposure you might have chosen if you ignored the camera's meter.

Peekayoh Loc: UK

Clipped highlights are not "recoverable", they are gone forever. I imagine what you are talking about is the difference between the JPEG Histogram shown by the camera and the Raw Histogram which is conspicuous by its absence.

Until the Manufacturers relent and give us a proper Raw Histogram, it's up to the User to find how much headroom is available before clipping occurs, then you can meter the highlights and dial down the appropriate number of EVs, probably about -3EV in your case.
You can take out the guesswork if you determine the "highlight headroom" of your camera.
Understood and that is the choice we face; do I expose for the highlights or do I expose for the shadows. Whichever you choose results in a correct exposure for that situation.

kymarto Loc: Portland OR and Milan Italy

Multibracket HDR is useful whenever the dynamic range of the scene exceeds the dynamic range of the sensor. There is no hard and fast rule as to the number of brackets nor as to the EV steps between brackets. The rule is this: the darkest frame should have no clipped highlights, or at least none that you hope to have detail in (you'll never get the sun not to clip) and the lightest frame should have the deepest shadows exposed as dark midtones. However many frames you need to do that is the right number; more make no sense. The dark frame is actually more important than the light frame: clipped highlights in HDR are unrecoverable, while you can bring up dark shadows, but at the expense of noise.

In my HDR work, I've sometimes had to shoot 15 frames (middle exposure and +-7EV, brackets 1EV apart). As long as you have a middle frame that has good midtones, you can actually use steps of 3EV, although I always think 2EV steps are safer. When I need to deghost, I use all the frames, as the 1 EV steps give me more options for the areas to be deghosted.

Here are a few of my more extreme HDRs, shot both just after the tsunami and two years later in the exclusion zone around Fukushima. These were just not possible with a single frame because of the extreme DR, but if your scene DR does not exceed your sensor DR, I strongly recommend not doing multibracket HDR for the "HDR look", which can be achieved much more easily using some standard post-processing techniques.

A bus wrapped around a building in Natori. Moderate HDR +-2EV

(Download)

A ship washed 2 kilometers inland, fairly extreme HDR +-4EV

(Download)

Front room in a small hotel, Tomioka two years after the trunami and the town's abandonment moderate HDR +-3EV

(Download)

Truck washed into living room, 2 years later. Extreme HDR (the room was completely dark) +-6EV

(Download)

Abandoned pachinko parlor in Tomioka, two years later. Exxtreme HDR +-7EV

(Download)

Peekayoh Loc: UK

Interesting stuff Kymarto.
Not my cup of tea but interesting none-the-less

lukan Loc: Chicago, IL

I love the subject matter, the composition, the detail and the color in each of those pictures. +-7EV! What gets! Good stuff, sir.