selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

In Sony's Zebra and ETTR I described the use of Sony's Zebra highlight warnings (blinkies) and how they can be used for ETTR (expose to the right). In Nikon's Blinkies and ETTR I covered the same subject for Nikon.

A newer Nikon starting with the D810 and newer Sony full frame camera, Highlight-Weighted Metering can make this easier.

The next posts will show an example of how I applied this technique to a scene with a wide dynamic range (DR).

I will also show a scene whose dynamic range is very narrow and you will see why ETTR is often not necessary.

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

The DR of this scene is about more than 8 stops. It's about as far as you can go before resorting to HDR. I guessed at a starting exposure that caused some higlight warnings to show in the A7 II display, lowered the esposure until the warnings went away and them added one stop of exposure.

The RawDigger histogram indicates that the exposure did not blow the highlights but that I would need to apply a little highlight and a lot of shadow recovery.

For more information see Sony's Zebra and ETTR, Nikon's Blinkies and ETTR and Highlight-Weighted Metering.

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After highlight and shadow recovery, slight exposure adjustment

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selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

The DR of this scene was less than five stops. In this case there was no need to resort to ETTR so the image was OK straight from the camera.

Note: The aperture used in both images was f/8. It did not record in the EXIF information because I was using a non-CPU lens with an adapter.

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Developed from raw with no exposure adjustment or highlight or shadow recovery

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