selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

I would take that a step further since the camera's suggested exposure level might actually be wrong. Remember the black cat on the coal pile and the white bunny on the snow.

To me, overexposed means lighter that it should be and underexposed darker than it should be - regardless of how or if you metered it.

Rich1939 Loc: Pike County Penna.

To me, overexposed means lighter that it should be and underexposed darker than it should be When displayed where? Lighter/darker in jpeg, lighter/darker on a monitor screen before or after processing

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

Lighter or darker than I want it to look when it's displayed or printed. I would need to process it to fix it.

If it looks good SOOC and I don't need to change anything, it's neither underexposed nor overexposed.

I process all my digital images from raw but more often than not I don't move the Exposure slider.

Rich1939 Loc: Pike County Penna.

'splains a lot

R.G. Loc: Scotland

That's a fair way of assessing exposure. What I was alluding to is that with ETTR you're using the camera's assessment as your starting point. For the sake of simplicity there's something to be said for using the camera's assessment of what the exposure should be, and modifying it as you see fit. There are other ways of doing it, but there's something to be said for making good use of the camera's capabilities, especially if it helps to keep things simple (my favourite approach ).

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

So is Exposure Value - No metering used

Based on what I have learned from RawDigger, I have had more success achieving proper exposure by putting my camera on manual exposure at a fixed ISO and disregarding all of my meters than I ever had trying to get the exposure "right".

All I need to do is watch for blinkies on the high side and a very dark result on the LCD. Otherwise, near base ISO, all of my cameras have enough latitude to handle any daytime landscape with no blown highlights and no noise.

It can't get any simpler than that.

photophile Loc: Lakewood, Ohio, USA

It has impact.

John Howard Loc: SW Florida and Blue Ridge Mountains of NC.

Forgive me for trying to translate again for those like me who find this above my pay grade.

If I use a single point exposure metering, and measure the bright spot in a composition (say a bright cloud), the camera will try to produce that cloud as gray. So I need to (one method) use the exposure compensation in Aperture mode to raise the exposure about 3 stops so the cloud is white as it appears.

If I am in Matrix metering, the same process applies but I am guessing a bit on how much to raise the exposure because the metering will be an average.

What I am not clear on is this. If I have the blinkies turned on and I view the photo on the camera screen, for ETTR I should not see any blinkies. For EBTR I will see blinkies. How much blinkies I can accept depends on the specific camera and I need to test it to see how much I can see versus how much is blown out.

How do I take a meter reading in point or matrix metering and determine for sure it is for example 2 and 1/3 stops above what the camera has metered is acceptable. If I cannot do that, then bracketing is the only solution.

Do I get it or not?

Thanks for all the expertise communicated here.

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

You are on the right track but, to be safe, you should be in manual mode at a fixed ISO so you can force the camera to use the adjusted result you got from spot metering.

Bumping the exposure up about 2 stops from your spot reading should get you close to ETTR and 3 stops should result in EBTR. Any more than that and you are probably screwed.

Watching for blinkies may be an easier approach. If you see none in the result you are at or blow ETTR. A few tiny flashing specs and you are on the cusp - you can probably recover those highlights easily. But if you see a lot of flashing you can't be sure if you have a safe EBTR result or one that can't be used.

Relying on the cameras JPEG histogram is riskier. It's not that accurate.

John Howard Loc: SW Florida and Blue Ridge Mountains of NC.

Thanks. Very helpful. One question more. I never use auto iso. I find in manual I need to guess a bit and check an exposure. Then I would need to adjust to ETTR. If I use aperture priority I can go right to the ETTR with the exposure compensation, which by the way I can do by feel keeping the EVF at my eye. Is that a mistake to use aperture priority?

PeterBergh

Let us, for simplicity, assume my camera has a dynamic range of 10 stops. The way I do it is to single-point meter the bright spot and then decide just how bright I want that bright spot to be. If I want it to be blank white, I would raise the exposure recommended by the meter by five stops (the meter reading recommends an exposure to make the bright spot middle grey). If I want some detail in the bright spot, I would raise the meter-recommended exposure by anything from two to four stops, depending on how much detail I want in the bright spot. I would also meter the dark areas to make sure I don't lose too much detail in them. BTW, this is Zone-System reasoning. This line of reasoning makes it unnecessary to worry about blinkies.

If I want full detail in both shadows and highlights and the brightness range of my subject is greater than my camera can handle, my only choice is to use HDR.

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

A more fundamental question is, "Why do you want to use ETTR?" Peer pressure is not a valid reason. You need to ask yourself, "Does it make my images better?"

In any event, since you are using a D850, you have a much simpler option for implementing ETTR - see Using the Highlight-Weighted Metering Mode. In effect, it gives you ETTR on auto-anything in combination with matrix metering. Several other Nikon models starting with the D810 have this feature. If you use it in conjunction with a modest +EC value you can also accomplish EBTR.

It won't be long before other manufacturers come up with a similar feature. Then all of this talk about how to make it work will go away.

R.G. Loc: Scotland

Manual + Auto ISO + EC gives you full control over the exposure. You can select the aperture you think you need then play off shutter speed against ISO. If you think the camera may be choosing an inappropriate exposure you can use EC to force the exposure higher or lower - or in this case you can use EC to force the camera to ETTR or EBTR.

If you know how much extra raw available dynamic range (ERADR) your camera has you can make safer choices when using EC to force the camera into EBTR. Where ERADR is concerned, each camera has to be assessed individually, but once you've done it you remove the uncertainty that the histogram introduces.

If you like the thought of having data-rich and (to all intents and purposes) noise-free files that will take a lot of pushing and pulling in PP then you'll like ETTR and EBTR. Until we have cameras that give us that kind of file as standard, there is an advantage in using ETTR (as described above). And where ETTR shows its limitations (i.e. when the highlights are already close to the right in a normal exposure as determined by the camera) you can tweak the process by going into EBTR.

Scotty has leading edge cameras that produce good results without having to resort to ETTR or EBTR, and he keeps pushing the idea that ETTR and EBTR don't give that much of an advantage over and above what can be achieved with standard exposures and appropriate post processing. He's right when he says that one day ETTR and EBTR won't be necessary, but we're not there yet, especially if you can't afford the latest and bestest cameras, and if your PP skills are basic.

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

Not quite lading edge. The D610 was a re-release of the D600 which came out in 2012, the Df in 2013 and A7 II in 2014. None of these have highlight weighted metering. They have good dynamic range and 14-bit raw but they are no longer leading edge.

Nikons with highlight-weighted metering include the D5, D850, D810, D750, D500, D7500, Z7 and Z6. They eliminate the problem altogether. They are leading edge.

The ETTR/EBTR approach was developed over 15 years ago as a work-around for crop sensor cameras that used 12-bit raw files.

Most newer sensors using 14-bit raw, even crop sensor cameras, can produce superior images without having to resort to ETTR/EBTR.

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

The only way to demonstrate that is by posting the RawDigger analysis like this.



And include the JPEG SOOC along with it.

For a camera to have a 3 stop gap from the JPEG limit to the raw file limit (16383), JPEG limit would need to be around 2047.

RawDigger is a much simpler way to study this question than by shooting a series of targets at 1/3 stop increments.