Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

I shoot raw, but I don't apply a universal exposure comp to a matrix reading, if I recall the person who posted this claimed. I will use the camera's spot meter and add 1.5 stops to the measurement of highlights in which I wish to retain detail. What I do is ETTR, I am not sure what the other guy is doing. With his subject matter he may be able to get away with this approach, but I think narrowing the area that is read and basing exposure choices on that will probably yield more consistent results in ALL settings.

gessman Loc: Colorado

Thanks for sharing your exposure technique here. It sounds like you wandered across the same comment. Did you happen to make a note of the source and who the people were who participated in the conversation. It's even more than barely possible that I totally misunderstood what was said. I'm flogging myself for not paying more attention to the article. If it comes to you where you saw it, would you please share that with me so I can go back and try to make more sense of it, if I can. I'm going to try to do some experimenting with this whole idea. Not sure I'll figure anything out but I'm going to give it a shot.

gessman Loc: Colorado

Thanks to everyone who commented in this thread. Sorry I opened this thread so unsure of exactly what I was thinking about. Maybe Gene51 paid more attention to the article and can refer us back to it.

Bipod

Thanks for the kind feedback.

It's true people can go off and do their own thing--but only if they can get the
equipment and supplies they need. No company is going to make a camera
because you or I want it. It will get made only if millions of people want it.

This is a big change. I remember a UHH post from a woman who had a "4 x 5"
camera made for her -- including a photo of the (very beautiful) camera.

But most of today's digital cameas use big custom chips (ASICs): Canon calls
its DIGIC, Sony has BIONZ, and Nikon has EXPEED. The captial investment
required to create a new ASIC is tens of millions of dollars. Nobody's going
to make one unless they can sell thousands and thousands of cameras.

I own many cameras for which I can no longer buy film (either roll or sheet).
I cannot make film stock or film: it requiers large, specialized equipment with
very close tolearances. Fortunately, sales of B&W film are booming (though
you wouldn't knwo it from UHH).

But other then film and lenses, if necessary, it is possible to make everything else
one needs for traditional photography: camera, developer, stop, fixer, enlarger, and
paper. Moreover, mechanical and electro-mechanical cameras can be maintained
and repaired fairly easily.

Photography is inherently optical, but it's only eletrical, electronic or chemical if
you want it to be.

The price of using digital technology is total depencence on camera manufactuers,
printer manufactuers, computer manufacturers, and their supply chains. But another
part of the price is extreme complexity: believe me, firmware for an embedded system
is complex, and ASICs are microprocessors are unbelievably complex.

Currently, only three types of photographic (e.g, non-industrial, non-security) digital
cameras are being produced:
* DSLRs
* mirroless with a screen on the back
* mirrorless with a screen inside (EVF)

That's not a lot of choices. If people continue to be lead around by the nose by marketing,
the DSLR may go away. The only camearas with opical viewfinders anymore are DLSRs.
So if they go away, so do optical viewfinders.

We live in a time of reduced choices and diminishing expectations. This is covered up by
golly-gee-whiz computer gadgetry and half-baked automation and a paid cheering section.

If someone claimed to have a portrait-painting machine, people would laugh.
But an automatic portrait-taking camera seems possible to the some people:
AF, AE, AISO..... Yeah, you can take drivers license photos that way.

A photographer is an essential ingredient in photography. The more closely the photographer
controls the process, the better the result can be.

But what Joe Consumer wants is easy and convenient. And his Uncle Bob just
likes fancy gadgets. So that's the direction the industry is going.

Nobody now alive knows how to cast bronze as well as the Shang Dynasty did.
And in not too many years, nobody alive will know how to take a good fine
art photograph. And life will go...just as it would without good artists or good
musicians. But the US no longer leads the world in photography, as it
did in the 1920s though 1970s.

Americans think they are individualists...but they are now corporatists. They drink
Coke, eat Whoppers, smoke Camels...and think that it's all their idea. And now
the ads and paid influencers are telling them to shoot mirrorless...

billnikon Loc: Pennsylvania/Ohio/Florida/Maui/Oregon/Vermont

When I shoot white birds in flight (example would be Snowy Egret) and to get detail in the feathers I shoot Raw and underexpose by at least 1 to 3 stops to get feather detail. Anything over exposed would blow out all the detail.

anotherview Loc: California

He might apply this technique in a controlled environment like a studio.

Under field conditions, however, he would have to consider both changing and unchanging variables affecting exposure, as a general rule.

cameraf4 Loc: Delaware

To me, this guy hits the nail on the head. The OP did not say what the "seasoned pro (salt? pepper?)" is metering on or if he is using spot metering. srt's reasoning is sound - meter only on white and place it where it should be in Ansel's Zone System.

Notorious T.O.D. Loc: Harrisburg, North Carolina

Not sure why you would constantly over exposure but I guess it would depend on what you are shooting and the metering method you are using. I can do as Gene states and spot meter on the brightest area I wish to retain data on in a scene and comfortably expose this area by slightly over 2 stops without losing data. This is based on calibration of my camera to my Sekonic meter using their software. But the key to me is that you are metering on the brightest area of highlights and the meter is looking to define that as 18 percent gray. If you did it using matrix metering of the whole scene you would get very different results. But doing what Gene and Bob say does work in my experience too.

1grumpybear

Well written.
I will try to simplify. Profile your camera. By profiling your camera you will know where you lose texture to left and to the right. (ETTR or ETTL) Depending on what you are shooting you will know how much you can push it.

traderjohn Loc: New York City

Ok so "the pro" is not a "seasoned pro" He is a false pro. There was no mention of he shooting in jpg.

imagemeister Loc: mid east Florida

Yes, it is - as well as shooting raw in general !

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

On its face value, it has merit. However, there is a lot being left out of this statement. For ETTR to work best, spot metering should be used along with spot metering on the very brightest part of the scene. Secondly, one needs to know how their camera reacts to the exposure being pushed. I use ETTR with The Zone System almost 100% of the time. However, that was after extensive testing and profiling the camera and various lenses I use.

I recently purchased a "new" camera. I've yet to actually use it to photograph anything but exposure charts. I need to know how the camera responds to additional exposure. What I don't agree with in the statement is a fixed amount of additional exposure. That should be determined by the scene and the desired placement of the high luminance values.
--Bob

anotherview Loc: California

One could instead simply consult the histogram to see where the exposure values lie. And then adjust settings accordingly.

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

I can, but with reservations. See my thread on Severe underexposure.

Note that this image was underexposed about 4 stops but there was still a lot of information that could be recovered in the shadows:



It was taken with a full frame camera that has a wide DR of a scene with a relatively narrow DR. This was a convenient pairing of the camera's DR with the scene's DR.

As I stated in the thread, so much underexposure is not a safe practice. However, with modern cameras it's safer to underexpose a little than to overexpose and risk blowing the highlights. If you don't know what you are doing, ETTR is not a safe practice.

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

The histogram reveals the values based on the camera processed jpg and not the RAW image. Thus, the histogram values can be misleading.
--Bob