rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

Michael, it's an acronym for Expose To The Right
--Bob

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

Careful, Linda. Chemtrails are a government conspiracy. Their purpose is to distract us from all of the other government conspiracies we miss while paying attention to some smoke in the sky.
--Bob

Geez I wish they had a tongue in cheek emoji.

rcarol

A little harsh on Bob, aren't you?

pentaxion Loc: Daytona Beach

Yeah, sorry. I get your all's points, but in this case it was a night shot at 25 seconds with a very dim porch light. I was just trying to see how far I could push it. Had I tried ETTR it would have required about a 12 to 13 minute exposure. What effect would that have on noise?

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

Zzzzzzzz, "Chemtrails", perhaps on a farm. Yes, I know the common chemical for what we see from jets, "Dihydrogen Oxide"!

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

The EXIF information on the original shot shows 1 second at ISO 100 taken with a K-S2 which is a crop body - is that correct? If it is, you should have been able to shoot 3 stops higher ISO (800) or 4 stops (1600), either of which would have been a better choice than underexposing. What are your thoughts?

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

Yes, not all of us. Don't generalize so much. I was trying to figure out his issue and his problem with posting the images. He and I also Private messaged a bit about our cameras. There are probably a couple issues with his posted images and I mean in addition to exposures he was discussing. He is still learning the UHH interface.

Alafoto Loc: Montgomery, AL

Commonly known as water.

whatdat Loc: Del Valle, Tx.

Thanks, Bob. I probably should have known that.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Edit: my EXIF viewer on my IPad must be lying. I opened it in PS and it shows 25 seconds (as you reported), but the ISO was, in fact, 100, so my recommendation still goes - ISO 800 or 1600 instead of 4+ stops underexposed.

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

lamiaceae, it's Dihydrogen Monoxide. http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html
--Bob

zzzynick Loc: Colorado

I have seen this reaction in more than one post. Jerks are jerks no matter the subject

traderjohn Loc: New York City

Given all the BS along with pompous and arrogant responses do you think anyone here is going to help you?

Whuff Loc: Marshalltown, Iowa

I’m not real well versed on ETTR, so take anything I say with a grain of salt. I can only speak about what I have experience in, but what I have found is that any time I have an image that’s underexposed, I can bring the shadows up in the raw image but doing so pushes the noise level to a point where I’m usually dissatisfied with it. On occasion I have overexposed and since I always shoot raw, I can bring the exposure down to an acceptable level with very little added noise. That alone is enough evidence (for me at least) that ETTR has something going for it.

Walt

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

ETTR may or may not be necessary or helpful, depending upon your camera and your techniques.

I know from processing a lot of images that when I use my Canon DSLRs in Evaluative Metering mode out in broad daylight with any of the auto exposure modes, that they tend to underexpose slightly. So I generally set them with +1/3 stop ETTR. Sometimes +2/3 stop when shooting moderately backlit subjects. This is in addition to any Exposure Compensation that might be needed due to subject tonality.

ETTR only applies to AE modes. Not to manual. I don't set any when using my separate incidence meter to determine the camera settings.

I think the reason I need to use ETTR is because Canon biases their metering systems a little to "the dark side". I noticed that even when I was using their film cameras years ago. Maybe it's related to slide shooting, where blown out highlights are more of a problem.

Original poster is shooting with a Pentax camera, and I have no idea whether ETTR is appropriate or not. You'll have to experiment with your camera and your techniques... If you don't run a series of controlled tests, you can simply observe when post-processing, if you are having to dial up exposure in a lot of your images. I find that I have to "dial up" about 90% of my shots slightly in LR... usually between +.33 and +.66... if I don't set some ETTR with my cameras. This is based upon post-processing many tens of thousands of images from the cameras I'm currently using (over the years there's been some variation in what was needed with different models... newer cameras are much better dealing with noise and because of that I'm less concerned about having to boost exposure in PP).

"Blown out highlights" are actually far less of a problem with digital than most people think. Image "noise" is usually more of a problem, when you have to brighten image in post-processing, due to under-exposure.

With high ISO images, in particular, in the past I've been more inclined to slightly over-expose, then "pull" exposure back. That made for better images. But my latest cameras are so much better dealing with noise that I no longer do that.

In fact, your computer monitor is probably the reason your image highlights appear blown out. I haven't seen any monitor able to display the full dynamic range of a digital image. They all clip both highlights and shadows. When I make a print from an image (using smooth matte paper and a high quality, 8 color inkjet) there is always noticeably more detail both in shadows and highlights, than I see on my calibrated computer screen. (This is dynamic range.... not color gamut: my monitor can display sRGB fully and nearly all Adobe RGB).

So highlights may not actually be blown out. It may well be that they'd look fine in a print... they're just clipped when displayed on a backlit computer monitor with limited DR.