Godfrey, thanks for the explanation. Due to a hardware issue, I'm not yet shooting RAW. Your explanation made sense. I probably won't really appreciate it until I shoot RAW for myself.
Thanks Kenneth Waller ----- Original Message ----- From: "Godfrey DiGiorgi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, May 20, 2005 3:15 PM Subject: Re: Speaking of exposure.... > > On May 20, 2005, at 11:45 AM, Kenneth Waller wrote: > > >> Don's exposure is pretty darn close for RAW > >> > > Don't know what that means. Either the exposure is right or it > > isn't. His image didn't appear to have the correct exposure as > > posted. His histogram seemed to agree with that. There were white > > shirts in the image and I assume there were black features in there > > somewhere. I also assumed that he wanted the whites white and the > > blacks black. If the exposure was properly captured, the whites > > should look white and the blacks should look black. I don't > > understand how the capture mode (Raw, JPEG, Tiff etc) has anything > > to do with proper exposure at time of capture. > > > > Can you educate me? > > The sensor sees light in a linear gamma space, not as your eye or > film sees it. The brightest f/stop's range is 1/2 the total > quantization space, etc, so the RAW format file, pre-correction, > tends to have most of the interesting values down low on the scale. > Processing the RAW data properly is the trick ... RAW data is NOT a > rendered image in RGB. > > If this scene was processed to this appearance by the default values > set in the RAW metadata, it could have stood another stop or so of > exposure. Then you use the RAW converter to correct and redistribute > the tonal curve into the proper space. It's not too bad though, as it > has plenty of data to work with in the dark areas. The several bright > areas and possibly the meters response to the difficult lighting mix > contributed to fool the meter a bit. > > I'd suggest, in the future, making a couple of exposures and checking > them on the in-camera display histogram then tweaking the EV > compensation setting to compensate if you want to use matrix metering > automation. But as it is, you have a good, usable exposure to create > a photograph with. It needs color correction and tonal correction, > that's all. > > Godfrey > > > >
