On May 23, 2005, at 8:15 AM, Cory Papenfuss wrote:
What I am suggesting is learning the appropriate exposure
techniques required to take the picture you want without depending
on post picture technology.
The technique of shoot and hope you get it right is what people
who don't know exposure do.
The educated photographer shoots and knows he got it right.
This is what I am suggesting.
Don't take it as a flame, but then what is bracket exposure for if
real photographers know they got it right before they even shoot?
One of the biggest advantage of digital (for me anyway) is that I
have a much shorter (and cheaper) schedule for learning than with
film. Rather than have to take good notes, wait for film to be
developed, and see the results (days or weeks), I can see the
diagnostics and have a much quicker feedback loop.
I agree with both of you. The best images will be from captures,
whether digital or film, that are "properly" exposed. What "properly
exposed" means is different for film and digital sensors, however,
and scene dependent as always.
If you are saving digital captures as JPEG images, you have to learn
the dynamic range and characteristics of the camera you're working
with to get the best out of it, post processing is constrained by the
limited overhead of a 8bits per channel. Camera setup and proper
exposure, bracketing, is essential. If you are saving digital
captures as RAW format, you still need to learn digital sensor
characteristics for proper exposure but you have a lot more data to
work with in order to express the final rendering. In either case,
the on-camera display of histogram and highlight saturation is only
really useful as a guide. You have to learn what they present in
order to use them as evaluations of the exposure.
If you are capturing images on film, you don't know how close you are
until long after the exposure is made so you have to think about
exposure more seriously up front *AND* bracket a lot more to be sure.
Godfrey
