Highway 61
Revisited
Completely agree too. Blown highlights are blown and cannot be recovered, because the photonic noise has destroyed all the information which arrived on the sensor. OTOH there'll always be something in the shadows, sometimes at the expense of a bit of electronic noise, but most of the times this won't be very visible now, because of the newer sensors and the newer softwares.
The "expose to the right until you're on the creek edge" saying has to be thrown away.
When you underexpose then recover the shadows while PP the RAW files, you're doing the same thing as setting the ISO up on the camera before shooting.
Kent
Finally at home...
Correct. But sometimes blown highlights are not really "blown", they just look like it on first sight.
willie_901
Veteran
Highlights
Blown highlights are often do turn out to be recoverable from raw files. However it is very common that the color fidelity of is reduced because one of the RGB (usually B) is partially blown. By partially blown I mean a significant number of the pixels fro that region are blown. The most common symptom is blue skies have a cyan hue. This can often be remedied in a minute or so with selective hue adjustments during post-processing. However now the controversial question of exactly was the true, but unknown, sky hue becomes relevant. My solution is to just make very subtle adjustments until the sky hue and luminance look natural. Less is more.
With in-camera JPEGs the likelihood of rescuing partially blown highlight regions is greatly reduced. The information you need to modify the hue(s) is lost forever.
Shadows
Often it is best to simply let shadows be exactly what they were... shadows. The first camera I used where I could selectively push shadows 3 stops caused me to to develop a bad habit – gratuitously pushing shadows. Eventually I realized to be much more subtle or not push them at all.
At the same time sometime one must selectively push underexposed regions of an image to use the maximum analog dynamic range of a camera's data stream. This can be a life saver. There are several issues though. First the low signal-to-noise ratio becomes obvious. Selective noise filtering (a.k.a. 'noise reduction') helps at the expense of detail and micro-contrast. Some raw rendering platforms introduce hue twists when shadows are pushed. This is a more difficult to fix. Most annoying is the fact that underexposed white objects (house trim on a shaded porch in full daylight) in underexposed regions (house trim on a shaded porch in full daylight) would have a natural green color cast from light reflected from trees, and grass. This is different from the M9 green hue problem.
When I did professional interiors photography I used multiple off-camera flashes. The aesthetic I was trying to achieve often meant using the minimum about of flash light and the maximum amount of ambient light. In this case I would intentionally under expose and push global brightness; selectively pull highlight regions and finally selectively push shadow regions in post. Or, the rooms had lovely outdoor views and I had to expose for the bright outdoor light. I didn't use spot metering. I didn't use an external light meter and I didn't use the in-camera histogram. Instead I auto-bracketed exposures by 1/3 tor 2/3 stops using the shutter time. I picked the single exposure that delivered the best compromise between partially blown highlights and shadow SNR. This was both efficient and made my clients happy. The post-production work time was not annoying at all once after a relatively painless learning curve on how to match exposure methods with post-processing techniques.
The fact is every time I upgraded to a camera with an improved data-stream signal-to-noise ratio (which meant a higher dynamic range) maximizing exposure with raw files produced significantly better results. The impact of partially blown highlights and selectively pushing underexposed regions became less of an issue.
The M262
Based on published statistical analysis of the M262's raw-file data, this camera will produce excellent results from raw files when circumstance requires either maximizing exposure or intentional underexposure by one to two stops. But, often one will often have to ignore the light meter and adjust exposure to get the most out of the camera's data stream and, or autobracket exposures to select a single exposure that renders the desired result.
Blown highlights are often do turn out to be recoverable from raw files. However it is very common that the color fidelity of is reduced because one of the RGB (usually B) is partially blown. By partially blown I mean a significant number of the pixels fro that region are blown. The most common symptom is blue skies have a cyan hue. This can often be remedied in a minute or so with selective hue adjustments during post-processing. However now the controversial question of exactly was the true, but unknown, sky hue becomes relevant. My solution is to just make very subtle adjustments until the sky hue and luminance look natural. Less is more.
With in-camera JPEGs the likelihood of rescuing partially blown highlight regions is greatly reduced. The information you need to modify the hue(s) is lost forever.
Shadows
Often it is best to simply let shadows be exactly what they were... shadows. The first camera I used where I could selectively push shadows 3 stops caused me to to develop a bad habit – gratuitously pushing shadows. Eventually I realized to be much more subtle or not push them at all.
At the same time sometime one must selectively push underexposed regions of an image to use the maximum analog dynamic range of a camera's data stream. This can be a life saver. There are several issues though. First the low signal-to-noise ratio becomes obvious. Selective noise filtering (a.k.a. 'noise reduction') helps at the expense of detail and micro-contrast. Some raw rendering platforms introduce hue twists when shadows are pushed. This is a more difficult to fix. Most annoying is the fact that underexposed white objects (house trim on a shaded porch in full daylight) in underexposed regions (house trim on a shaded porch in full daylight) would have a natural green color cast from light reflected from trees, and grass. This is different from the M9 green hue problem.
When I did professional interiors photography I used multiple off-camera flashes. The aesthetic I was trying to achieve often meant using the minimum about of flash light and the maximum amount of ambient light. In this case I would intentionally under expose and push global brightness; selectively pull highlight regions and finally selectively push shadow regions in post. Or, the rooms had lovely outdoor views and I had to expose for the bright outdoor light. I didn't use spot metering. I didn't use an external light meter and I didn't use the in-camera histogram. Instead I auto-bracketed exposures by 1/3 tor 2/3 stops using the shutter time. I picked the single exposure that delivered the best compromise between partially blown highlights and shadow SNR. This was both efficient and made my clients happy. The post-production work time was not annoying at all once after a relatively painless learning curve on how to match exposure methods with post-processing techniques.
The fact is every time I upgraded to a camera with an improved data-stream signal-to-noise ratio (which meant a higher dynamic range) maximizing exposure with raw files produced significantly better results. The impact of partially blown highlights and selectively pushing underexposed regions became less of an issue.
The M262
Based on published statistical analysis of the M262's raw-file data, this camera will produce excellent results from raw files when circumstance requires either maximizing exposure or intentional underexposure by one to two stops. But, often one will often have to ignore the light meter and adjust exposure to get the most out of the camera's data stream and, or autobracket exposures to select a single exposure that renders the desired result.