shooting digital - exposure tipps / guidelines?

[lubitel]

Here are some things I heard or read about shooting with film:

1. "shoot for the shadows, develop for the highlights"

2. Its better to overexpose a negative than underexpose.

3. Slide film is not as exposure-flexible as negative.

I hope I didnt mess up these "truths".


So what are some general rules one can apply to shooting digital? I read that overexposing is a very bad idea, is shooting digital like shooting slide, the exposure must be very accurate? What are your tips / experiences with digital? Did switching from film to digital change your exposure habits?

Thank you!

 

[dkapp]

I just sold all my digital gear, but I shot with it for about a year.

Keep the ISO as low as possible. Some camera high ISO is complete garbage.

Don't overexpose. You'll never get highlights back. Holding highlights is digitals weak area. Reds blow easy on most sensors.

Watch for underexposing. If you pull the detail out of the shadow area, it will be very noisy.

So basically, shoot it like slide film. It has about the same dynamic rage. Just have fun with it and watch your histogram.

What camera are you using? You might be able to get more specific pointers too.

Dave

 

[dexdog]

I have owned and used 4 different digital cameras from 3 makers over the past 5 years, and I think that these rules still apply in general, although based on my experience, the ranges of these factors are different for digital cameras as a whole, than for film as whole.

For example, as discussed previously in this forum and as noted on other sites such as The Luminous Landscape, the sensors in digital cameras are usually capable of recordng a range of about 5 EV, whereas most films are capable of 7 EV. Consequently, one would have less latitude with over-exposure on a digital than with film. This was particularly true of my first digital, an Olmpus P&S (C2020 Zoom), and is still true to a lesser extent with either of my current Canons. This might have some relevance to item #2- treat the digital like slide film, and be careful about the over-exposure.

Per item #3, I would rank digital cameras as group as much like slide film, and less like negative film.

Per item #1, my experience with the digitals I have used is that I have been amazed repeatedly at the detail that is recorded in shadow areas of digital images that a moderate amount of processing in Photoshop or similar programs can reveal. I have had less luck trying to coax details out of over-exposed areas with software programs.

My $0.02...I amm interested to see what others think.

 

[Panoramix]

Hi, I'm only starting with digital photography but I find the 'histogram' very useful. Here is a good discussing of this function.

http://luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/understanding-histograms.shtml

The trick is not to overexpose or underexpose. Digital seems to be as tricky as exposing slides. The result may look dull but you can fix it in Photoshop without loosing detail in the bright areas.

 

[Kin Lau]

Use the histogram. With digital, it's almost the same as shooting slides, shoot for the highlights.

If you have a RAW mode, then use it for a while, it's a very handy learning tool. With many DSLR's and some digicam's, that will give you almost 1-1.5 stops of over and under exposure leaway, and you'll quickly learn what your camera is capable of.

 

[lubitel]

Great pointers! Thanks. I am eagerly awaiting a 350D (aka rebel xt).

 

[GeneW]

Good advice here. Expose like slide film. Use RAW mode if possible. You can bring detail out of the shadows, but not out of overexposed hilights. RAW mode gives you the chance to make after-the-fact exposure corrections (within reason) and white balance decisions.

One additional thing -- if you're a pictorialist. You can, on a tripod, take several exposures and combine them into a single image. The dynamic range of this approach is astonishing, if done well. It obviously only works for static subjects ...

You can simulate multiple exposures from a single RAW image as well.

Gene

 

[sf]

rules for shooting digital :

rules for shooting digital :

Master Photoshop. It is the one and only necessary darkroom tool.

Use a tripod for important shots and shoot copies of the same shot at different exposures, and use Photoshop to "band-aid" blown highlights or lost shadows with the clone/band-aid tool.

use the lowest ISO setting you can.

Make use of your ISO capabilities too, never forget that you can change ISO whenever you feel the need, unlike film.

Use good lenses - to avoid the color shift effects of some lenses. Nikon's entire range is nice, and Canon, but avoid Vivitar and Sigma when you can.

Always know your white balance - since you have the ability to adapt to any white balance on the fly with a digital, do it.

If you are shooting a still life or landscape, you can fight back the effects of noise by overlapping several shots. That will "blend" noise out to some degree. It works.

Keep a can of air around for blowing the sensor clean (NEVER use your breath, I've seen it done - yikes) - if you change lenses alot in the field, you will find it necessary to blow the sensor clean often.

Carry extra storage, 1 GB (300+ images on my D70), seems like a lot, but when you shoot at "digital" pace, those 300 will go by fast.

Learn how to "batch process" files into size requirements. I have a client that wants the work I did for him to be in two forms : printable form (high quality at 1.5 MB), and emailable form (batch processed down to 100K or lower). Batch processing is necessary when you have 500 pics and they all need to be shrunk.

#1 rule of Digital Photography : shoot often. It costs nothing but time, and you can fine tune all your photographic skills at very low cost. Bring it everywhere you go, and take all the pictures you would have let pass with a film camera because of cost.

OH YEAH ! I almost forgot. Backup everything in triplicate. Make CDs, DVDs, keep them on hard drives, print some out. Make lots of copies because the computers will try to lose them when they can.

That about does it

 

[bmattock]

Just a tip - something I picked up along the way. True for film scans too. When you first get the file to your computer, mark it as read-only. Any changes you make to it (crop, levels, etc) are made to a copy of the file. By making the original file read-only, you ensure that you can't easily overwrite the original file.

I use a file-naming convention that tells me what I have. For example, IMGP1234.JPG (or PEF, if I'm shooting RAW on my Pentax) is the original unique name of a single photo - never to be repeated. The camera keeps track of numbering for me. If I process it in any way, the copy of prepended as such 'PS_IMGP1234.JPG' to indicate that I've photoshopped it. If I've made several copies of it - some larger, some smaller, then I postpend that information as such 'PS_IMGP1234_LARGE.JPG'. There are times when I batch-rename an entire directory to indicate something more useful, such as 'christmast_2005_at_home_001.jpg' but I realize when I do that I am giving up the easiest route to trace back to the source file if I ever need to.

Hope you find this helpful.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

 

[Kin Lau]

There are times when I batch-rename an entire directory to indicate something more useful, such as 'christmast_2005_at_home_001.jpg' but I realize when I do that I am giving up the easiest route to trace back to the source file if I ever need to.

Neat trick that works on my Canon, but it should work on your Pentax as well since the jpeg numbering seems to be fairly standardized, is that the EXIF data has a line for "Image Number". The last 4 digits should be the original image number.

 

[bmattock]

Neat trick that works on my Canon, but it should work on your Pentax as well since the jpeg numbering seems to be fairly standardized, is that the EXIF data has a line for "Image Number". The last 4 digits should be the original image number.

Seems like a good idea, I'll check into it - thanks!

Also, I should mention - since I run Linux and program in Perl, I have a perl script that runs every night and inserts my copyright into the JFIF and EXIF 'Author' and 'Copyright' lines. That includes images I've scanned from film. These days, ya gotta be careful.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

 

[Sean Reid]

Much of what I'd say has been mentioned above but my recommendations are:

1. Shoot in RAW esp. when exp. is tricky. Good RAW software can sometimes pull one stop of highlight detail or as much as two stops shadow detail from a 350D RAW file. But...keep in mind, the higher the ISO, the more noise you'll be bringing up as well when you lift the values in the shadows.

2. If you want to preserve highlight detail (sometimes one doesn't), expose so that the histogram "mountains" end just before the right edge of the graph.

Cheers,

Sean

 

[lubitel]

Wow Folks! So many good tips. Organizing the work is of course another problem, since I am not much of an organizer, that will be my next challenge after the exposure and PS work.

Good lenses. Well, I have a Sigma hyperzoom 28-200 f 3.5-5.6, which is sufficient for many of my purposes, and I want to purchase a Canon 50mm 1.8 as my "good" portrait lens. I heard its of very good quality and since I don't usually use a flash that f1.8 is going to be very usefull.

thanks for your help.

 

[Gary R]

Something else to point out is that often images straight from a DSLR do not have as "finished" a look as your standard P&S camera. Be prepared to either change the in-camera settings or post process.
As for organization, if you use a program like iView media pro or Adobe Lightroom you can batch rename all the files using several standard formats provided by the program or create your own. I would suggest starting with the year, then month and day followed by a shoot name. My files end up looking something like this: 2006-12-20_(Client name)_(job or subject name)_001. This way when you look at your archive all the images will be in chronological order. If you start with the month, then March 2006 and March 2007 will end up together which might cause some confusion.
With lightroom, the original photos can also be automatically backed up to another folder or drive as well during import. You can also shoot RAW and export the photos to jpeg files fairly quickly with this program so you can have the best of both worlds, a RAW backup and a jpeg file to edit/post/etc.

Of course, there are many ways to do this, I just thought I would throw this out there in case it might help you. I hope you enjoy your new camera and shooting digitally.

 

[350D_user]

Master Photoshop. It is the one and only necessary darkroom tool.

GIMP is a free download, and is just as capable. But if its interface seems unfriendly, try GIMPshop.

Keep a can of air around for blowing the sensor clean (NEVER use your breath, I've seen it done - yikes) - if you change lenses alot in the field, you will find it necessary to blow the sensor clean often.

That can also dislodge dust and end up putting the dust back onto the sensor. Use sensorswabs instead.

... sensorswabs also won't discharge propellant onto the sensor.

OH YEAH ! I almost forgot. Backup everything in triplicate. Make CDs, DVDs, keep them on hard drives, print some out. Make lots of copies because the computers will try to lose them when they can.

Bad filesystems can cause data corruption. Run scandisk and defrag on the HDD's frequently.