An Exposure Question...

af_thefragile

To overexpose or underexpose? Thats the questions...
Especially taking landscape images with a high dynamic range. Is it preferable to overexpose to image so that you get all the detail in the land but end up with a blown out sky or is it better to underexpose so that you can protect the highlights (clouds detail and all in the sky) but lose detail in the shadows (dark land).

So what do you guys reckon is a better thing to do while taking landscape pictures. To overexpose the image or underexpose it....?

Thanks...

melekalikimaka

expose correctly... shoot in raw... nearly 2 stops either side to play with then

punchdrunk

use bracketing

lukeod

Good question - trying to get the picture on the camera rather than PC. Personally I'm a fan of reducing exposure a lot, but its preference really. For detail in the sky on landscapes you can of course use ND grad filters...

CabanSail

Shoot RAW.

If you are not going the HDR route then Overexpose to get the detail in the Shadows. Adjust the highlights in PP.

You have a few stops of detail in the RAW data to play with, however if you are trying to pull detail out of the shadows then you can get noise, which you wont get from pulling back the highlights.

af_thefragile

^Aah, thanks CabanSail, that was kinda the answer i was looking for...!
For most pictures i take, i don't feel its worth spending the time going down the HDR route so i was looking for the best and fastest way to get it good on the camera and with minimal PP i can have a decent pic.

Haven't tried my hand at HDR yet though, should try it sometime soon.. Now that i have Lightroom... Still gotta figure it out how to do it tough...



Cheers, i don't have a grad filter and to minimize the time i spend in front of the computer, i'm trying to get it just right in the camera.
I did take a few shots the other day and i realised i lost a lot of unrecoverable detail in sky when i overexposed the pics but on underexposing i lost massive detail in the land. And i didn't quite like the comprise the camera gave me either.

I guess bracketing is a good solution. I don't know why i didn't think of it before...!

Anouilh

I found the discussion here helpful:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055521546

Also, a lot of photographers do spend a lot of time post-processing:

http://www.daviddugan.com/blog/2008/06/a-more-dramatic-sky.html

The only tip I can offer to cut down on time spent at the computer is to use a high f-stop, which seems to make clouds more vivid. However, depending on the time of day, the resulting photos can end up a bit dark or over-contrasty.

Mr. Grieves

af_thefragile wrote: »

Haven't tried my hand at HDR yet though, should try it sometime soon.. Now that i have Lightroom... Still gotta figure it out how to do it tough...

If you have Lightroom 2, you can use the graduated filter tool over on the right. For a simple bright sky/dark foreground, it's very effective. I find increasing the contrast as well as reducing the exposure is good.

I would suggest exposing in the middle. Overexposing will result in less noise after you've made your adjustments, but if you accidentally push the highlights too far, they're gone.

Bracketing is a useful safety measure, or for combining the resulting exposures.

Anouilh wrote: »

The only tip I can offer to cut down on time spent at the computer is to use a high f-stop, which seems to make clouds more vivid. However, depending on the time of day, the resulting photos can end up a bit dark or over-contrasty.

You mean to underexpose. The aperture chosen won't effect the clouds, unless it's chosen in order to under-/overexpose, by keeping ISO/shutter speed constant.

mrmac

Do you keep an eye on your histogram? I've only recently started paying any attention to the histogram, and now I nearly have a look as a matter of habit. It can quickly tell you if you're losing detail at either end of your dynamic range, if you see high spikes at either end.
Have a search for it, loads of info on-line.

af_thefragile

Mr. Grieves wrote: »

If you have Lightroom 2, you can use the graduated filter tool over on the right. For a simple bright sky/dark foreground, it's very effective. I find increasing the contrast as well as reducing the exposure is good.

I would suggest exposing in the middle. Overexposing will result in less noise after you've made your adjustments, but if you accidentally push the highlights too far, they're gone.

Bracketing is a useful safety measure, or for combining the resulting exposures.

Yup, its the 30day trial version of Lr2 and I'm loving the grad filter tool. I've been using it a good bit for my pics lately. It works pretty well.
Used it here and got a decent result:


And i did realise that if i overexposed too much i completely lost details in the highlights, pulling back the exposure made no difference to the blown out sky. So probably overexposing one stop and using a grad filter might be a decent idea if i don't wanna go down the HDR route.

Anouilh

http://www.juzaphoto.com/eng/articles/landscape_photography.htm


The site above has some helpful technical details.

I use a fast shutter speed and at least f13 to capture details, which means, contrary to the advice given in juzaphoto, choosing iso 400.

I have not technical training and do not know how professionals approach landscapes.

This photo was post processed to enhance the clouds and, to my amazement, made it into the Flickr "Explore" system.
[/IMG]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3555/3370557679_c7cf4ef3e0.jpg

Valentia

I remember reading that it is best to expose to the right. When looking at your histogram make sire that it is weighted so tht it is mostly on the right without crossing the edge. This achieves what has been said above. There is a fairly old, but still relevant, piece by Thomas Knoll of Photoshop fame here on Luminous Landscapes.

smelltheglove

I have to be honest I dont look at my histogram, if the picture looks good, that is all that matters to me. I would expose as well as possible for both together rather than one or the other and pull back the detail on pp on the sky and brighten up the darks also, although like cabainsail said, if you underexpose you will get noise in the darks so you need to be careful with this.

If unsre do 2 exposures and use the sky from one and landscape from the other. I believe in taking the best picture possible with minimal effort in pp but it is true that a lot of top photogs do a LOT of pp, they just dont spend hours on end with different pics as they are more likely to choose one good one than 10 ok ones.

Brndn

If you shoot in RAW then I find it works well to crank down your exposure compensation until no highlights get blown out, then bring the darker areas back in using the 'fill light' slider on photoshop's RAW converter. Though this usually results in a histogram more to the left, which if you subscribe to the 'shoot to the right' policy, is kind of wrong :P. Alternatively, shoot to the right and to the left and patch the two together using a layer mask and a grad filter function

mrmac

"It's just a jump to the left
And then a step to the right
Put your hands on your hips
You bring your knees in tight
But it's the pelvic thrust
That really drives you insane
Let's do the time warp again!
Let's do the time warp again!"

No, seriously, so long as your histogram is not bunched up at either end of your range, you'll have captured enough detail to adjust your image PP. It's when you see info being captured at the extremes of your histogram that you know you've cooked it!

P.S. best to try to get the image right by setting up your camera, rather than your PC

Valentia

smelltheglove wrote: »

I have to be honest I dont look at my histogram, if the picture looks good, that is all that matters to me.

To be honest I don't understand that. I'm talking about at the time of taking the photo, not afterwards in an editor. The whole point is to save yourself as much hassle as you can at the time of exposure. If you are talking about the picture looking good in the little LCD on the camera I don't think that would be a very good idea at all. The opposite TBH.

@mrmac: If you read the article I linked to it actually recommends that you bunch up the histogram on one side, on the right. It makes good sense to me.

It fits in perfectly with what CabainSail was saying really.

mrmac

Valentia - I read that article about two weeks ago, as a result of trying to get used to the histogram experience. Found it useful, and clearly written. Yet I find that it all depends on what end result you're looking for. As Brndn pointed out, depending on weither you're looking for a high or low key result, your histogram will change as you alter your exposure. Plus, as I like B&W portraits, I often choose to under-expose, as that's a result I happen to like.

But I'd highly recommend people to try to understand the info they can learn from the histogram, and then decide what setting Vs results they like best.

Valentia

I agree 100%. It's only in the context of landscapes as the OP mentioned that I'm talking about. I should have said that :rolleyes:. There are many many cases where exposing to the right would not work. I'm thinking of scenes that have a relatively uniform light with maybe a touch of highlights and dark areas.

charybdis

Valentia wrote: »

I remember reading that it is best to expose to the right. When looking at your histogram make sire that it is weighted so tht it is mostly on the right without crossing the edge. This achieves what has been said above. There is a fairly old, but still relevant, piece by Thomas Knoll of Photoshop fame here on Luminous Landscapes.

Bingo.

Difficult to apply, but correct.

The schools of thought on the subject are thusly: you should underexpose to preserve detail in the highlights; you should overexpose to preserve detail in the shadows & because the sensor noise increases precipitously as luminance decreases. The rational combination of these is the strategy that Valentia advocated.

Realistically, you're probably going to have to make sacrifices somewhere in many situations and will have to choose whether you want detail in the shadows or detail in the highlights. You can mitigate this problem by increasing the dynamic range of your final exposure; this can be achieved by: using RAW, using film, shooting bracketed exposures and going down the whole HDR & tone mapping route.

RAW files generally have one or two stops more dynamic range than their equivalent JPEGs but, frustratingly, the histogram displayed by your camera will most likely represent the histogram of the JPEG equivalent of your RAW file and thus is an imperfect tool for checking exposure.

Mr. Grieves

charybdis wrote: »

RAW files generally have one or two stops more dynamic range than their equivalent JPEGs but, frustratingly, the histogram displayed by your camera will most likely represent the histogram of the JPEG equivalent of your RAW file and thus is an imperfect tool for checking exposure.

I've noticed that: what appears blown on the LCD often isn't, so it's hard to trust it. Exposing in the middle or bracketing are always the safest options.