Do you shoot to the right?

oshead

The first time I heard of this method or something similar was a year ago @ one of Guy Gowans talks. He said that generally, he tends to over expose by f/+⅔ or so depending on the conditions. As I remember, he didnt go into much more detail as to why, except that the RAW images were easier to work with that way.

At the time I had a Canon 400D (still have as a spare). It seemed to under expose by a full stop on 90% of my shots. I put it down to lack of experience/ability with the camera and thus spent a lot of time in Lightroom trying to 'fix' them. The Histogram nearly always had more data to the left (darkest) side. More often than not, I would end up with very noisy images. Totally unusable for my main porpose, printing. Further research into the problem revealed to me that other people on the InterWeb were having the same issues with the 400D.

I began to compensate for me &/or my cameras underexposure problem by upping the exposure at shoot time by f/+⅔ to f/+1 stop. This seemed to solve the noisy underexposure problem. Now 10% or so of my shots were badly over exposed. But of those 10%, I seemed to be able to recover a lot more of the shots. I felt this was hardly the ideal solution but, one I could live with. If there's one thing I could take from this period it is that I've learned to use Lightroom and Photoshop quite well.

When the EOS 40D came out I went straight out to buy it. Its an excellent camera IMO and within a day or two, to my suprise, i'd almost forgotten how to use the 400D. Suffice to say, using the 40D is much more intuitive, making it easier to use. It didn't suffer from the under exposure problems i'd recently been experiencing on my now 'defunct' 400D. So I didn't feel the need to over expose the images. It also fitted my grip better. All in all, I was (still am) very pleased with the purchase.

IMO my images got better (a little). As always there is definate room for improvement but I was progressing. Still some images were a litte under exposed but not really a major concern until recently.

I had been doing a bit of reading on various photography sites namely luminous-landscape.com. Among others, the articles I read were in relation to exposure & mostly how to read the in camera histogram review.

If I could paraphrase the articles:
Most modern digital cameras are able to distingush approx a 5 f/stop range of exposure. Whereas people can distinguish approx 10 f/ stops. Reading the histogram the darkest tones are on the left and the brightest on the right. Any thing beyond the right or the left sides is whats known as clipping (This I already knew). The part of the article that got me was this. The stop on the histogram furthest to the right, ie. the brightest stop contains the same amount of digital data as all the other four darker stops to the left. Basically going down each stop reduces by half the remainder amount of data that can be collected by the camera. So if the brightests f/stop weights in @ 2048 the next down is 1024, then 512, then 256 and finally 128.

In essence, if you don't utilize the f/stop furthest to the right of your camera then you will loose half the available data of the image. Simple as that. I was gobsmacked. It made sense to me since in Lightroom I'd live by what the Histogram said.

I've started to put this methodology into action. After every shot I check the histogram of the image to make sure most of the data is to the right without clipping the edge. In this form the image looks totally unuasable. But when I import them to Lightroom it's a simple thing to recover the image back to acceptable levels. From the camera, the RAW image file size has grown form averaging around 10mb to be anything up to 17mb. Thats all the proof need. Yes indeed the camera is collecting more digital data.

I have to say my images have improved yet again. Less noise and significantly more detail.

So I ask the question again.... Do you shoot to the right?

Dave OS

kjt

That was a good read, thanks for that Dave. I never knew this before. You say

In this form the image looks totally unuasable. But when I import them to Lightroom it's a simple thing to recover the image back to acceptable levels.

To what extreme are the photo's "totally unusable"? Could you post a shot straight from raw and then one you have processed? I'd love to see.


Thanks,
Kyle

oshead

I'm baby sitting right now with a 19 month old baby who demands 100% attention. Maybe I'll have a chance later.

For now here are a couple of links for further reading. I should have put them in the original post.
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/understanding-histograms.shtml
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/expose-right.shtml

Dave OS

quilmore

I did try it, but I didn't get good results on skintones
but it is very efficient on almost everything else
in short: aim at the shaddows, the highlights will come up later

also, the D300 has about 1 EV more of highlight data than the D200

oshead

quilmore wrote: »

in short: aim at the shaddows, the highlights will come up later

Actually, now that you mention it. I think I've heard that phrase somewhere before. I guess it just didn't click with me at the time.

sunny2004

How is that babysitting coming on ? did you get a break or is she a slave driver;)

Dink

I think this fella may be on the same lines to your post Oshed.. I had bookmarked it earlier in the year, waiting for the day I understood it!!

http://www.petercox.ie/expose_right.php

Mellor

oshead wrote: »

I'm baby sitting right now with a 19 month old baby who demands 100% attention. Maybe I'll have a chance later.

For now here are a couple of links for further reading. I should have put them in the original post.
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/understanding-histograms.shtml
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/expose-right.shtml

Dave OS

Nice links,
i never really got histograms,
im still starting, (well i think so), so these things are helping, thanks

oshead

Dink wrote: »

I think this fella may be on the same lines to your post Oshed.. I had bookmarked it earlier in the year, waiting for the day I understood it!!

http://www.petercox.ie/expose_right.php

Yeah. Nice spot Dink. This is the exact same concept.

Mellor... Glad you got some use from this.

Dave OS

CONMIKE12

I have been using this technique ever since i heard Guy |gowan speaking about it a couple of years ago. Works like a treat.images look brutal on the lcd screen but once processed to bring down the highlights and open the shadows up, they look great.Simply put, it means not getting any noise in the shadows when you brighten them up

oshead

kjt wrote: »

To what extreme are the photo's "totally unusable"? Could you post a shot straight from raw and then one you have processed? I'd love to see.

Hi Kyle
Here is an example.

The file f0.jpg is the original unaltered.
Notice the histogram to the right.


The second one f-1.5.jpg is with the exposure setting dropped down by -1.5.
The histogram in the middle. Of course the second one needs some more work.


The third one processed.jpg is a 100% crop with exposure dropped and colours punched out a little.
You'll notice a noise free image.


The point is. If the image was exposed to the left & you had to add +1.5 to the exposure. The final processed image would have quite a bit of noise and probably less detail.

Dave OS

kjt

Thanks for taking the time to post that up Dave!

sineadw

Hmmm!!! Interesting! I've gotten so used to underexposing at gigs I often forget to set the camera up for normal lighting conditions. Not going to any more!

JMcL

oshead wrote: »

So I ask the question again.... Do you shoot to the right?

Yup, practically always. I'll always work on keepers in Lightroom anyway, generally by starting with zeroed settings, so bringing the exposure back isn't a problem. Where I'd avoid it is if there's a risk of motion induced blur by lengthening the exposure.

Most camera metering systems seem to be fairly conservative to prevent blowing the highlights.

One thing to beware of is that it's possible to blow one of the red, green, or blue channels, while the overall exposure looks ok on the histogram. An example of this is trying to shoot a bright red flower against a green background. For this reason, if your camera has the capability, display an RGB histogram (where three separate graphs for each of the channels is shown) rather then just a single luminance histogram, and make sure you don't blow any of the channels.

It's also a good idea to make sure you've got appropriate white balance selected (or use auto WB). While you can adjust the WB in post processing if shooting RAW, the histogram is based on a processed version in the camera. So if you've set the WB to "shade", and take a photo under tungsten, your histogram will be misleading, as there'll be far too much red in it.

Mellor wrote: »

Nice links,
i never really got histograms,
im still starting, (well i think so), so these things are helping, thanks

It's a very good idea to learn how to use them, as the image on the back is usually fairly worthless other than for checking composition. Also find the setting to turn on highlight warning, where blown highlights will flash.

oshead

sineadw wrote: »

Hmmm!!! Interesting! I've gotten so used to underexposing at gigs I often forget to set the camera up for normal lighting conditions. Not going to any more!

Hi Sinead. I find that this method works very well under normal lighting conditions. I've never taken photos at a gig before. The lighting I suspect can be very demanding. Contrasting from extreme spotlights to very darks. It would be nice to see some examples if decide to change your habits. Maybe a few test shots to start off with.

Dave OS

mervifwdc

It's good practice to keep right, just shy of blinking (blownhighlights). Once the highlights are blown, they are not coming back. Just keep as right as you can but no so as you have blown highligts.

it's just math really, as explained quite well above.

Merv.

Roen

Well here's an example to help visualise. I knew there was no end of texture to be had in the wood. But it was by far the brightest thing in the frame.

So I kept as far to the right on the histogram as I could without blowing highlights and brought the detail back after the fact. I've spent about twenty seconds in photoshop adjusting levels and curves. I could if I wished actually spend a bit of time and get a better result, but for illustrative purposes this will have to do.
This is an aggressive crop by the way. The reason I went as close to the right as possible was that most of the rest of the frame was far darker and need as much light as possible to stop it being underexposed.

Before

Hugh_C

oshead wrote: »

Do you shoot to the right?

Yeah a fair bit of the time, especially when the subject is backlit, generally +2/3 to +1 stop. I often don't have the time to check the highlights with fast moving stuff, so I just wing it and recover in Lightroom. The transfer characteristics of sensors are logarithmic if I remember rightly, and we occasionally have to use things called LUTs (look up tables) when working at film res at work to get the useful-but-awful-looking log pictures back into the realm of the pleasant.