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Photography Q&A
Highlight Overload and Dynamic Range.
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<blockquote data-quote="voxmagna" data-source="post: 496219" data-attributes="member: 38477"><p>I would guess he recommends not using spot in case you missed a brighter cloud and got sky as the peak highlight instead? On the other hand anybody using spot which I do, will spend time evaluating different parts of the scene. I think once you disconnect automatic exposure features like averaging and multi zone, you become a 'human' photographer making your own decisions in real manual mode. </p><p></p><p>If you have the time setting up a shot I don't think you win much from using all the preset exposure modes and it could go wrong for you. My point starting the thread is once you establish the highlight and lowlight exposure range equivalent to the scene dynamic range, the camera is limited as to how it will handle it anyway and there is no magic bullet setting. It is peak luminance values that clip and that's what you probably need to know, not an average exposure value over a large area. I have similar feelings about automated focusing zones to. The exception being dynamic tracking which I do consider useful. Light and shade by its nature is peaky so why fool yourself with averages and zones, because only one result goes to set exposure. The sensor pixel array is not mapped and by some 'magic' individual pixels or pixel groups are exposed differently. Sometimes, I wonder if the exposure and focus options mislead users as to how they work? However tonal curve bending in post is crudely similar to pixel group manipulation, but as far as I know that is not a Nikon camera feature, unless it is in the preset scene modes.</p><p></p><p>I just tried some HDR tests using 5 shots 1 stop apart and merged in post. More darkroom work, but it definitely gets the dynamic range from bright pretty cloudy skies and foreground. You have to choose a shutter at your chosen fixed aperture that can go up and down by the equivalent of +/-2 stops. It is quite revealing to preview each shot afterwards and conclude no one shot is exposed correctly over the high contrast scene, then create the HDR image file and see the scene as it should be. What surprised me knowing the limitation of 256 bit jpeg, is a 16 bit HDR image down sampled to 8 bit jpeg still looked very good.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="voxmagna, post: 496219, member: 38477"] I would guess he recommends not using spot in case you missed a brighter cloud and got sky as the peak highlight instead? On the other hand anybody using spot which I do, will spend time evaluating different parts of the scene. I think once you disconnect automatic exposure features like averaging and multi zone, you become a 'human' photographer making your own decisions in real manual mode. If you have the time setting up a shot I don't think you win much from using all the preset exposure modes and it could go wrong for you. My point starting the thread is once you establish the highlight and lowlight exposure range equivalent to the scene dynamic range, the camera is limited as to how it will handle it anyway and there is no magic bullet setting. It is peak luminance values that clip and that's what you probably need to know, not an average exposure value over a large area. I have similar feelings about automated focusing zones to. The exception being dynamic tracking which I do consider useful. Light and shade by its nature is peaky so why fool yourself with averages and zones, because only one result goes to set exposure. The sensor pixel array is not mapped and by some 'magic' individual pixels or pixel groups are exposed differently. Sometimes, I wonder if the exposure and focus options mislead users as to how they work? However tonal curve bending in post is crudely similar to pixel group manipulation, but as far as I know that is not a Nikon camera feature, unless it is in the preset scene modes. I just tried some HDR tests using 5 shots 1 stop apart and merged in post. More darkroom work, but it definitely gets the dynamic range from bright pretty cloudy skies and foreground. You have to choose a shutter at your chosen fixed aperture that can go up and down by the equivalent of +/-2 stops. It is quite revealing to preview each shot afterwards and conclude no one shot is exposed correctly over the high contrast scene, then create the HDR image file and see the scene as it should be. What surprised me knowing the limitation of 256 bit jpeg, is a 16 bit HDR image down sampled to 8 bit jpeg still looked very good. [/QUOTE]
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