Landscape Photography and Exposing to the Right

Hi Robin, Nice video and advice, I have always under exposed even with my Nikon cameras, very good advice

Being relatively new to photography I have certainly been swayed by ETTR. Thank you for this. I use micro four thirds so will some testing.

Interesting. Definitely some experimentation is required!

Robin, as far as I am aware exposing to the right has always meant the max possible exposure whilst NOT clipping the highlights (specular highlights excluded).

I have always felt guilty for not exposing to the right. It's all about looking at the histogram.

Convincing description- I‘ll try ...

I bracket a lot so I tend to not concern myself over exposure latitude these days. For event work where bracketing isn't an option I expose slightly under. It's easier to fix shadow noise ( if there is any ) than fix blown highlights ( which to be honest are unfixable anyway lol ). I figure pretty much all my cameras these days have a maximum 1.5 stops highlight recovery and 3 stops shadow recovery, a 2:1 ratio. I call it my 2:1 exposure method and it seems to work really well 😊

Hi Robin. Good video. I may be missing something, but it seems to me that the "correctly exposed" image had severely blown highlights, as is often the case when the image is predominately dark and the metering is averaging out the exposure. It's a photographer's judgement call to dial the exposure back, in recognition of this, a lot easier when you have a live histogram to refer to and requiring another bite at the cherry in cameras where you only have a histogram after taking the shot. Looking at your C1 histogram, the likely blown highlights are evident, but you didn't have that at the time. Bracketing to allow for this possibility saved the shot.

We're never too old to learn eh? Anyway, I got rid of my Adobe products earlier this this year. I now only have Capture One 20 and Affinity Photo. There are times I wish I could blend 2-3 images with different exposures. Do you or have you found Affinity Photo to work well with a couple of images, one exposed for the highlights and the other other for the shadows. Not interested in HDR styles, I only want to replace the sky from one to the other. I haven't really found any videos out there including the Affinity site that cover this procedure. I really, really don't want to go back to PS just for the occasional landscape sunset/sunrise exposure blending.

I also love to expose to the right, so we can brighten the shadow areas, but keeping the highlights to not clipping at the same time, which bring us to sharper and clean images than to shoot very underexposed images then try to brighten up those in post and ended up with more noise. If you have and bring a tripod, is essential to use exposure bracketing technique because the HDR will looks more natural, expand the dynamic range even better than a single exposure.

Interesting video but I am still somewhat confused. I always thought that for every stop you under expose you lose half the digital information.

I do use an XT2, XT3 and Capture One for the post processing. Do you only use the XT3 or do you have similar results with the XT2? My experience with Capture One is that I can easily make the shadows lighter wthout getting noise you can see. The Fuji XT 3 has a lot of potential in the shadows. I do not know for the XT2. And realy it is also a matter of taste. Too open shadows do not look natural to my taste.

I picked up on this after watching some blogging about street photography. The need for quick response meant the tog would pre set exposure for the sky and rely on being able to recover detail in post. I started using it for landscapes as i didn't have a great set of grad nd's. You are bang on about lots of literature still harping on about ettr. Cheers for the vids.

I have also experienced what you describe and find that recovery of shadows is easier. ETTR has its merits, but is not the be-all. Thanks for being brave enough to challenge the sacred ETTR “rule.” 😉🙏

As sensor technology has been getting better, im reading that other photographers are also deciding not to use grad filters as well. Whats your take on this?

Always underexposed and never exposed to the right as it burns data in digital photos.

At 2.41 you say look at the sky, the area aound the sun is not as badly clipped in an exposure you say is 2 stops under exposed. Maybe I am missing something, but this sugggests to me that you ARE exposing to the right with this exposure and that the exposure you describe as correct went beyond a realistic ETTR. Surely the point about ETTR is that you set the exposure of the brightness area THAT IS IMPORTANT TO YOU to the right? This may mean that some areas such as the area immediately around the sun in this scene will be blown out but that will not necessarily look unrealistic.

much talk but sorry I learnt nothing.

People’s mileage will vary a lot on this so as you say it is important to experiment. Cameras that use ISO invariant Sony sensors will be much more forgiving of boosting underexposed shadows than will ISO variant sensors such as on many Canons. Push up the shadows on them and you see terrible noise, banding and purple color casts. But it varies with the camera and degree of underexposure. Lab tests for dynamic range reveal this.

I still expose to the right and what you say makes sense. I have not noticed it I suspect as landscape is still bracket and merge images. Another thing I have always done since the early DSLR. I will experiment as you have. Thank you.

It is because Fujifilm X series cameras have an ISO invariant sensor. X trans sensors are mostly ISO invariant. It is possible to shoot at base ISO and under expose the shot according to the histogram. In post increase the exposure by the amount of stops that the image has been under exposed and there will be no noise penalty. In effect, if you are using the DR settings on the Fujifilm cameras this is what it does to protect the highlights on a Jpeg. The good thing is that it affects the RAW file too. DR200 under exposes by 1 stop, DR400 under exposes by 2 stops. The camera jpeg engine then pulls the shadows up by the corespondinng amounts to produce well exposed Jpegs. Because it also affects the Raw file the highlights have been saved. Software such as Capture One and Lightroom ( and also the under rated Silkypix software supplied with the camera ) pulls the shadows up automatically because of a Flag in the metadata. Some basic Raw editing software doesnt see the flag and then displays the file exactly as exposed with leaving the user to work on the shadows to taste. Hope this helps. Cheers Ian.

I came to the same conclusion when testing Capture One Pro earlier this year. Paul Reiffer who is a Capture One Ambassador will always take the exposure slider to the limit both ways just to see how much information is actually in the file. It’s a good technique and the results are often surprising!

I don't agree with this video at all. I accept ETTR was more important with older sensors as they introduced a lot of noise when boosting the shadows, but you still had to avoid clipping highlights. ETTR never meant not clipping the blacks so as having to avoid boosting shadows ( if that is what you mean ) like you would with negative film.

Hi Robin,
I am not sure if I have understood your way of exposing properly. I guess you still expose to the right but not so much that you can’t recover the highlights, don’t you?.
Another question / doubt I have with bracketing is, how do you expose the main bracket?. I mean, you make a first photo and from that, the camera makes 2 or more shots under and over that main exposure. How do you make this reference photo?. Do you set the controls on the ———o——— exactly?. Sometimes, when I bracket, the results in the highlights or the shadow areas are not satisfactory.
Have you got any video on this topic?
Regards

Very interesting, and each person will have his or her own view on this, so I don't think there's a right or wrong conclusion. I agree that technology has moved on to the point where shadow detail is less of an issue than it used to be - most cameras today do a good job, even most ISO variant models. That said - the way sensors capture data across the tonal range hasn't changed to my knowledge - so more data is still gathered at the brighter end than at the darker end. So, for me, I still tend to shoot a bit over and drag the exposure back in post. I do think I get better shadows this way, and it's not too onerous a job as long as I watch my highlights very carefully when I'm in the field. That said - I wouldn't argue with anybody who took your approach and just trusted their camera and software to pull up the shadows. I still do this sometimes (normally when I've messed up in the field!) and I don't recall having any images that I've had to bin. I think it might depend on what you're going to do with the image though - a very large print might well show the benefit of the expose to the right technique.

Phew! I am retired but new to digital photography and have read about ETTR and have tried to set up my camera to expose this way. I use an Olympus EM1 Mark II, the software I use is Affinity. When I take a photo, I look at the histogram and try to expose to the right, when I open the raw file in Affinity, I always have to adjust the levels from the right to the left, it's still underexposed! Do you recommend any settings for the camera? Even though the images are slightly underexposed, I'm not aware of any noise when using a low ISO.

So the first image you edited was exposed correctly to the right?

I'm willing to bet that the new AI de-noising tech like DxO's Deep Prime makes shadow noise far less of an issue than ever, although I've always slightly under-exposed digital images because I really dislike blown out highlights.

IMHO ETTR works better if the scene is not high contrasting. Like woodlands without the sky etc.. Your opinion please