New camera suggestions

[SirBC]

"Stepping down 1-3 stops is generally a good idea as you can pull out shadows more than blown highlights, but tapping for smart metering is usually enough. If I'm shooting a slot canyon or within a crack I'll switch to ProRAW and underexpose by 6-7 stops at times."

I have always understood that RAW is most useful for recovering highlights, and that consequently people "shoot hot".

People may Expose To The Right (ETTR) (push the histogram towards the highlights) so that the highlights are either just about to be blown or even slightly blown. By doing that you are effectively pulling up the shadows as much as possible without blowing out the highlights. Even if the shot is now overexposed in the hightlights you can recover those (as long as they are not fully blown) and if you now need to recover any crushed shadows, because you have already pushed the histogram to the the right, you do not need to pull up the shadows as much, decreasing any shadow noise. But RAW does give you much more latitude in recovering crushed shadows vs. blown highlights.

The latest Adobe PS/LR update introduced an insane AI noise reduction capability for RAW files. It's a total game changer. I was just playing around with it on a photo I shot of the Aurora at ISO 6400 on a Canon 5D Mk III. There is so much noise that the file is not usable. I tried the new AI Denoise in Lightroom and results are amazing. This is a 100% crop with the AI Denoise on the left and the original on the right.

AI-Noise.jpg

Here is a video showing it in action:

[Love the Sierra]

Thank you, Gentlemen.
I will try the RAW setting next time.

[BSquared]

FWIW after similar research (and considerable advice from this forum) I went with a used Sony RX1000 III—a much older camera. It appeared to me that the newer ones mostly had bells and whistles I wasn't interested in (various kinds of Internet connectivity for example) and/or were better at taking movies, which I very seldom do. I've been delighted with the pictures it takes, though having such an old model does have its drawbacks—the leaf-style lens "cap" frequently doesn't open all the way when I turn it on, and if I forget to give the camera a firm tap I can find that my photos are masked around the edges. But overall I'm delighted.

[erutan]

People may Expose To The Right (ETTR) (push the histogram towards the highlights) so that the highlights are either just about to be blown or even slightly blown. By doing that you are effectively pulling up the shadows as much as possible without blowing out the highlights. Even if the shot is now overexposed in the hightlights you can recover those (as long as they are not fully blown) and if you now need to recover any crushed shadows, because you have already pushed the histogram to the the right, you do not need to pull up the shadows as much, decreasing any shadow noise. But RAW does give you much more latitude in recovering crushed shadows vs. blown highlights.

Some great analysis there, I learned something. Thanks!

Stepping down a little is a good general rule for taking a quick "oh hey this neat thing photo" while on the trail. For shots that seem exceptional I'll scrub exposure and watch the real time zebra striping for the different color channels, or even use the waveform analysis etc if I'm in a slot canyon. I find that the last few iPhones tend to shoot hot (12 and newer?) which normally works out well, but can lead to overexposure in very direct sunlight or high contrast areas.

I played with the new LR AI denoise tool on a nighttime cooking shot and was impressed, but haven't shot much high noise since and haven't dug into past photos. It does definitely strip some detail, but if you have to go reaaaally high ISO it's kinda magic.

[michaelzim]

Hey @erutan and @SirBc...
Ummmmmmmmm, is there a way to make what you are talking about here...

People may Expose To The Right (ETTR) (push the histogram towards the highlights) so that the highlights are either just about to be blown or even slightly blown

...comprehensible to the illiterate like myself? I get the feeling that it could be useful if I understood it! I do not use much after image processing but on occasion I will try to get better balance in high contrast shots like snow scenes. Not with Photoshop or the like, just Google Photos, or now Flickr.
Mmmmmm, I see Flickr has quite a list:
Brightness, saturation, contrast, gamma, clarity, exposure, shadows, highlights, blacks, whites, temperature.

So back to the question...Does your "pushing towards the highlights" etc. mean that if I stop down high contrast shots by 2,3,4, or more stops (thus a darker image) I can "recover" the "lightness" with better overall results with post-processing? As in fiddling with one or more of those "adjustments" in the list? If so, which particular adjustments would you be talking about?

Hope I have made myself clear, as for sure I could have it all pretty confused!

Ta ~ Michaelzim

[SirBC]

Below is a good video explaining, with examples, what ETTR is and why you may want to use it for some shots.

Hey @erutan and @SirBc...
Ummmmmmmmm, is there a way to make what you are talking about here...

People may Expose To The Right (ETTR) (push the histogram towards the highlights) so that the highlights are either just about to be blown or even slightly blown

So back to the question...Does your "pushing towards the highlights" etc. mean that if I stop down high contrast shots by 2,3,4, or more stops (thus a darker image) I can "recover" the "lightness" with better overall results with post-processing? As in fiddling with one or more of those "adjustments" in the list? If so, which particular adjustments would you be talking about?

Hope I have made myself clear, as for sure I could have it all pretty confused!

Ta ~ Michaelzim

Most cameras will show a "histogram", which is a graphical representation of the tonal values (shadows, midtones, highlights) in your image. Shadows are on the left, midtones in the middle and highlights on the right. ETTR means you are pushing more of the tonal values to the right, or making them brighter. The above video shows examples of when and why you may want to do this for some images.

Basically, when you look at a scene where you think that you will need to lift the shadows when post processing, if you ETTR and take a shot that looks somewhat overexposed, you can take those highlights down and raise the shadows in post and the shadows that you raise will be cleaner with less noise than if you didn't ETTR. For this to be useful you should be shooting in RAW, not JPEG, which means you will need a RAW capable editor.

Also, for scenes with high dynamic range where even if you ETTR you still have areas that are very dark, I bracket exposures by taking a few shots, one with the highlights exposed properly (shadows are overly dark), one with the shadows lifted so detail can be seen (highlights blown out) and one with the midtones exposed properly, and then just blend in Photoshop.

[wsp_scott]

@SirBC mentions it, but I just wanted to emphasize that ETTR only makes sense if shooting RAW so you can adjust highlights in post-processing, no good if shooting JPEGs

[michaelzim]

@wsp_scott... Thanks for the clarification on ETTR only being of real use in RAW. The Flickr site does have a "Shadows: and "Highlights" adjustment in the list of edits for plain old JPEGs, but it all seems like a hassle for the 'marginally possible' gains. I do have RAW capability on my camera though so may try it one day. Ha, ha...maybe emphasis on "one day"!

Ta ~ M.

[erutan]

The thing about editing a JPG is that a lot of the information has already been discarded due to it being processed in camera /rendered / compressed as a jpg. In general either take the time to edit RAW or don't bother too much - though you could just shoot more delicate shots RAW and then keep the casual ones JPG/HEIC etc.

I've been playing around the AI noise tool a little bit and it seems like shooting RAW then using it is better than shooting ProRAW in many cases (though it quadruples file size vs doubling it). In a low light shot it still "smeared" details vs RAW, but less than shooting ProRAW (and that was on the poorer 13mm equiv setup).

One shot were it really impressed me was this post sunset shot from Queen Elizabeth park in Vancouver BC at 1000 ISO on the tele 3x 85mm lens (again not as good at the main 24mm equiv). It actually pulled in a lot of detail extrapolated from what was a very weak/soft/blurry photo.

IMG_1722.jpg

IMG_1722-Enhanced-NR.jpg

[SSSdave]

I don't shoot RAW with my A6000 but subjects with considerable dynamic range will suffer. The A6000 has a good neutral color jpg setting and conservative exposure processing. For decades shot slide film that has a narrow range. Key is to avoid shooting contrasty subjects so many tend to choose and in general underexpose a bit. After processing tend to manually boost shadows a bit in CS6 but is in any case not as effective as using RAW. That noted, the main reason I shoot jpg's is with multi column row stitch blending plus focus stack blending, I'm already taking lots of shots on each subject that is near the limit of being able to cope. For post processing work each subject in Zerene Stacker from complex exif Excel charts of individual shots I sort by focus distance that is an exif element taken from the effective prime lens barrel rotations.