"dennis@home" wrote in message
web.com...
On 23/09/2015 13:41, NY wrote:
8

But set against that is the fact that if you *are* willing to learn from
your mistakes, the fact that all your photos are free means that you can
experiment, and you can see instantly which is the right exposure in a
situation where an automatic meter would be fooled. Admittedly, because
the exposure latitude of digital is less (it is very easy to overexpose
and irrecoverably burn out details in the highlights) you *need* to get
the exposure more correct,

Are you shooting in RAW?
I ask because modern digital sensors have a higher dynamic range than most
films available. The range is chopped off to make the JPEGs and you may
then lose shadow or highlight detail. Its where the HDR images come from,
compressing the middle of the range rather than the ends.
If it is consistently over exposed then there is probably a metering
fault.

My compact camera doesn't have the option of shooting in RAW. My SLR does
and I have set it to take both JPG and RAW for every photo. I still
underexpose by 1/3 stop on both cameras for the benefit of the JPG, but I
don't think it affects the RAW (I could be wrong on that). Occasionally I've
had to go back to the RAW and have been amazed at the amount of extra shadow
and highlight detail I've been able to retrieve. I also, when I am not in a
hurry, try to look at the histogram and make sure that only a small
proportion of pixels are peak white or jet black because these will be
clipped. And I set the display to show brightly coloured pixels (the
equivalent of zebra stripes on a TV camera's viewfinder) to show up any peak
white pixels to help with exposure. Sadly because the SLR only has an
optical viewfinder, this aid is only visible when reviewing photos that have
already been taken, but for anything critical I check and retake if
necessary.

In the days of film, I was gobsmacked by how much extra detail could be
retrieved by scanning a negative than was visible in the print, especially
when printed in a cheap lab which uses auto settings, rather than when
things are hand-printed (which costs the earth).

The 0.3 stop correction may be a matter of personal preference and to
counteract the manufacturer trying to produce brighter more vibrant
pictures. I have a pathological loathing of pictures where any crucial
detail has areas of peak white or flat featureless colour (usually cyan or
yellow) because one of the three colours has maxed out while leaving the
other two just below peak).