Exposing to the right

How do you balance it?

I'm not talking about low-ISO situations where you want the absolute least noise and where lighting isn't an issue, but rather those 3200+ ISO situations. If you push the histogram to the right, you're decreasing shutter speed - but odds are, shutter speed is your problem in the first place. So you need to compensate some other way, such as pushing ISO even higher...

Assume a low-light, no-flash situation where you could get a decently exposed picture with reasonable speed at 3200 ISO. Would you be better off (with a 5D2, if it matters) going 6400 ISO and pushing the histogram as far right as you can without blowing out highlights? How about if you're at 6400 ISO already, is it worth going up to 12800 and exposing down in post?

Writing this, it occurs to me I could probably test it pretty easily. Hmm. To the test-mobile! But if anyone has insights, please do share.

Once you end up into the "expanded" ISO levels, exposing to the right results in little value. There seems to be some, in what I have shot, but effectively, all the higher ISOs are just digitally pushed values anyways, so you could shoot at a lower ISO level and just push the exposure up.

For example, with a 7D, shooting at ISO 6400 to the right, or shooting at ISO 12800 at exposure metering of 0 should result in very, very similar results.

Here is the overall scene shot at ISO 12800 to the right.

Shooting TTR is such a myth.

I mean if you have an image with lots of tones across the board, like a fashion or a portrait shoot in the city street, only the correct exposure will give you maximum details.

I would only recommend TTRing for a 1/3 or 1/5 of a stop in scenes that are mostly center-toned and missing in both blacks and truly whites (blond girl, wearing neutral tones on a neutral background such as beach on a cloudy day etc).

I don't think noise is ever an issue, I shoot with XS and I'm constantly complaining about the metering, color gamut, wb... but even on this rebel the noise is never a concern, especially in print.

P.S. If the shutter speed exceeds the desired length, always go for the ISO, as the noise is always better then undesired motion blur.

Too bad we already have several stickies that show the differences and it is NOT a myth. Buy hey, you have an opinion and are entitled to it.

Also consider you may just not shoot what others are shooting, so what works for you with your XS will NOT work for others with what they shoot, what they print, and how large they print.

The HAMSTTR approach, https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=744235, a variation on ETTR, says to raise the ISO if you need to do so in order to use the shutter speed/aperture you need/want. If you don't need to raise it, don't. If you want to get into the details for why this works, take a look here:
https://photography-on-the.net …php?p=8361715&p​ostcount=8 (a very helpful post from this extremely long, contentious, but ultimately very rewarding thread https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=730218)

Fun read here too: http://www.luminous-landscape.com …optimizing_expo​sure.shtml

jakovmarkovic wrote in post #13943989
Shooting TTR is such a myth.

I mean if you have an image with lots of tones across the board, like a fashion or a portrait shoot in the city street, only the correct exposure will give you maximum details.

^^^
Not

=======

Shoot at full ISO increments and over expose by 1/3 stop if you can without loosing detail, correct in post.

I've done the testing with 40D, 7D and 5DII.

It's well worth the effort if shooting at higher ISOs where detail critical.

Not a myth,

PROOF!

First a note for those unfamiliar - when we shout at say f1.8 1/50s the sensor gets the same number of electrons/voltage independent of the ISO. I can shoot at ISO100 or ISO 6400, the sensor is totally unaffected. The only think that is changing is where I gain the signal (before or after A/D conversion).

So with that, I still I don't always believe what I read, so I tested this with both my T1i and 5DII and indeed, if you have room to raise ISO, ETTR and then reduce exposure in PP, you are better off than shooting an lower ISO (for native ISO's). I see the expanded ISO's basically for the people that shoot .jpeg and/or don't want to do any PP.

Based on the LL article and Roger Clark's website this makes sense because at higher ISO you gain the voltage from the sensor before adding extra noise in the A/D converter and other electronics.

In very simplified terms, this is how I think of it: For example, say you record 20 electrons (photos), add 4 electrons read noise, then gain to 1000 units, and add 10 units 'noise' (A/D + other electronics), then reduce back to 20 - the total noise is close to the read noise. If you don't gain you end up adding 14 (read +A/D + other) units of noise to the 20 unit signal and end up with a very noisy signal. (obviously this would be for more than a 1 stop gain; more like 5-6 stops).

I'm not sure how much noise gets added in the A/D converted, or other electronics after the voltage amplifier, but is must be some (and the experiments show it is not negligible). Plus if we added no extra noise after the sensor readout, we wouldn't need ISO (for raw files) - we would just shoot at native ISO and gain in PP.

I should be noted that if you are shooting Raw, the "expanded" ISOs can be a convenience but don't give you an "ETTR" benefit -- in fact, you have more control over the final result if you shoot with the best native ISO and do the work in post-processing.

Something else I do occasionally:

If I have a landscape with a lot of shadow areas, particularly if I'm trying to get a lot of subtle shadow detail, I'll bracket as if I were doing an HDR. But instead of doing an HDR, I'll normalize all the exposures to the base 'correct' exposure and then blend the shadows from the longer exposure (with blown out highlights) with the 'normal' exposure. It can significantly increase the DR and tonality of the shadows and reduce noise.

Also, the expanded ISO's can be a disadvantage in that lower dynamic range with the 1 stop plus 2/3 if detail lost and higher noise with the 1 stop plus 1/3.

1 stop plus 1/3 is underexposed then brought up in camera.

So here you go, a nice example of HAMSTTR/ITTR. One is ISO 3200 and the other is 6400 brought back 1 stop, all other settings identical.

HOSTED PHOTO
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Wow, Tony and TeamSpeed have over 57,000 posts between the two of them...

And always with awesome information. Great to be on this site

TeamSpeed wrote in post #13943766
Once you end up into the "expanded" ISO levels, exposing to the right results in little value. There seems to be some, in what I have shot, but effectively, all the higher ISOs are just digitally pushed values anyways, so you could shoot at a lower ISO level and just push the exposure up.

The advantage of shooting at the camera's highest non-expanded ISO (BTW, the ISOs labeled as expanded, H1 and H2, in the 5D2 are 12,800 and 25,600, but 6,400 is also an expansion) and rolling your own push is that the camera's expansion is linear, a straight, across the board doubling or quadrupling. If you do it yourself you can do different amounts of push in different tonal areas using Exposure, Fill and Brightness (Exposure, Highlights and Shadows in LR4) according to the needs of the image. And you see the result before you commit to it.

The disadvantage is a dark review if you chimp.