Bracketing

What is the point of the bracketing mode on the G6? I never could understand what that's for when I go to shoot. Can anyone help?

Exposure and focus bracketing; pages 101-103 in the user guide

I know where they ar ein the manual. I just wanted to know if anybody knew more about what its function is for the camera.

Would it be good to use when shooting at night?

"Correct exposure is at least as important with digital capture as it is with film, but correct exposure in the digital realm means keeping the highlights as close to blowing out, without actually doing so, as possible." [From the book "Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop CS", by Bruce Fraser]. He goes on to suggest that whereas with film we used to expose for the shadows and develop for the highlights, but in digital it is better to expose for the highlights. Getting as close to an overexposure for the highlights without actually blowing them out requires careful control over exposure. Take a lot of the guess work out of it by braketing. That gives you twice as much chance of getting it right. On the G5 the range of bracketing can be set to any value up to +/-2 stops in 1/3 stop increments. I assume that the G6 options are comparable.

Hi, as has already been pointed out there is exposure bracketing and focus bracketing:
1) Focus bracketing - This takes a series of shots moving the point of focus slightly in each shot. Personally I find this particularly useful for macro shots where the depth of field is very shallow and consequently it's sometimes not always easy to get the focus spot on (a combination of not being able to see a large enough preview or having your view partially compromised by bright sunlight in some cases). Bracketing the focus gives you a better chance of getting the result you wanted. You can also combine different shots with different focus points to give macro photos with an greater apparent depth of field (of course you could do this manually as well).
2) Exposure bracketing does the same sort of thing but obviously (and has been pointed out already) with respect to the exposure of the shot rather than the focal point. Digital sensors have somewhat limited dynamic range sensitivity so, as well as being one way of ensuring that you maximise the chances of exposing your shot correctly, bracketing also gives you the option of combining a number of differently exposed shots of the same subject to give a composite image with a wider dynamic range (i.e. a bigger range of shades between the brightest and darkest parts of the image). If you shoot in RAW mode and combine the control this gives with bracketing then you give yourself the most options when it comes to processing the image.

Hope that doesn't raise more questions than answers

Does the G6 have both types of bracketing?

digidog just reminded me that there is another, powerful tool that relates to braketing - in photoshop. I won't try to outline the procedure here in any detail, but the gist of it is to start with two exposures of the same scene (think braketing).

Then, using some powerful features of Photoshop you input the underexposed image and the overexposed image and output an image that includes the detailed highlights from the underexposed image combined with the good shadow detail of the overexposed image - thereby giving you a range of tonality that is difficult to obtain otherwise.

Considering what the process involves, it is almost a certain requirement that you take the images on a tripod.

Yes