I spot meter, in manual mode, placing the pointer on the +2 (or other) segment of the meter scale
If the brightest part is not truly white, cream for example, I might only use +1
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You get the same result using the histogram in the camera. I know most DSLR’s don’t have a live histogram but system camera’s have. When adjusting the histogram in your example as is shown in your second image I would get the same result as you have.
I’m not sure about that. A full sensel is a mathematical or physical approach. Full is full. On the dark side there’s is no exact limit. And that is where the best results can be achieved.
I think @John-M is referring to the +2 stop. If that is for most camera’s then the extension of the dynamic range can only be on the other side. In your case about 12 stops to the dark side.
George
The difference is that I don’t have to look at, or play with, the histogram. I just take one spot measure and press the shutter.
What’s more, as I have already said, the histogram shows the JPEG dynamic range, not the full RAW.
What on earth are you talking about? I’m a photographer and don’t even know what a “sensel” is. How do you think I have managed all these years using the same techniques for both film and digital and getting guaranteed perfect exposures for more than 90% of the time.
Once again, I don’t get your point. The D850 sensor has a range off 14.6EV, of which I reserve 3EV for highlights. It’s just simple logic.
Exactly what is shown your screen print.
I think all that discussions of the RAW vs RGB histogram is rubbish. Theoretical during the conversion there is no clipping added. And then most clipping warnings use a threshold, be it in camera or in the editor.
What pixel is for the image, picture element, is sensel for the sensor, sensor element. I thought it was quit common.
You use a correction of +3EV relative to what the meter proposes. If your camera has a dynamic range of 14.6 then there’s another 11.6 left on the dark side.
I don’t say that what you’re doing is wrong, not at all. There’re more roads leading to Rome.
George
Agree completely, in this context only suitable for non-RAW. For RAW, I’ve always used your method (or close variant) to determine the exposure headroom, and it does vary from camera to camera as you say.
I recently switched to a Sony a6700, my first Sony camera in many years. The zebra settings there offer another approach. The zebras can operate in the RAW headroom area (beyond the standard histogram) and can be adjusted to the desired lower limit. The testing method for establishing that lower limit is just as you describe. I use a zebra setting of 107+. This is a bit conservative, but is where my old eyes begin to see loss of detail in a bright textured surface. Mark Galer (see link below) recommends 109+, and demonstrates this simple, fast approach.
Wouldn’t it be nice if cameras could just display the RAW histogram? Someday maybe.
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Liamsi, I am also a beginner trialing Photolab 8 but what I want is simplicity.
I tried Wolfgangs family picture from above but just used the 2 HDR Artistic Preset and after a few other small changes to exposure etc got quite a good result. Unfortunately just installed new Mac mini and appear to have lost it. A new download is not working at the moment.
You can only have one trial of PhotoLab per email address. If you have another email account try using it on your new computer.
Mark
Thanks Mark but I do only have 1 email. I think it might have been down to the system not allowing me to do too much on my first day of posting. Took 24hrs to get this reply posted.
Here is my version with just the HDR preset, and small reductions to exposure and higlights. It’s looking very likely that I will be buying the product very soon.
Mike
P1050189.RW2.dop (12.4 KB)
In my case, the answer is to work from the exposure setting. Get the highlights right from there and work down to bring out the shadows, etc and rely on the noise reduction to ensure that the final image is what you need. My main fault is over exercising the fine /micro contrast settings.
In practice, it is necessary to constantly take into account the area of the exposure point in the ratio to the optics angle as well as the contrast of the surface entered in the exposure point, because Continuous textures do not always come across, and also Sekonic is not always with themselves) so more often in practice you even need to do an correction of -0.7 and the measurement point is essentially a average value of brightness. And in order to accurately get it, you need to turn on the BKT and choose the best frame using the FastRawViewer program) But you can also use a more promptly matrix meter + BKT.