Auto-Bracket

Given the general exposure characteristics of the KD10, does anyone have any thoughts on the most effective auto bracket settings?

I'm not sure that an over setting is often necessary at all since many frames show slightly blown out highlights in the normal course of things.

Strange. I find the opposite to be true: the K10 generally underexposes a bit to protect the highlights ?

Set the order to "0 - +", then you can let go of the shutter button before the second or third frame when appropriate. Use steps of 0.3 EV unless you find that often isn't enough.

Tendency to blow highlghts or not depends on the metering mode and lens, as well as the subject and light.

I only shoot raw, I don't know if that makes any difference but certainly in ACR I'm often pulling exposure back up to a half stop.

Lens wise I use the 15mm, 35mm and 70mm DA Limited lenses and metering multi mode. The slight over exposure seems to occur mainly on shots with a full tonal range.

I have a feeling that this might be by design as slight overexposure and reigning it in on raw can enhance the noise performance, I read.

Your experience, Lemmy, is opposite to many other Pentax dSLR users. It's often said that Pentax deliberately under exposes to preserve highlights. That goes for RAW as well as JPEG.

Anyway, it doesn't matter as long as you get the result you want, whether that be through EV compensation, bracketing or manual settings.

I've my camera set to 0.7ev overexposure, what kind of metering mode to you use maybe that makes a difference. My is 90% of the time set to spot-metering.

For bracketing I often use 5 steps of 1ev stop, with raw those exposures overlap so you cover a range of more then 5ev stops then, that's good enough for me.

Looks like it's down to personal preference on my part from the consensus here. Thanks for the comments.

I've been a pro photographer for newspapers and magazines all my working life and ten years after retiring bought a dSLR. I think what throws me is that if I make a colour or black and white print, I pretty much know how it will appear to other people (I know the viewing light affect it but the brain compensates quite well).

With digital, I use a nice Eizo monitor, with Huey Pro calibration, I make my stuff look how I want. But when I view it on someone else's computer or iPod, it looks utterly different.

It's a bit dispiriting at times.

Your Theatre of Death's very good lemmy

shim

Now look, Shim, that's not what I expect. You are supposed to traumatised.

Seriously, thanks!

Indeed it is. Absolutely excellent.

I'm blushing.