Exposing to the Right

[Apologies if this has been covered before]

I've been reading up a little on exposing to the right since AP magazine mentioned it this week. The theory make a LOT of sense - so do any of you guys practice it when possible? Our cameras tend to under-expose which, of course, has advantages - so what's the best balance?

Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated

The dynamic range of pentax camera is shifted more too the dark so I aint so sure if you need to worry much or not... what do you think?

But Pentax's sensors work in the same way as all other CMOS/CCD sensors, no?

Have a look at this: clicky

Given the relatively cheap cost of memory and as mostly I'm returning to a computer later in the day I have the camera set to bracket mostly. +/- 2/3. ( I'm not taking sports/action shots, I can wait for the buffer to flush to a relatively slow 8GB SDHC card and I have many more 4/8memory cards ready)

You end up with three shots for each image but as there's a computer doing the exposure calculation and its some times wrong, you get to pick the one you like best.

Doug

Matt you're right but a MAC works the same as a PC right but still they preform differently

Here waht I mean with dynamic range link

Doug, funnily enough I bracketed all my shots today (first outing with the DA 17-70) in exactly the way you describe to try and get some "exposed to the right"

Stefan, interesting link, thanks
What you can't get away from, though, is the pure mathematics of the situation. Let's assume a certain scene has a limited dynamic range and the average metering system exposes to give us a centrally positioned histogram. This would be the ideal situation to then increase the exposure as much as possible whilst still avoiding highlight clipping: this way, the shadow tones are now represented by more discrete tonal values. The RAW file can then be developed to reduce the exposure if necessary.

The Pentax way still has the advantage in high contrast scenes: highlights are preserved and shadow detail can be recovered from the RAW at the slight expense of detail and noise. Higher shutter speeds are, of course, also a useful benefit.

My conclusion is that for contrasty scenes the Pentax way, i.e. under-exposure, should be used. For low contrast scenes, however, the photographer can maximise image quality by increasing the exposure level by using his/her judgement and/or the histogram.

Nice summary Matt, I think that covers it.