RAW capture and processing: exposing to the right

The first and second are very impressive Barrie, though I find the foreground in the third a bit flat (I think that's because we have different taste in contrast)
Clearly "early learning counts" - you learned how to gauge exposure long before cameras did it for you.
 
In theory ETTR is fine, but in reality I am struggling with burnt out highlights most of the time.

I guess my post throws some light on this, if in a slightly convoluted way. had I used the average reading from my spotmeter, and doubtless from the camera, I also would have suffered from burnt out highlights. I would suggest that many digital camera average metering systems do not make allowance for the limited tonal range of a digital sensor above the average value, and therefore over expose by default. By exposing measuring the metered highlight and then compensating for 2.5 stops I have placed the exposure at the true average level for the sensor. I understand that Panasonic sensors are rather more limited in over exposure headroom than those used in the Olympus range, which might withstand 3.0 stops before burning out the highlights.

Barrie
 
The first and second are very impressive Barrie, though I find the foreground in the third a bit flat (I think that's because we have different taste in contrast)
Clearly "early learning counts" - you learned how to gauge exposure long before cameras did it for you.

Paul,

That beast of a Mamiya Press, and indeed my Leica M3, relied on the use of an external meter, or knowledge. I certainly used a spotmeter in those days with the Press, but of course film tonality rolls off nicely at either end, so in this digital age it pays to be conservative at the top end. The dpreview graphs showing the sensor characteristics in their reviews form a nice starting place to make that assessment.

I would concede that the third one doesn't quite work, mainly I think because I've made a mess of the curves at the shadow end and have very slightly posterised the shadow values.

Barrie
 
In spite of the concerns I had earlier in this thread about how the article demonstrated the concept, ETTR is actually an approach that I do use where possible. This is simply based on the premise that increasing the exposure of darker areas in post-processing results in increased noise. Due to the limits of dynamic range in some scenes it is not always possible to overexpose the entire image without burning highlights, but if you have reached that limit then the image is still exposed as far to the right as it is practical to go. It is ETTR in spirit only :). Ironically it would seem that the cameras which would benefit most from ETTR are the ones that are most prevented from using it due to the limitations of their dynamic range.
 
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