Shooting to the Right reference needed

rickp

I just signed up to a photography course in a local college and my professor and I were talking about exposure.
He's teaching to shoot with the exposure 1/3 to the left, so I asked why and he said that I would get better exposures that way.
Then I told him that pretty much everything I read stated to shoot to the right and bring it back down to the left in PPing. Now he's asking me to produce this info where well know photographers are recommending shooting to the right.

Does anyone have any reference material from well established photographers that are recommending this?
I got this from forums and general internet reading but nothing from big time photographers.

Any help with this would be appreciated.

R.

colourbox

This is the classic Adobe white paper (PDF) on the subject written by the late great Bruce Fraser.

A highly credible article by Michael Reichmann at Luminous Landscape

In the end I disagree with your instructor not because of Expose to the Right, but because of one of its corollaries: That the one thing you don't want to do with digital is underexpose, because you're just asking for noise that way. The only time I go negative on the exposure compensation is when I need the highlights to drop back into the histogram, like today when I was taking a picture of white flowers on a sunny day.

I might agree with your instructor if he is shooting JPEG (that he won't brighten in post) or slide film, but for Raw or negative film, underexposure is not a good thing.

rickp

colour,
that was my point to him as well, the noise.
Thanks.

At this point I'm just looking for big names in the industry ( i don't know any) so I can support it. At least that's what he asked for.

R.

Angelo

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=expose+right


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rickp

Angelo wrote: »

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=expose+right


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Thanks but that doen't give me the big names in the industry I need to validate the information. Which is what he's looking for.

R.

Dan7312

Angelo's search brought up this article http://chromasoft.blogspot.com/2009/09/why-expose-to-right-is-just-plain-wrong.html that supports your professors point of view. It's certainly worth a look.

rickp wrote: »

Thanks but that doen't give me the big names in the industry I need to validate the information. Which is what he's looking for.

R.

rickp

that was good read. I'm not sure I agree with it though.

His point of being able to achive that by lowering the ISO is a point I don't get. We chose an ISO because we can't chose the lower ISO, so if we shoot a certain ISO this technique helps get achieve the results we might have gotten with a lower ISO, hence the reason for it being a useful method.

Is that clear as mud??scratchD

R.

Dan7312

I think his point is that the only time shooting to the right helps is when you cannot lower the iso, and even then the effect is marginal because of other factors that will affect the image. That is, you can see it if you do some pixel peeping but you won't see it in a print. The examples he shows seem to support that.

rickp wrote: »

His point of being able to achive that by lowering the ISO is a point I don't get.
R.

rickp

Correct, but that's my point. We normally chose an ISO because we can't go with a lower value, otherwise we would. Hence the reason for the technique.

For example let's say we have to use ISO 1600 because 800 would be too dark. The shooting to the right might be useful then if we can PP and get the results of shooting with ISO 800 and remove noise.

That's how I'm interpreting the article and information.


R.

Dan7312

Right, (sorry for the pun ) but what he is saying is that even in that case the noise reduction produced by shooting to the right and reducing in PP would be marginal and might even be worse because of the way the camera tries to reduce the noise when shooting at high iso.

I'd like to take some time to duplicate his tests... but heck I like to take some time to take more pictures too.:D

rickp wrote: »

Correct, but that's my point. We normally chose an ISO because we can't go with a lower value, otherwise we would. Hence the reason for the technique.

For example let's say we have to use ISO 1600 because 800 would be too dark. The shooting to the right might be useful then if we can PP and get the results of shooting with ISO 800 and remove noise.

That's how I'm interpreting the article and information.


R.

rickp

OL!!! I hear you!!!

It is an interesting point and would be good little research project. At least you get to shoot and work on one's PPing technique, a win win.

R.

Angelo

rickp wrote: »

Thanks but that doen't give me the big names in the industry I need to validate the information. Which is what he's looking for.

R.

OK which names are you looking for? There are a couple of articles in that list of links written by accomplished photographers. You dug this hole, we're offering you a rope. Take hold it or.....







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rickp

To be honest I don't know any names in the industry, that's what I was hoping for from you guys. Actually that's not true, I know one name, Scott Kelby. As a matter of fact I have one of his books, and sure enough he talks about shooting to the right in it. He recommends it.

I can search Google but i wouldn't recognize any names in the results. So for all I know I could be looking at the grand master of all digital photography or billy bob with a point and shoot expressing his opinion on the subject.

BTW, how did you do that with google?? That's very handy.

R.

Angelo

rickp wrote: »

To be honest I don't know any names in the industry, that's what I was hoping for from you guys. Actually that's not true, I know one name, Scott Kelby. As a matter of fact I have one of his books, and sure enough he talks about shooting to the right in it. He recommends it.

I can search Google but i wouldn't recognize any names in the results. So for all I know I could be looking at the grand master of all digital photography or billy bob with a point and shoot expressing his opinion on the subject.

BTW, how did you do that with google?? That's very handy.

R.

So screw the names thingy man. Your teacher is just f*ing with you anyway. He didn't like being challenged so he offered up an "oh yeah?" scenario.

Just print out several examples of arguments in favor of shooting right and open the debate with him.

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rickp

Well if he is messing with me, he's in for a surprise. I'm not an 18 year old wet behind the ears kid. I'll find every piece of paper on this and slap it on his desk, with a here you go a**hole look on my face.

I sent him an email with a few sources. So far I haven't heard back.

R.

Angelo

rickp wrote: »

Well if he is messing with me, he's in for a surprise. I'm not an 18 year old wet behind the ears kid. I'll find every piece of paper on this and slap it on his desk, with a here you go a**hole look on my face.

atta boy!!!!!