Google Groups: rec.photo.digital.slr-systems

Google Groups: rec.photo.digital.slr-systems
One of the biggest problems those switching to digital face is the
misinformation eminating from many who were grand-masters of film, but don\’t
appreciate that with digital, some of the rules have changed.

Case in point: With film one would expose for the shadows and develop for
the highlights, whereas with digital it\’s the other way around – blow your
highlights and the image is toast (in broad terms) – grossly under-expose
and you\’re throwing away 3/4 of your potential information. Take for example
a typical forest scene consisting of even, but subdued lighting. Most modern
digitals will expose the scene in a way that makes it look pretty realistic
on the built in monitor, but in reality is barely using 1/2 the dynamic
range of the sensor. Trying to lighten some of the shadow areas in
post-processing they quickly come up against limitations of noise and
posterisation – and we hear things like \”these digital cameras are
convenient and cheap, but in terms of image quality they\’re not quite up to
film standards yet. Whereas in reality 90% of the the issue is lack of
understanding of the process – in the above example they needed to
\”over-expose\” to the point where the histogram is maxed out and the sensor
is using all 4096 levels – not just the first 512 – 1024. Done correctly the
in camera review might look hideously over-exposed, but in post-processing
FAR MORE information has been captured and can easily be tamed with lavel
and curve adjustments.

What\’s the point? The point is that many professional old timers making the
switch just don\’t understand things like this – and as a result there\’s a
lot of misinformation out there. By working your way through the likes of
Real World Camera RAW Bruce really hammers home these fundamentals – in my
opinion books like Real World Colour management – and Real World Camera RAW
are worth their weight in gold because of the foundation that they lay.

Possibly related:

• My first proper digital camera
• Sony to unveil its first DSLR camera next week
• I really ought to use my Lubitel’ more.