A response to a recent post of mine said my post "shows how inexperienced [I am] with modern technology." It had to do with automatic focus and exposure setting. I am inexperienced and need to know so I can get a new camera if I ever need or want one. Heck, I may need one now and not even know it.

It has been more than 20 years since I bought a serious camera for my own use. It was a 4x5 view camera with auto nothing. What has changed in exposure settings? I know the hand held light meter is now inside the camera, and a "computer" juggles various inputs. I apparently don't know what they are.

I learned that exposure had three factors - f/stop, shutter speed and ASA. (I made the jump from ASA to ISO.) I also learned that the photographer fixed any two of the three, and the third was then fixed. The fixed result could be adjusted by the photographr to suit his needs. (When I was a kid, it was called "Kentucky windage." Then I went to college and learned "SWAG." Then I went to photography school and learned what was "really happening." But, alas, time has passed me by.)

Do cameras using modern technology have more than f/stop, shutter speed and ISO to deal with?

Auto focus. I thought I understood how a lens is focused. What has changed from "turning the focus ring" besides who yurns it?

Really nothing has changed, a camera is a camera, the iso continues being the asa, the focus is the same, and the photometer continues giving the same service.

but, the technology, aids, thorically, the phtograph to obtaining better results, but autside the thechnology, It can continue focusing by hand, to put the velocity and the F, so all.

Thanks. I was afraid I had slept through a couple of generations. So nothing has really changed, just some photographers are willing to let Canon, for instance, think for them. For the sake of speed of course.

Woo! Nailed it! Exactly the line I thought you were setting yourself up for!

I'm Kreskin baby!

It was a serious inquiery. I thought I knew the aswer, but just wanted to make sure

You nailed it . Just like there were some people who were convinced that a shiny new EOS 1 or F4 would improve their photography, there are plenty of folks now who think their cameras matter a lot more than they actually do.


--
Daniel Bell

If I had a nickel for evey time I watched a photographer sell a bag of Canon stuff to buy a Nikon stuff (and vice versa), I would buy a new digital back for my old MF so I could take really good and clear shots.

My camera is 25 years old, as obsolete as this afternoon, but it still works just like it did then. I have a friend who is an excellant photographer, had more money than she can spend in a life time (and then she married even better) who still buys used Nikon Fs simply because she likes them. The way they feel, the way they sound, and I guess they even smell good and talk to her. Please, nobody tell her she is stuck in the 60s.

I was trout fishing near Bishop one day when a guy with a thousand dollar fly rod asked me what I was using for bait. I said "worms." While he was explaining how n one can catch trout on worms, I had to ask him to move over while I landed dinner.

If you're shooting digitally, add white balance to your list.

Mike.

No. There is one difference between film and digital that should be learned, namely "Expose to the right" (for which see MRs excellent tutorials, esp. on histograms which is decidedly a new aid in correct exposure), also the fact that ISO can now be changed as easily (in theory) as f/stop and shutter speed may cause some rethinking of shooting modes, and then there's all manner of quirks in auto exposure that varies from camera to camera and setting to setting which is probably more different between cameras than between film and digital as a whole. Without seeing the post I cannot tell if the other poster was just being all modern on you.



Well, autofocus isn't just autofocus -- when *you* turn the ring, *you* know what you're focusing on, with AF you have to tell the AF some way or another what to focus on. Thus the proliferation of different AF systems. But these are mostly not new to digital either, though they have been evolving somewhat over tiime. Your understanding of how the lens focuses is still valid; understanding how the AF system picks *where* to place the focus is tricky. Again, MR has some tutorials in this area, which, if you've only used MF you may want to read.

-Lars

This is a very funny topic. Cameras are tools, as you know. Some tools are more sophisticated than others, and help you to get the job done in an easier and more convenient way.

Different photographers use different tools, according to their needs. It seems that for your photography, you don't need the modern stuff. Good for you. But thousands others do need the modern stuff.

I like the modern stuff. I like it very much that I can trust my EOS 1V in-camera evaluative meter 95% of the time (the other 5% I use spotmeter). I could get by with an external meter, but I value convenience.

I could probably be riding a cartwheel too, but cars are ore convenient. To each its own, no need to make fun of the rest of us, poor lazy photographers, who, lo and behold!, use the automatisms provided by the cameras.

I bought a DSLR about a year ago and found the journey an interesting and challenging one. Once the roll of film was in the camera I no longer thought about ASA and color balance, it was fixed. I thought about the 2 variables that I had aperture and shutter speed. Now I think about the 4 variables, aperture, shutter speed, ISO and color temperature, a more complex equation, but I'm finding it very rewarding. I also found the transition to digital was like the transition from analog audio to digital audio, they are the same in some ways but different in others, and I enjoyed mastering the technical differences. I have also found the feed back is quicker so improvement and learning are accelerated, a display of the image, histogram etc. And I have learned there are some differences like exposing to the right to maximize the captured data (a round about answer to your question!)
Marc

I have never thought of white balance as part of "exposure."

That will require some thouht.

Thanks

After a little thought (and this may seem arbitary), I think exposure is a light quantity problem and white balance is a light quality problem. They seem unrelated.

If you shoot in RAW, white balance is not an issue when taking the picture.

I thought it had an impact on the histogram. And if you follow John Shaw's advice of "take a photo, look at the histogram, adjust and take another photo" you probably want that histogram to be as accurate as possible. If you don't chimp (read: get it right in the first place) then it isn't an issue.

I think about white balance as a 4th variable. If I take a picture indoors do I want the skin tones pleasing or the wall color accurate? If shooting a sunset from my lanai do I let the camera miscalculate the color balance for more pleasing oranges? Whether I correct it later when processing the RAW I still think about it, where I gave it little thought with film (after the roll was in the camera). I now set my camera to a RGB histogram not brightness as often one channel clips and the brightness histogram doesn't show the clipping ( the red channel in sunsets or the blue channel from the cockpit) So they are a bit inter-related although I agree one is quantity and the other is quality, still things to to think about and correct while taking the picture.
Just food for thought
Marc

AFAIK the histogram is based on whatever jpeg the camera would produce. If you shoot RAW the histogram is not accurate, merely a reflection of the 'potential' jpeg result.

However, if you set the WB in RAW on the camera, at least you do get a representation of the colour change on the screen, which is a useful guide.

Yes, but since that histogram and the flashing highlight warning is all the information we have about how the exposure is across the image as a whole, white balance does count, since it can trick you into thinking that your exposure is correct when it isn't, or that it's wrong when it's correct.

Of course, if you know how to expose correctly without checking the histogram, then this variable can be ignored, as can the JPEG preview.

For those who still need to learn, it's rather important, though.

IMHO the basics of exposure have not changed from your 4 x 5 days, and the principles outlined by Ansel Adams in The Negative still apply. However, digital is more like transparency film where you expose for the highlights rather than for the shadows as with negative film.

I agree with a previous post that you should look at Michael's expose to the right essay. With ETTR, it is often best to take a reading from a highlight rather than a mid-tone so that you can place the highlight to the right, just short of clipping. This placement usually about 2 1/3 stops over the metered highlight value.

For most situations, the histogram gives a good indication of the exposure, and a highlight reading may not be necessary. You can simply adjust the exposure until the histogram looks good. The B/W histogram on most digital cameras represents luminosity, which is heavily weighted toward the green channel. Clipping of the red and blue channels may not show up in the luminosity histogram, and many newer cameras have histograms for all three RGB channels.

Bill

Thank you Bill for your thoughtful reply. I thought exposure was still exposure. And 'expose to the right" is not a new idea. It worked very well (and still does) with slide film. Expose to the right merely shifts the exposure up so the highlights are to the right as far as the photographer wishes. Quite analogous to variable developing time for b&w negs so the highlights fall where the photographer wishes. Only difference between film and digital is the time it takes to "see" the results.

But exposure is still just f/stop, shutter speed and ISO. Nothing really new.

Expose to the right pushes the highlights as far as possible to the right. One then pulls them to the left (Um, where the photographer wishes) in post processing.

WB is only relevant at shooting time if you're shooting JPEGs. If you're shooting RAW, f-stop, shutter speed, and ISO are the only camera parameters that affect the RAW image. There are supposed to be some exceptions, though. The Nikon D2X is alleged to perform white balance while digitizing the RAW data. I don't know if that's true.

Are you saying that the histogram either luminance or RGB is not one of the RAW data but an approximation of the cameras JPEG interpretation? (on a Canon DSLR)
Marc

PS. I did a quick experiment and on a 5D in auto white balance bracketing mode the displayed image and the histogram followed the changes in white balance but in manual white balance mode setting both extremes 2800K and 10,000K the image and the histograms are the same. My assumption is in manual white balance mode you are looking at the RAW histogram?
Marc

With both Nikon and digital cameras, white balance is achieved by changing the gain in the red and blue channels so as to bring the color balance to neutral. With the Nikon D200 and daylight exposure, the red channel is multiplied by 1.8 and the blue by 1.4. Here are the multipliers for other Nikon cameras and color temps:

http://www.pochtar.com/NikonWhiteBalanceCoeffs.htm

Here is a Macbeth Color checker exposed under daylight and processed in DCRaw with no white balance applied. The balance is decidedly green and the histograms for the channels in a neutral square are shown in Photoshop. The picture appears dark, since it is gamma 1.0. In general, raw histograms with gamma 1 are not that helpful, since everything is squeezed to the left.

http://bjanes.smugmug.com/photos/70235196-O.gif

With Nikon cameras one can get a gamma corrected histogram of the raw data by loading unity white balance into the camera so that the coefficients are all 1.0. I do not know if this is possible with Canons, but John Sheehy suggests that one can achieve a similar effect by taking a custom WB from a magenta piece of paper.

I don't see that this would be a big issue. Under-exposure is much easier to see with a linear histogram. Most of the detail you need to see to expose to the right is on the right. However, I'd like to see any kind of RAW RGB histogram, as long as it is clearly ticked for fine exposure estimates and corrections.

You are absolutely correct about ETTR! Instead of introducing this *new* acronym, the writers could have made it a lot simpler by referencing "exposing to retain highlight details on slides". The experienced slide shooters would have no problem understanding it. But that is just too boring for some.

As far as auto everything is concerned, many media and sports pros do rely upon them. Manually exposing and focusing can mean losing a shot.

There are a couple of key differences between film and digital exposure. With digital, the preview and histogram can provide immediate feedback. But of course those who can nail their exposures perfectly every shot would find these useless.

The noise at different digital ISOs vary between different camera sensors. For a particular film type and ISO, the grain, etc. remains the same regardless of which camera is used. Not so in digital.

With digital raw (and HDR), it is now possible to extend the dynamic range with a single shot (or multiple shots with different exposures). This is something very difficult or nearly impossible to achieve in a traditional darkroom.

I sounds like a digital camera determines exposure the same way. It just uses a new exposure meter with a histogram and an instant picture to look at.

Digial noise is a lot like film grain. Fast film, more grain (or noise).

Yes, with digital. it is "possible to extend the dynamic range with a single shot (or multiple shots with different exposures)." I say that is not exposure but processing. It is possible to extend the dynamic range with film with preflashing. Not really exposure either.

If I had a new camera with new technology and all, I wouldn't want to say it really worked just like an old fashioned film camera. And that is a lot easier to say with a straight face if you have no idea how an old fashioned film camera works.

When Adams "invented" the Zone System, he was really just applying an old methodolgy developed (no pun intended) by others. Variable processing is not Adams'.

And again, I have nothing against autofocus or autoexposure. But I suspect those "media and sports pros" really understand how their camera works and what it is doing for them.

No, that's about keeping it enough to the left that you don't blow the highlights. ETTR is about going to the right as much as is possible, with no regard for reflecting real scene tonality. There's a difference. Does slide film record contrast best in its upper stop? Have the weakest grain after increasing its contrast? Have the best saturation? Digital *does*.



Not exactly. This is different. Would a slide shooter shoot a dark-grey-on-black scene so that the dark grey is just short of clipping? That is what ETTR can entail.



How do you know that you're "nailing" your exposure? I bet lots of people who pat themselves on the back for nailing exposure are wasting a stop of DR, which is most likely what you're doing in a RAW file if the JPEG looks "nailed".

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorial...ose-right.shtml

Thanks for the link. I read the information and I think I have it now.

Film and digital have some common ground and some real differences. If I understand it right, digital is linear and flim is not. There is no warning and no forgiveness for overexposing digital. Film is more forgiving. Maybe that is why it is easy to get the "correct" exposure. AS a highlight approaches "blown out" on film, it takes an increasing amount of exposure to cross the line with film. With digital, the highlights just fall off the end.

It appears to me that digital exposure is still just f/stop, shutter speed and ISO, same as film. The method for bumping the image to the right is the same, but knowing how far to bump is different, and of course processing is different.

Because film is non-linear, slightly underexposed highlights are also hard to see. The highligh latitude is more forgiving in both directions. Underexpose a digital highlight is OK, it just wastes information space,

I think that is an excellent summary, Howie. Well expressed.

Eric

I don't mean to imply that there's anything wrong with using modern equipment, only that cameras and lenses are just tools for doing a job. If the old tools are doing the job, I'd go right on using them. There are certain things about digital capture, postprocessing and printing that I find compelling enough to convince me to work that way.

That said, I enjoy the experience of shooting with mechanical cameras much more than using my automated cameras. I just make more good images, faster, with the modern setup.

If you do your best work with a Nikon F or Leica M (or 4x5 field camera), why mess with anything else?


--
Daniel Bell

Yes, after reading a few posts and MR's ETTR essay Howie has come up to speed very quickly with digital. That is because he understands exposure. The same principles involved in 4x5 exposure with black and white negative film or color transparencies also apply to digital: one places the exposure to optimize the characteristics of the medium.

Bill