ETTR (Expose To The Right)

wiltw · Jul 21, 2025

Nikon 2 said:
I never had to look at a screen shooting film…

I had almost 40 years of experience shooting film before ever adopting digital, so my usual is to not look at histogram, and usually not even chimp shots...only if the lighting is a tricky situation do I initially shoot one shot and review it to see if I need to alter settings at all. But usually shoot dozens of shots with zero chimping! Use of RAW conversion postprocessing adjustments greatly facilitates chimpless shooting.

DWThomas · Jul 21, 2025

It must be my aging brain -- every time this ETTR topic shows up in the new posts feed, I think "a Bronica model I missed ..."

OK, I'll show myself out.

Nikon 2 · Jul 21, 2025

DWThomas said:
It must be my aging brain -- every time this ETTR topic shows up in the new posts feed, I think "a Bronica model I missed ..."

OK, I'll show myself out.

If your brain doesn’t age, you’re not normal…

wiltw · Aug 25, 2025

wiltw said:
With regard to the initial 'muddy' shots of yours, I believe that your metering was wrongly biased by the bright sky (and the big white clouds). Folks often assume it is 0EV, when in fact it starts off brighter than an 18% gray card in the same light. Today, my sky (without clouds) is not exceptionally bright, but it does read +0.4EV brighter than a gray card right now.

To follow up on the point made in this earlier post, I just went out with spotmeter and a gray card at 10am late August at Latitude 38, and made these observations about the brightness of the 'blue sky' relative to a gray card... readings of the 'blue sky' taken about 45 degrees away from the sun position

ranged from 0EV to +1.7EV relative to a gray card reading with the same meter (readings decreased in brightness as the angle of elevation of the meter reading went higher in the sky)
IOW, the sky can be a very poor surrogate for a gray card reading.

BTW, today simply following Sunny 16 would have failed, too...as the gray card reading was ISO 250 1/250 f/11 +0.5EV (contrast that with frequently getting f/16 +0.3EV in readings taken at random sampling intervals over the past months)

Nikon 2 · Saturday at 7:19 AM

wiltw said:
I had almost 40 years of experience shooting film before ever adopting digital, so my usual is to not look at histogram, and usually not even chimp shots...only if the lighting is a tricky situation do I initially shoot one shot and review it to see if I need to alter settings at all. But usually shoot dozens of shots with zero chimping! Use of RAW conversion postprocessing adjustments greatly facilitates chimpless shooting.

I agree, no monkey business for me…

ETTR (Expose To The Right)

wiltw

DWThomas

Nikon 2

wiltw

Nikon 2

Privacy & Transparency

Privacy & Transparency