(car beeps) (mellow music) (upbeat music) - Hi everyone and welcome to Pal2Tech. About a month ago, I
published a full video on the HDR feature for Fujifilm cameras. HDR stands for high dynamic range and it's a setting that's located usually on one of the top dials. There is a significant difference between shooting an HDR image, using the HDR setting on
the camera versus shooting using the exposure
bracketing setting to then merge those photos later on in HDR. For example, here's a scene
where the camera has indicated that this is the perfect
exposure and here's one that's two stops under exposed, and here's one that's
two stops overexposed. Now, if I took this exact same photo but used the HDR feature on the top dial of the camera, using say an
HDR mode setting of 400%, which causes the camera to
take three separate photos. Each photo is two stops in
exposure apart from the others, but have a look at the HDR version. Now you can read NAS pretty well. And I don't have my highlights blown out. You see that? The camera merged
together those three shots and then gave me one final
balanced JPEG or a RAW file. And as I mentioned before this is using the HDR
feature on the top dial. However, for my next set of shots I used the exposure bracketing feature. By using exposure bracketing, the camera does not merge them for you. It simply saves each one to your SD card as a separate photo. You still have all of the original images and you can try out different settings in your HDR software
to get a better merge. Here are five photos I
took using HDR bracketing. And as you can see, they range from overexposed
to under exposed. What I did was I selected all of them in Lightroom and
I simply right-click, Photo Merge, HDR. I am leaving the default settings because this is not an HDR tutorial. And here's the photo
that came out of that. This is the merged HDR photo from those five different
bracketed exposures I took on the camera. Now let's look at the difference between
the exposure bracketed HDR merge in the software
versus what Fujifilm did when I set the top dial to HDR. They look pretty similar,
but if you zoom in look how you can see the shadow
detail of the hard drive. You see that? There's also more vibrant and saturated colors, have a look at this. And if I zoom in 200%, you can see that the exposure bracketing
version does a better job of reproducing the blue
color shade right here. Look at that. If I expose for the
wooden post on the dock I'm gonna blow out that background. And if I expose for the background, I lose detail in the wooden
part of the dock right here. You see that? So what I did was I shot a series of five bracketed exposures, but once I merged them
together in Lightroom have a look at this. Now you get more detail in the sky. You get more detail in the water. You get more detail in the dock. Look at the detail in
the wood on the dock. Do you see how the exposure
bracketing brought that back in? Okay, so here is how you use
the exposure bracketing feature on the Fujifilm camera. The first thing you want
to be sure you do is set your top dial to be BKT. Next, you want to go into the Menu, into your camera icon, into Drive Setting. Now don't go to HDR mode, go
watch my other video on that. That's a whole other topic. So just ignore that. What you want to do is you want
to go into Bracket Setting. You see that? Now, the first thing you
want to do is make sure that Bracket Select is selected
to auto exposure bracket. You see that right there? Then go down to auto exposure bracket and you have three
different menu items here. The first is called Frames Step Setting. This is where you choose the number of photos your camera takes as well as the exposure difference
between each of those photos. This is an exposure meter right here with zero at the bottom,
going all the way 15 stops on either side for both
overexposed and underexposed. So for example, if I choose
plus three frames right here and three step, the camera
will take three photos. The first one will be at what it thinks is the perfect exposure. Then it will take a second
photo, three stops overexposed and then a third photo with
six stops over exposed. But if I go back and I say,
I want five plus and minus that means it's gonna take five photos. One of them with normal exposure and then two underexposed
and two over exposed with a three stop difference
between the two of them. This makes it so easy to figure out what the camera's gonna do. I love this thing. The next option is Frame Continuous. If you put it in continuous, right? That means that when you're ready to go, you got your camera on the tripod. You're all ready to shoot. You, press the shutter button one time. And then the camera takes
all the pictures at once. You know, (imitates
shutter clicking rapidly) it takes them all at once, but you only press the button one time. You kind of kick it off, and then it does its thing
and takes all the shots. However, if you set this to 1 Frame, then the camera will only take one photo each time you press the shutter button. So if you want that series
of five bracketed exposures, you have to press down
the shutter button one two, three, four, five times, right? And as you press the button
down and continue to take it, you have a little icon here. Do you see that? And as you press the shutter
button that begins to drop down to zero, as you're taking your shots until you're finished and it's at zero. And lastly you have Sequence Setting. What this means is the order in which it's going to take the shots. So for example, on the top one, right here it's gonna start out at zero. Zero means that's the shot that the camera thinks is perfectly exposed. You know, it hasn't applied any over or under exposure to it. So that would be the first shot taken. Then see how it's moving to the plus. Then it would take your next set of shots that are overexposed. Then finish up by taking your
shots that are underexposed. Now, if I were to go down
here to say this one, it would first start off by
taking your underexposed shots. Then it would take the perfect shot. Then it will take your
overexposed shots in that order as it saves it to the SD card. I pretty much leave it on
the top one all the time. Now, in terms of exposure settings if you're new to exposure bracketing, I suggest you start off by
putting all of the dials, you know, your exposure triangle, just put everything in A for automatic. Then go out and have fun and shoot some exposure
bracketing and see what you get. Now as you start to set
fixed values for your ISO, your shutter speed and your
aperture what'll happen is your camera will then
adjust the other ones so that it can maintain this exposure it needs for the various
over and underexposed shots that it's taking. So for example, if you
have ISO set to 160 firm and you have your shutter
speed say set to 125, but your aperture set to A for automatic, then when you're taking
your bracketed shots, you're bracketing is going
to adjust your aperture so that you get the over and under exposed bracketed shots. Now, if you have everything
in all manual, and then you go to take your
exposure bracketed shot your camera will then
change the shutter speed. That is why you always
want to be using a tripod. You never know how low that
shutter speed is gonna go. Well, thank you so much for watching. I hope this video has
been helpful for you, and if it has, be sure to give
it the like and subscribe. Have a wonderful weekend. Try and get some exposure bracketing done. I am signing off now and I will see you in another video next week. Take care. (upbeat music)
