Pros Know this about Bracketing & Beginners Avoid It

many thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this week's video now don't get me wrong exposure bracketing undeniably has its place in a photographer's toolkit it's just not a I guess a one-size fits-all solution to achieving A Perfect Exposure So within the realm of digital photography and uh particularly landscape photography exposure bracketing has long been hailed as the foolproof method to ensure optimal exposure in difficult lighting conditions however as camera technology I guess advances and photographers refine their skills it's becoming increasingly evident that bracketing exposures isn't always a requirement for capturing a perfectly exposed image and in this video I'll share with you how to determine whether or not you actually need to bracket your exposures and from my personal experience most of the time I used to exposure bracket I was really just wasting my time so I organized this video into four parts photos that don't require bracketing photos that may require bracketing photos that do require bracketing and how you can tell the difference when you're out in the field and and on location so why should you even care about this if you're a digital photographer can't you just expose your bracket everything right and just figure it all out when you get home and the short answer is yes that's certainly one approach that you could take but my argument to that thinking is that if you fully understand exactly when you should and when you shouldn't or when you need to and when you don't need to expose your bracket you will be a better photographer so for one and this isn't even the main reason but for one it's going to save you time you know if you do a three- shot exposure bracket and you exposure bracket everything you're basically tripling the amount of photographs you take so that's going to waste time in the field and it is definitely going to waste your time when you're in the digital dark room calling through your photographs figuring out you know what you need versus what you don't need and trying to clean up and find the gold amongst all the photographs that you took on a particular trip so that's one advantage but the big one is understanding your camera's limitations every camera today has limitations and understanding what your camera can and can't do is huge you will be a better photographer if you understand that understanding the the relationship between light versus Shadow how to read a scene that's unfolding in front of you and and also how to read your histogram and to fully understand what your camera can do in a single photograph versus what your camera needs to rely on exposure bracketing in order to accomplish by understanding all of that you will be a more not only a better photographer but you'll also be a more confident photographer in your own skill set along with what your camera your gear can and cannot do so as far as the photographs that you really don't need to expose your bracket so this is a scene that this is actually the edited photo but I just captured this uh last week in my Norway workshop and this is the type of scene right here that I always use to to exposure bracket so full disclosure when I got into photography I guess it was maybe year two I learned about exposure bracket pretty early on and when I figured out how to set it up in my camera well I exposure bracketed everything my thought was just bracket at all just in case just in case you needed it well I tell you what the just in case scenarios really never happen I didn't use hardly any of the exposure bracketed photographs that I ended up taking because most of those scenes look like this right here this is not a a high Dynamic scene there is not a lot of contrasting light there are some Shadows down here and there is a sky that is a little bit brighter but nothing in this scene here is out of the realm of a modern digital camera today you know most cameras today have I'd say on the low end maybe average of 10 stops of dynamic range and on the high end maybe 15 16 or maybe even 17 stops of dynamic range so cameras today have got a lot of latitude they can capture a lot of information in a single scene just understanding what those limitations are is what's so important so I did not need to exposure bracket these types of photographs when I was first getting started that's just this is just the uh the edited version I've been working on but here's another example so this is from the dolomites uh my fall workshop last year where we're starting to see a little bit of Light Pop in we're also getting a little bit of Shadows down here as well so you've got kind of a brightish light kind of brightish clouds you got some darker Shadows here but even this type of a scene right here you don't even need to really expose your bracket either so understanding what you need to do versus what you don't need to do is absolutely imperative but what I used to do and what I see a lot of people do especially on on workshops is that they expose your bracket everything and it's and it's always the same reason why and it's the just in case I need to use it and most of the time you're probably not going to need to use it so those are some just two quick examples of scenes that you really don't need to expose your bracket now scenes that you may want to expose your bracket this is where it starts to get interesting so right here tons of of very dark shadows all through here and a sky that is fair fairly bright up here as well so if we come over here to the develop module and we look at the histogram here you're starting to see a lot of information piled up on the left side of the histogram histogram to where the blacks and the Shadows are indicated and you're also starting to see a little bit of a spike over here where the highlights and the whites are indicated on the histogram as well so this is the type of scenario where you're starting to get into that realm of maybe you're starting to get close to needing to expose your bracket this type of a scene but even this right here isn't an a I should say a necessity it's not a requirement the camera that I used for this which I believe was the A7 R2 Sony was even able to capture this in a single photograph like even if I bring the highlights all the way down you can look in the sky and you can see that there's no area in the sky up here that is Overexposed now if I hit the shortcut key j you can see that there are some areas of underexposed Shadows down through here which is definitely you know it's a little bit of a problem but the real culprit here is you really really want want to avoid Overexposed highlights or commonly referred to as blown out highlights that's what you really want to avoid and I'll show you here in a minute why that's that can just destroy a photograph but underexposed Shadows are definitely not good but not nearly as bad as Overexposed highlights are and here is the final version of this Photograph right here which you can see I was able this is still that that same exact photograph and of course that there was no areas that are Overexposed in the sky and you can see that there was no areas where there's lacking any detail down here in the foreground either now here is another example uh also from uh my trip to the dolomites last year all of this area up here in red these are all Overexposed highlights so this type of a scene here let me hit the shortcut key I you can see that my shutter speed is at 130th of a second so if I sped this up a little bit and did 160th of a second you can see that there's not quite as many Overexposed highlights in the sky but there is still a lot go a little bit faster this this is 1 125th of a second and you can see that there's still areas of Overexposed highlights in the sky here and the area down here is almost completely dark but you can still see what's happening but if you look at the histogram here you can see that the left side of the histogram up here is not pushed all the way over to the left of the histogram which basically would be indicating underexposed Shadows or some people refer to them as crushed Shadows or clipped Shadows there's none of that in the seam you can also tell because there's not that blue indicator anywhere down here either but if you look over here on the right side of the histogram there is a little bit of a spike right at the very edge and when I go back and look at some of the other photographs you can see the spike starts to to grow a little bit higher so that's really what you want to pay attention to but even this type of a scene you you don't have to expose your expose your bracket this type of a scene you might want to though just to create a cleaner image so with the Shadows being this dark I would would have to bring up the Shadows probably to 100 I'd probably have to bring the Black Point up a fair amount as well I'd have to bring the exposure up a fair amount bring the highlights down quite a bit as well to a point to where we're starting to get a more usable file right here and the reason why you might want to expose your bracket this scene is because when you have areas that are very very dark crushed Shadows or clipped Shadows maybe and you bring up so much Shadow recovery and you have to bring up the exposure so much A lot of times that can create noise in those darker areas of your photograph so using exposure bracketing techniques that's a way to create a somewhat of a cleaner file but if we're only talking about exposure even in this scenario I was able to get almost all of this Photograph done in a single photograph a single image but where those Overexposed highlights really come in is this right here this is pretty interesting so let me uh let me just reset this if we look at this area up here this is the area that Lightroom is saying this is Overexposed these are clip highlights right through here so if you remember the shape of this just kind of just remember that basic shape I'm going to turn the clipping indicator off and I'm going to bring the highlights all the way down let's bring the contrast all the way up so you can easily see this maybe bring the clarity up a little bit see that area right through here that's the exact same uh shape of that clipping indicator that we saw which is basically telling me that those areas were Overexposed which we knew cuz it's it was highlighted in red but there was no information captured in those areas there was no info captured it was Pure White there's no way to resolve that there's no way to bring that back it is gone that is why Overexposed highlights can destroy a photograph underexposed Shadows are definitely something you should try and avoid but it is not a a a a killer of your photograph but the Overexposed highlights are definitely something that can cause you a lot of problems and if I hit the if we reset this again and I hit that shortcut key j see there's the Overexposed area right through there and the same thing all of these areas up here that are indicated in red there is no information captured in any of those so that is an example of when you may want to expose your bracket now this example here this is where you absolutely have to expose your bracket and I'll show you a very very easy way to determine this when you're on location so this scene right here this was captured at 1/10th of a second you can see that this whole area up here is Overexposed if I turn the clipping indicator off this is the overall scene but that's at 1/10th of a second this is at 130th of a second so and once again you know there's a a much smaller area that is Overexposed up here now and there is a little area of underexposed Shadows down here as well if I bring the exposure down a little bit yep we're we're getting to the point to where we've almost removed all of that Overexposed highlights in the sky but now look what happened down here this is all underexposed these are all clipped or crushed shadows and then if I want to resolve those clipped Shadows bring the exposure back and now we have no clip Shadows but now we have a huge Overexposed sky and that's kind of the The Telltale sign is when you can't capture an image that has either overex I should say appropriate detail in the in the highlights and appropriate detail in the shadows at the same exact time that's where exposure bracketing comes in and now here's a real easy way to tell this when you're on location if you look at your histogram when you're on location if you have your his has a spike on the left side and it's pushed all the way to the left and you also have an area that is pushed to the right so you've got a spike basically on both sides that is a that's that is your camera telling you hey hey photographer I cannot capture this in a single frame you have to expose your bracket this no matter what you do to the camera settings if you can't resolve the spike on both sides at the same time then you should you should definitely expose your bracket that and just for clarity purposes when I say at the same time time is if you have the spike on the highlights here and you've got a big spike on the Shadows when that is occurring at the same exact time and there's no way to fix that so if I bring up the exposure see that now I've got no Spike on the left side but I've got a spike on the right side and if I bring this back down here and now I don't have a spike on the right now I don't have a spike on the right side but now I've got a huge Spike on the left side so whenever you see that when you're on location when you see your histogram it's got a big pile of on the the Shadows of the blacks and you also have a a big pile of information on the highlights and the whites on the right side of the histogram when you see those two things and there's no way to resolve them and and at the same time you should definitely expose your bracket that scene and that's a great way that's what I always try and look for when I'm on location and I've been using my cameras long enough to where I can almost just look at a scene and tell if I'm going to need to exposure bracket exposure bracket it or not and I think a lot of that just comes with practice from using your gear here now what a proper histogram really looks like and when I say proper I shouldn't use the term proper but a well balanced histogram this is a raw file from my uh Greenland workshop last year but you see how every all the information is kind of piled up in the center here there's nothing even remotely close to the blacks or the Shadows there's nothing even remotely close to the highlights or the whites over here very very balanced exposure now right here is another one this one right here could be a little bit tricky because you do have a bright Sky up here at the top and then you do some areas down here that are darker but if you look up here you can tell that there's nothing there's no Spike over here on the left side in the black of the shadows and there's also no huge Spike all the way over here on the uh the whites or the highlights the highlights are starting to get a little hot they are starting to get a little bright but you can tell when I bring the highlights down there's detail all through there and if I hit the shortcut key j and turn on the clipping indicator it's on right now nothing is is indicated anywhere on here now if I bring up the exposure a whole lot you see now the clipping indicator starts to kick in but here it's a very very clean image and when I bring the highlights down you can see that all that beautiful detail is retained in the sky as well so getting comfortable and understanding the relationship between light and shadows just by looking at a scene but most importantly is looking at your histogram and really being laser focused to the extreme left of your histogram and the extreme right of your histogram the Black Point and the Shadows versus the highlights in the white point paying attention to those and trying to avoid big spikes on either side of those is going to be your indicator as to whether or not you need to expose your bracket a seam like I said I used to expose your bracket everything and I really never needed to and now I feel more confident understanding exactly one what the limitations of my camera gear are my camera specifically is but I also understand my own skill set and I and I'm more confident now in being able to read a histogram being able to read a scene and being able to identify whether or not I need to expose your bracket a scene and I think that that has ultimately made me a better photographer so before I do that was a lot of information but before I do wrap up this week's video I do just want to say a big thanks to the longtime sponsor of the channel which is Squarespace who I use for all of my website and e-commerce needs Squarespace provides a robust and beautiful online platform to develop your website you can showcase your photography using squarespace's professional portfolio designs and display your work using customizable galleries in order to make it your own and with squar sp's online store feature you'll have access to all the tools you'll need to start selling your physical digital or service products online immediately you can even use squarespace's new asset Library so you can upload organize and access all your content from a single place in order to easily find and use them across the entire Squarespace platform so if you're looking to start a new website or possibly upgrade your current website check out squarespace.com Marny for a free trial and 10% off your first purchase so if you do have any questions about exposure racketing please leave those in the comment section below and I will do my best to get back in touch with you as quickly as humanly possible and if you did enjoy this week's video if you could give it a thumbs up subscribe to the channel if you're not subscribed already and as always I really do appreciate you carving out a little bit of time to spend it with me here today talking about all things related to perfectly exposed landscape photos and I really do appreciate it and I will see you all next Wednesday bye

Channel: Mark Denney

Views: 73,910

Keywords: landscape photography, landscape, photography, mark denney, exposure bracketing, exposure bracket, how to exposure bracket, exposure, bracket, what is exposure bracketing, when to use exposure bracketing, when to use bracketing in photography, when to bracket exposures, photography for beginners, beginner photography, beginner photography tips, exposure bracketing tutorial, exposure bracketing for beginners, exposure bracketing examples, best exposure bracketing settings, how to

Id: TcOp6_SzYUk

Length: 16min 26sec (986 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 14 2024