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Exposure Bracketing

Started Oct 2, 2021 | Discussions thread
Erik Baumgartner Senior Member • Posts: 6,894
Re: Exposure Bracketing
2

a_c_skinner wrote:

This is one of those "Don't know" questions.

With film I never did, it used too much film. If I want to be confident of using jpgs from the camera it would make a lot of sense and I do this with ISO bracketing. This saves different jpgs but the same raw.

Were I not wanting to use jpgs at all there seems no practical difference (for what I do with X-Trans 3) between slight underexposure corrected in processing and correct exposure.

I don’t see how ISO bracketing makes much sense for RAW or jpeg shooters. Sure, you get three jpeg images to choose from with different brightness, but if you underexposed you’re still stuck with unnecessary noise in all three images, and if you overexposed you’re still stuck with potentially blown highlights in all three images.

Exposure bracketing will also result in three jpeg images of different brightness to choose from, but you will also benefit from the choice of the most optimal exposure as well. And who needs three functionally identical RAW files taking up space from each shot?

The only reason I could see using ISO bracketing is if you want to avoid any movement between the three jpegs so you can blend them in post - which also doesn’t make any sense to me when a single RAW will be much simpler and will have significant post processing advantages as well.

 Erik Baumgartner's gear list:Erik Baumgartner's gear list
Sony RX100 Fujifilm X100V Fujifilm X-T2 Fujifilm X-T20 Fujifilm XF 35mm F1.4 R +5 more
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