Exposure Bracketing

Way back yonder, back in my Nikon days, I always had exposure bracketing on, because as they say, film is cheap....

I did this for a short while once entering the Fuji age some time back with a x100s, but stopped because I never needed any of these over our under exposed images.

So, the last two days, I turned it back on, mostly because I'm upgrading my Capture One from v12 with the latest upgrade offer, which includes HDR processing ability.

How many of you keep your exposure bracketing on all the time?

Equally important, how do you select which image to post process of the group?

Thanks

I only use exposure bracketing when the dynamic range required exceeds 3 stops. I shoot RAW so have a reasonable latitude in PP. I don't see the point in cluttering my hard drive with different exposures when 95+% of images don't require the HDR treatment.

Unless a scene has ridiculously high DR and I am already planning to do some sort of merge in post, I almost never bracket exposures. Frankly, it’s pretty rare that I can’t get a decent result with a single properly exposed RAW file (which is exceptionally easy to accomplish with a mirrorless camera with an EVF) in almost any situation.

Erik Baumgartner wrote:

Unless a scene has ridiculously high DR and I am already planning to do some sort of merge in post, I almost never bracket exposures. Frankly, it’s pretty rare that I can’t get a decent result with a single properly exposed RAW file (which is exceptionally easy to accomplish with a mirrorless camera with an EVF) in almost any situation.

I agree that Fuji raws have a lot of depth and can be processed quite well with the raw processor (Fuji/Silkypix version or others).

A nice set of exposure bracketed shots can be directly imported to a HDR program, and this might be a convenience.  The inconvenience is the slight motion of subject matter between shots.

Because of the sensor's available dynamic range, ISO bracketing can work very well.  This mode requires one shutter click and takes only one exposure, but processes that single exposure into three output files.  The first output file will be at the chosen exposure and ISO, the second will be at a higher ISO, and the third will be at a lower ISO.  These import very easily into a HDR program.  A deviation of +/- 1 EV is possible, depending on how you set it up, and you can get near-HDR images of moving subjects, unlike three separate exposure bracketed images.

I use ISO bracketing quite a bit, because I like using my HDR program.  If you prefer processing raws, a single exposure should do you just fine, as Erik states above.

1/3 of a stop?  For most of us that is trivial, have I misunderstood?

a_c_skinner wrote:

1/3 of a stop? For most of us that is trivial, have I misunderstood?

Agreed, if I'm going to bother bracketing I'll usually be at +/- 2 1/3 stops or more.

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.

As in 2/3 stop each way? Even that is very precise for me (but that may confess to a slapdash approach on my part).

Edit, not arguing, this genuninely intrigues me - the whole subject.  As a graduate of the Kodachrome years exposure was always deeply trying.

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.

At the ISOs I use the noise is trivial whatever you do, the difference even more so.  Yes, it gives you three jpgs to choose from, no more.  If I never wanted to use jpgs it would serve no purpose.

Great dialog. Thanks.

I think, for now, I'm going to use it more selectively.

Appreciate all the feedback.

a_c_skinner wrote:

As in 2/3 stop each way? Even that is very precise for me (but that may confess to a slapdash approach on my part).

Edit, not arguing, this genuninely intrigues me - the whole subject. As a graduate of the Kodachrome years exposure was always deeply trying.

Nope, 2 and 1/3 stops each way, anything less isn't worth the trouble IMO. 2 1/3 stops (arrived at through a bit of trial and error)  works well for adding some extra clean shadow detail and plenty of highlight headroom into the HDR equation. I usually just go with a single RAW exposure, but I will occasionally do the exposure bracketing thing if I want to guarantee sufficient image detail to work with in very high DR scenes.

I used it, 10-15 years ago. That happily ended when I came over to Fuji's DR.

Chris Dubea wrote:

Way back yonder, back in my Nikon days, I always had exposure bracketing on, because as they say, film is cheap....

I did this for a short while once entering the Fuji age some time back with a x100s, but stopped because I never needed any of these over our under exposed images.

So, the last two days, I turned it back on, mostly because I'm upgrading my Capture One from v12 with the latest upgrade offer, which includes HDR processing ability.

How many of you keep your exposure bracketing on all the time?

Equally important, how do you select which image to post process of the group?

Thanks

I usually use ISO bracketing with my Fujis, but my other camera (Sigma fp L) does not support it.

Generally with that camera I exposure bracket five shots, with a spacing of 1 EV per shot.  This means -2EV, -1EV, 0EV, +1EV, +2EV.  This gives me lots of choices in post processing.  I find myself gravitating to using the 0EV or the -1EV raw, and it becomes the only raw I process.  I'm using this camera this way more and more, but I don't always use exposure bracketing.  Sometimes a single exposure is more appropriate.

Moving on, if highlights are blown, they might not be completely blown in the next lower EV image of the set of five.  Sometimes the highlights appear to be blown but are not blown in the raw itself.  These are things I find out during post processing.  I might have to open a few raws to find out these things, then I choose which one to process further.

If the highlights are not a problem the shadows can be a problem.  So, I have to choose which of the five images gives me the best chances with both.  Plenty of time for that during post processing, of course.

And the subject matter always predominates when it comes to choosing the best of the five images to process.  Sometimes completely blown highlights are not important.  Sometimes blocked up shadows are not important.  So it all "depends".

I have not found it useful to combine a set of exposure bracketed shots into a HDR, because slight movement of foliage or people will mess up that area of the image.  I do like the results I get when I combine ISO bracketed shots into a HDR though, because there are none of these artifacts.  I wish all my cameras could do ISO bracketing!