In every workshop I've taught since the dawn of digital, one of the things I have told my students is that to get the best quality images you have to know how you are going to process your images to know how to capture the image. What I mean by this is that how you expose and what ISO settings you can effectively use depends on what type of software you are using to process those images. If you have a raw processor that can't recover highlights then you'd have to be extremely careful not to blow out any important highlights while shooting. If your camera produces excessive noise that is another issue, but if you have experience with a noise reduction software like Noise Ninja or the noise reduction tools in Lightroom and you know you can effectively take care of noise up to a certain ISO setting then that allows you more freedom while out in the field.

If you are shooting jpegs then you have to get it right in the camera because any alterations made to the image afterwards are going to degrade the image quality - maybe only a little in some cases - or maybe a lot depending on what needs to be fixed. And getting it right in the camera means using a custom white balance and nailing the exposure. If you are shooting fast a furious this may not always be possible. Shooting raw doesn't mean you should be any less vigilant but it does give you a file that can be salvaged.

Since Lightroom can effectively recover up to two stops of highlights then I know I have some leeway on the highlight end of the histogram when exposing raw images. This doesn't mean I don't pay close attention to my exposures. I don't needlessly overexpose images - but I do know that most of the information that my sensor can record is in the first stop of highlights. Hence for an optimum exposure and for the least amount of noise (especially at high ISOs) the adage "expose to the right" is the correct exposure for most situations. What I mean by expose to the right is to expose using the histogram and adjust the histogram so that it is as far to the right as possible without bowing out any highlights - or at least not any important highlights. Once you are ready to process the images you can adjust the exposure and brightness to make the images appear as they should. Now of course this is only if you are shooting raw files, for jpegs this would just leave you with a bunch of overexposed images. And if you are shooting RAW + JPEG then this introduces some problems. Do you expose for the jpegs or for the raw files?

Now, one exception to this rule is when shooting portraits. If you blow out the highlights in one channel (red, green or blue) then you might have some strange color issues on your subjects face. These may be subtle or they may not. Lightroom and ACR uses the channels that are not blown out to recover those that are. If all of the channels are blown then you can get some highlight information back but most likely not all. If only one channel is blown (and it isn't a portrait) you can usually get enough back that it isn't that big of a deal. For portraits, to avoid any unnatural colors in the skin tones I make sure no highlights are blown out on the face via the blinking highlights display on the cameras LCD - or on a laptop tethered to the camera.

Exposing with digital is tough. While is has great detail in the shadows in reality digital has even less exposure tolerance than slide film had - if you are looking for the best exposure. Sure you can get an image and probably a decent image even if you are very lax with your exposure settings. But getting the best possible output requires some experimentation and getting to know your camera.

Of course at some point you'll run into a scene that will exceed your sensors exposure latitude. In these cases you'll just have to decide what is important and expose for those parts of the image. Or, if the subject is stationary, you can bracket exposures and put them together in Photoshop using the High Dynamic Range tool. But that is a topic for another time.

And if you have never heard the "expose to the right" philosophy then this blog post holds some serious gems to help improve your photography! I'm giving away the secrets here folks. Feel free to mail me a check! Just kidding...maybe.

If you would like to explore the ins and out of how to expose for digital my eBook Adobe Photoshop Lightroom: A Professional Photographer's Workflow is available on my website and contains a lengthy section on exposing with digital.

Also, check out my review of Joe McNally's latest book on my blog here.

That's it for this session. See you next week.

Adios, Michael Clark