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Re: [OM] ETTR, was: MooseRant on Low Light Shoot-Out

Subject: Re: [OM] ETTR, was: MooseRant on Low Light Shoot-Out
From: Moose <olymoose@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 28 Jan 2014 21:52:29 -0800
On 1/28/2014 6:53 AM, Ken Norton wrote:
> ETTR is ONLY valid if you shoot RAW, unless you are photographing a
> subject where placement of the highlight at Zone IX is critical.

On 1/28/2014 7:08 AM, Chuck Norcutt wrote:
> ...
>
> Umm, no.  If I have to "recover" highlights I haven't done the ETTR
> thing correctly.

On 1/28/2014 7:24 AM, Ken Norton wrote:
>> No, I'm not.  I make it a practice to assure that none of my colors are
>> clipping.
> Impossible. The in-camera histogram is generated off of an in-camera
> JPEG and also shows only the primary (RGB) colors, not the derived
> colors (CMY). You can have the yellows clip and never know it. The
> only thing you can do it ETTR and then back off one stop to be safe.

Is it possible you guys are arguing about definition, not substance? It's seems 
to me you may be arguing past each other 
about different ideas about what ETTR is, rather than about real differences?

Reading this thread, it sounds to me like AG is using ETTR as an absolute, 
perhaps defined by some of those (possibly 
imaginary) unnamed web folks with whom hs is always arguing. He is arguing with 
a dogma, dogETTR. He assumes it must 
involve highlight recovery, else why would he harp so much on the perils of 
highlight recovery, and why would ETTR be 
invalid for JPEGs?

OTOH, Chuck seems to be attempting to practically shoot as high up the 
histogram as possible without clipping 
highlights. No dogma, just pragmatic experience, pettr.

I'm closer to Chuck's idea. I'd like to have a Raw histogram that just barely 
falls short of touching the top on any 
channel. In practice, this is very difficult to achieve outside a controlled 
environment. So I try to pay reasonable 
attention to doing that. Highlight recovery is then a fallback when I miss.

This is, or should be, about practical technique to optimize digital exposure 
to minimize highlight clipping while 
retaining the best shadow possible, not absolute definitions.

It's also far less of a problem with contemporary cameras with wider DR. One 
need worry less about nailing just that 
one, highest pixel to the very top of the flagpole.

  --- Side note ---

Some JPEG engines do quite a good job of compressing highlights, rather than 
clipping them. It often looks like clipping 
when viewed as a web image. But if one selects highlights and looks at the 
histogram, little or nothing is clipped. 
Knowing this is one of the side effects of messing with a lot of other peoples' 
images, as I shoot Raw.

When it's the case, it's generally possible to 'recover', make visible, 
highlight detail that was there, but not 
visible. I've posted quite a number of examples over the years.

Definitional Moose

-- 
What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
-- 
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