Re: Best Exposure

[P3D Peter Davis <pfd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 04:54 PM 1/7/97 -0600, you wrote:
>Peter Davis joins the melee with:
>
>>There may be no such thing as "perfect" exposure, but it may be
>>possible to define a "best" exposure for a given scene.  Both
>>underexposed and overexposed shots lose information, because detail is
>>lost either in the shadow areas or in the light areas.  Therefore, it
>>might make sense to say the best exposure is the one which preserves
>>the most information.  By analogy with audio recording, once this
>>"master" has been recorded, it could be mixed and adjusted, optically
>>or digitally, for particular effects.
>
>Peter's point is a good one and makes a good general rule, although it
>apparently presumes that the information in the highlights and the
>information in the shadows are equally important.  This will not always
>be the case.
>
>As Mike S. suggests and Greg W. emphasizes, our exercise of creative
>choice as photographers may cause us to deliberately select an exposure
>that does not merely preserve the most information, but creates the
>image we envisioned.  As an extreme example, who among us has not seen
>a beautiful photographic silhouette?  The best exposure for such a result
>would not be defined as the one that captures the most information.
>
>Also, in shooting stereo slides, most of us are usually creating the
>final image in the camera and will not readily be able to treat the
>slide as a "master" that can be mixed and adjusted, so we often have
>to create our exposure effects when the film is exposed.

Absolutely correct.  What was I thinking?  I guess this comes from too much
signal processing and such.

I think in the case where the image is going to be manipulated after
exposure, it makes sense to record a sort of "generic" image which can then
be tweaked.  This is pretty rare, though.  Most of us, myself included, live
with what comes back from the processing lab.  So, we've got to do our
homework in the camera.

-pd
--------
                                Peter Davis
                   URL:  http://www.ziplink.net/~pfd/

                 "Nondescript -- the one word oxymoron."


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