Re: Using a 113 gray standard in digital photo
Re: Using a 113 gray standard in digital photo
- Subject: Re: Using a 113 gray standard in digital photo
- From: tflash <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 12:09:27 -0500
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>> The idea of a "properly" exposed image is
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>> then a matter of sliding the whole tonal range of the scene up or down
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>> inside the tonal range of the final media - with a fair amount of tonal
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>> compression cranked in.
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> Excellent post, that's exactly how I was visualizing it. Like placing
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> a
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> sliding, variable-size bracket around a Photoshop histogram, where the
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> bracket is the capture device's range and the histogram is the subject's
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> light response. It'd be great if cameras had a graphic UI like that
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> for setting correct exposure.
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Unfortunately this is not a choice that can be made automatically in all
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cases. For instance I shot a few frames of the frost on my bedroom window
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yesterday. If I were to set the darkest pixel in one of these images as
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black, anad the lightest as white, it would no longer look like frost, but
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some type of high contrast abstract painting... on the other hand the auto
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exposures from the Olympus E-10 were quite accurate in a literal sense, but a
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bit flatter than I would choose to actually print the image. The artistic
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intent factor can't be eliminated, and should not be. Rather, we should offer
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the best tools to offer appropriate defaults, and a full range of manual
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overrides.
Right. I was one who agreed that the gray card reading can fail under
extreme circumstances. It's a nice little rule of thumb which will work some
80% of the time, but it was a little too facile to bet the job on it. It's
only useful inside of other parameters, both technical and artistic.
Todd