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: email@hidden
- Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 11:09:19 EST
In a message dated 12/26/00 5:14:30 PM, email@hidden writes:
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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.
Unfortunately this is not a choice that can be made automatically in all
cases. For instance I shot a few frames of the frost on my bedroom window
yesterday. If I were to set the darkest pixel in one of these images as
black, anad the lightest as white, it would no longer look like frost, but
some type of high contrast abstract painting... on the other hand the auto
exposures from the Olympus E-10 were quite accurate in a literal sense, but a
bit flatter than I would choose to actually print the image. The artistic
intent factor can't be eliminated, and should not be. Rather, we should offer
the best tools to offer appropriate defaults, and a full range of manual
overrides.
C. David Tobie
Design Cooperative
email@hidden