Any b&w film photographer who studied even a little about the craft is familiar with the zone system. Well today's equivalent in the digital photography world is to "expose to the right" of the histogram. If you aren't familiar with the concept, read the Luminous Landscape article above for a much better description than I could ever hope to give.
Exposing to the right is often tricky business because of a digital camera's propensity to blow the highlights. So about four months ago, I read a post on dpreview.com from photographer Tim Wilson on how to "expose to the right" easily and consistently while preserving the highlights. You will use your camera's spot metering function to do this. (if you don't have one, then you are probably out of luck with this technique).
Step one. Set your camera's metering mode to spot metering. Step two, set the exposure compensation to +2EV. Step three, find the brightest part of the scene which you have composed and use the spot meter on that part to lock your exposure. Step four, recompose and take the shot.
What you have just done is told the camera to put the brightest part of the scene at +2EV. This preserves your highlights, while pushing everything as far to the right on the histogram as possible.
This technique takes a little practice, but works like a charm. On my 5D, I've created this set-up this as the custom "Camera User Setting" on the exposure mode dial, so I always have these settings at the ready.
Damn. More buttons to push and dials to turn. Oh well ... I'll give it a whirl. :-) Excellent information.
Posted by: Craig Persel | March 24, 2007 at 07:27 AM
Thanks Lawrence. So here's something you might not believe...these images are unprocessed, straight out of the camera. I did one little trick to get this look
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