5 replies to this topic

[Nikon Shooter]

It was serious business, not a fuss. in film times but it is now!

With digital recording technologies, dynamic range latitudes
are so great that as long as you consider the histogram and
the EV button on your camera as your best friends at capture,
exposure is NO MORE the ultimate criteria but rendition is.

It hurts me painfully when ever I hear/read: "good" exposure",
"well exposed" etc. How can they know how it was exposed?

I say that it is not with the exposure that the mastery lies but
with the rendition of a capture.

What do you say?

[Ron]

What matters most I think is the photographer's intent. What was he/she trying to convey? Like you, I've read many articles that dwell on exposure as though that were the only criteria in determining the worth of an image. To me, good exposure is whatever it takes to tell the story that the artist is trying to tell. Histogram be damned.

 

--Ron

[Nikon Shooter]

What matters most I think is the photographer's intent. What was he/she trying to convey? Like you, I've read many articles that dwell on exposure as though that were the only criteria in determining the worth of an image. To me, good exposure is whatever it takes to tell the story that the artist is trying to tell. Histogram be damned. --Ron

 

Correct to the last word except the three last words.

Artist you say, Ron?

Damning the histogram is like working

1. on unprepared canvas.
2. without whites — or too many of them,
3. without blacks — or too many of them as well,  and
4. unmatching paint of different base compositions, dates, age, etc

Telling a story, in these conditions, is rather a random exercise, isn't it?
A story where someone practices some kind of censorship, forbidding

the use of given words, intonation, inflexions, style and what not.
 

[Ron]

What I meant is to not let the histogram bully you away from your intent... be it artistic or otherwise. In my line of work I'm dealing with often brightly colored flowers against a totally black background. Now, depending on the flowers, I may use a gray or light green background but in most cases the background is black. You can imagine where the histograms end up.

 

When I can use them, I do... but I don't let them bully me. They're tools. Nothing more.

 

--Ron

[Nikon Shooter]

Gotcha!

[Nikon Shooter]

As a publishing photographer working mainly in the E6 spheres,

there was nothing else than exposure, it made it or it killed it.

Nothing else than exposure because after that it was either the
bin or the publisher's desk. This was the right time to make all
that fuss about exposure.

Today, exposure is only getting it in the ball park: the histogram.
— things are really getting interesting once up in the converter's
window. From the strict readout of the recorded data with trans-
lated dynamics to the most sophisticated PP, everything is possi-
ble IF the recorded quality is comfortably within the histogram.