Expose for the Highlights, Print for the Shadows - Photography Quick Tip #8

http://cazillo.com/articles/37-photography/189-expose-for-the-highlights-prin...

You should be setting your camera's exposure with the highlights in mind. Be careful not to overexpose important parts of the image by using the histogram. Exposing this way will give you the maximum amount of data to create better & more colorful images.

Next step is editing your photo. Its easy to adjust your shadows in Lightroom to have a full tonal range. Check out the video!

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Photography
• printing
• profiles
• shadows
• highlights
• histograms
• photography histogram

[GregoryCazillo]

@jeanozeroeight It means you need perfect exposure and need  to pay attention to your exposure and histogram.

[dolansphoto]

I kinda disagree! With RAW files you are always able to bring back underexposure, but once a face is overexposed its DONE! I know what you meant but for the average user I think this may be a bad tip because they're going to start overexposing everything and have a bunch of blown out faces that are not reparable! Anyway, just my lame two cents! Hope to chat with ya soon on SKype!

[GregoryCazillo]

@dolansphoto When you underexpose your images by 1 stop you lose 1/2 of the data that could have potentially been in the image. When underexposing & then fixing it in post you also add more noise to the image, lowering the quality again.

[gtochad]

i like these more advanced tips. its what your best at and what im most interested in

do you have any suggestions though of what to take photos of when your in a rut and cant go outside for fear of the weather damaging the camera?

[GregoryCazillo]

@gtochad it all depends on what you are interested in. If you like studio or still life photographs then try to create some of them. Otherwise check out the ThinkTank Photo Hydrophobia rain covers. I own two of them (70-200 flash and 300-600) both are great.

[heuykiller]

Would you say that your face is blown out in the video? I would.

[GregoryCazillo]

@heuykiller Yup, my point exactly!

[andyordphoto]

A 60 sec tutorial on hyperfocal distance would be useful one day ;-)

[jeanozeroeight]

Greg do you mean, shoot for the highlights, like it would be better if we shot an overexposed image than an underexposed image to get better quality?

[harishgudavalli]

Thanks Greg..your videos are very informative.

[StevenScholten]

Thanks a lot for that (and your other vids). I have been trying to get as much info as possible on getting good (flash) exposure. I know how to adjust ISO.Shutterspeed and aoperture, but how to judge a good exposure seems hard. I have the feeling there's more to it then just trying to get the histogram as far to the right as possible without overexposing. Those shots always seem to bright to me. The more you can teach us about it the better!

Greets from Holland

Steven

[atamola]

Great tip. Thank you.

[GlaucoHass]

Great tip, very helpful. I can see myself shooting again some underexposed subjects with that "expose to the right" thing. They will definitely look better. Thanks.