Bracketing shots

[paperdoll]

November 14, 2006 at 11:58 am

Can anyone explain how to bracket shots correctly? I know how to turn it on but thats about it!! What are the little +/- numbers and what should they be set to??

[Jay King]

November 14, 2006 at 12:14 pm

here’s a good article on it…

http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/18075.html

Loads more results in gooooogle – http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=bracketing+photos

I’m sure someone else will have their own input but hope it helps :)

[paperdoll]

November 14, 2006 at 12:20 pm

thanks Jay ….I’ll have a read.

[ciaran]

November 14, 2006 at 12:20 pm

paperdoll wrote:

Can anyone explain how to bracket shots correctly? I know how to turn it on but thats about it!! What are the little +/- numbers and what should they be set to??

Bracketing is a way of taking the same shot, but with different exposures. It’s very useful when you’re shooting a scene with a very wide dynamic range (very dark through to very bright) and you want a final shot to retain all the detail. Normally, if we just took one shot, we’d have to either expose for the shadows and lose risking detail in the highlights, or expose for the highlights and risk losing detail in the shadows. Another approach would be to expose for the middle and risk losing detail in perhaps both the shadows and the highlights (again it depends on the dynamic range in the scene).

But what if we could take a shot for the shadows and then one for the midtones and then one for the highlights? We could then try and merge them in Photoshop to give a shot which appears to have a very wide dynamic range. One way of doing this would be to put your camera on a tripod or in some position where it can’t move (this is essential). We choose our desired aperture for the depth of field that we want and then choose a shutter speed. If we have a LONG shutter speed, we’ll get lots of detail in the shadows but we’ll blow the highlights. Now, keeping the aperture the same and the camera in the same position, we’ll adjust the shutter speed to something a little quicker (perhaps double the speed – decrease exposure by one stop). Now, we’re taking a shot for the midtones and we’ll probably lose some detail in the darkest shadows and brightest highlights again. Finally, keeping the aperture the same and camera still in the same position, we’ll go for a quicker shutter speed again, let’s day doubling the speed or decreasing exposure by one stop again. Now take the shot.. this time the highlights are perfect, but we’ve lost detail in the shadows.

Effectively we have 3 shots of the same scene all taken at different exposures. In this case the exposure was controlled manually. We changed the shutter speed each time, each time choosing a 1 stop increment. This is effectively what bracketing does. The camera can be set up to take X amount of shots in a bracket (our example had 3), with X increment in between each (our example was whole stop increments, but depending on your camera you can go for 1/3 stop or 2/3 stop increments). The + is when it’s “overexposing” to get detail in the shadows and the – is when you’re “underexposing” to retain detail in the highlights. So we set our camera to bracket, hold down the shutter release and it will take X amount of shots, each time adjusting the shutter speed in between frames automatically.

For me, when I do apply bracketing, I usually do a 3 set bracket of 1 whole stop incremenents and then use Photoshop (badly) to stitch the shots together.

[paperdoll]

November 14, 2006 at 12:28 pm

thanks Ciaran, I get the jist of what you are saying, but I’ll have to read again at home when I have the camera in my hand! I know my camera can take 3 bracketed shots…its how much to under or over expose the bracketed shots that sorta confuses me…but I guess that depends on the scene.

[ciaran]

November 14, 2006 at 12:33 pm

paperdoll wrote:

thanks Ciaran, I get the jist of what you are saying, but I’ll have to read again at home when I have the camera in my hand! I know my camera can take 3 bracketed shots…its how much to under or over expose the bracketed shots that sorta confuses me…but I guess that depends on the scene.

Yup exactly! Personally I don’t see the point of increments any smaller than 1 whole stop as Photoshop, or indeed any RAW converter can allow you claw back exposure less than this anyway. The best thing to do is practice it :)