ISO vrs. pushing exposure in post?

~SamRickim Jun 18, 2012 Student Photographer

I have a Nikon D3100, and I'm using Lightroom to develop from RAW.

Is it better for me to up the ISO (from 100 to 200, or from 200 to 400) or to adjust the exposure of a shot in post? Is it necessary that I get the shot perfect on camera? Is adjusting exposure in post non-destructive?

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Devious Comments

~Molot Jun 19, 2012 Hobbyist Photographer

Post production will never provide you with more detail. It will only steal it from you. +- 1EV from RAW is possible, +- 2EV sometimes works, but all in all, it adds just as much noise as setting lower or higer ISO would.

Maybe, you know, brighter lens?

~MarkKenworthy Jun 19, 2012

I think Molot is closest to what OP was asking and I have always wondered this. Taking shutter and aperture out of the equation, in the medium iso range, do you get the same image quality shooting with ISO say, 2 stops below desired exposure and boosting it by two in post, or pushing it up to a higher ISO in camera?

~Molot Jun 19, 2012 Hobbyist Photographer

ISO is the "default", designed way to do it. If your RAW format records enough data, it is possible to get the same quality with ISO 1 or 2 stops lower and boosting it in RAW processing. My experience says 12bpp RAW gives +- 1 EV margin and 14bpp gives about 2 EV. It is not possible to get more detail that way. You may get somewhat less noise, but it only means your fine details will be washed out instead of noised out. And it is easy to get worse result.

*Fuzzypiggy Jun 18, 2012 Hobbyist Photographer

Do as little to the exposure correction as possible in post. Blown highlights and dark shadows, especially when working from RAW, are not very easily saved. You crank up the shadow sliders and the first thing you will see is a loss of details and worse a lot of noise in the shadows. Your editor is actually faking detail, falsifying detail in your images to try to fill in the bits you never captured in the first place. If the light's dynamic range is too great on site while shooting, expose a range of shots at different exposure compensation levels and blend a couple of shots or H&S areas together to get a shot you really want. Make a big effort to learn to use the histograms on your camera, almost all DSLRs have some way to show you the shot's histograms at shoot time it's one of the great advantages of digital's instant feedback, you can then see if you've clipped your H&S at either end of the scale.

If you don't have the detail at captured at shoot time Photoshop cannot magically make it appear. I will do it's best to save what little you did get but it cannot just pull detail out of thin air. The curse of the modern age is thinking shots can always be fixed in post, Photoshop is not a miracle cure for bad images. Smacking your car engine with a hammer might get it going but it doesn't change the fact that their is something fundamentally wrong if you have to keep doing it, LOL!

~SamRickim Jun 19, 2012 Student Photographer

How do I blend shots together?

*Fuzzypiggy Jun 19, 2012 Hobbyist Photographer

Almost all photo editing apps these days allow layers to be created. Essentially you take two separate images, put each into a layer and then using layer masks carefully "bleed" one image through to the one above. The skill comes in learning how to do it correctly so the final composite looks like one single image with the correct lighting and tones.

*Euphrein Jun 18, 2012 Hobbyist Photographer

Learn your camera's native ISO's (hint: not always the lowest)

~SamRickim Jun 19, 2012 Student Photographer

`FallisPhoto Jun 18, 2012

You get it as close as you can get it with the camera, because you can't adjust a bad exposure to gain information. For example, if you have a good exposure, you can lighten the highlights and you will lose a little detail there. If the exposure is off, and you want to lighten the highlights in order to GAIN detail on that end of the value scale, it isn't going to happen. What doesn't get recorded is lost forever and the detail just isn't there to recover. You will still lose the detail you would have lost if the exposure was perfect, and you lose the detail you lost from an imperfect exposure too.

Adjusting exposure in post: The manmufacturers of digital cameras purposely set their cameras to shoot flat (low contrast), dull (desaturated), and washed out (too bright) photos. They do this because they want to capture as much detail as possible across the value scale. If they have more than the least amount of contrast possible, you will lose detail on the white end of the value scale and on the dark end (detail will get lost in the highlights and in the shadows). If they provide more than minimum saturation, detail will get lost in the pale and dark colors. If they make it too dark, you lose detail in the shadows again (apparently this isn't as big a problem with digital cameras as with film cameras on the bright end). You are expected to adjust this in post processing to make it more viewable from an aesthetic standpoint, but you lose detail every time you make an adjustment and hit the save button. Is it gone forever? Depends on whether you saved the original file, what you saved it as, and etcetera.

~Molot Jun 19, 2012 Hobbyist Photographer

"apparently this isn't as big a problem with digital cameras as with film cameras on the bright end" - correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it because digital cameras are essentially diapositive cameras and work more like positive film than negative one?

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