effing blown highlights

just a thought & its something I must try test myself - would a ND filter help?
I have a x4 ND


No Roger, the ND filter will block light uniformly and the meter will either ask for a higher ISO or a larger aperture (or longer exposure). It's my job to understand how the light meter works and adjust the exposure accordingly.

My rant was really all about how lazy I am and a vague pleading to the camera manufacturers to add another form of metering to accommodate my intrinsic laziness.
 
I don't feel there's anything wrong with your dog photo, Luke. :)
Yes, there's the lost the detail in the fur, but this could even be beneficial compositionally. It draws our eyes to the eyes/face of your dog - no visual "clutter" to distract us.
(In a way blowing the highlights is an equivalent of throwing the background out of focus - you're losing unimportant and potentially distracting detail to focus the viewer's eyes on what's important).
As long as the transition into "white-ish" is gradual (and not a harsh clipped line) I have no problems with blown out areas.

Having said that, I'm really quite happy about the exposure warning blinkies on my m43 cameras. People go on about the limited dynamic range of m43, but at least there are tools to manage that range easily. I'm including myself in the group of lazy photographers in that respect. :)

And as to the waterfall: a waterfall in broad sunlight - with wet black rocks and deep shadows of forest canopy... and water that directly reflects the sun... That's one of the hardest things to turn into a great photograph (if not impossible). The dynamic range of the scene is soo big. Overcast days are great for waterfalls.
I think in your case the camera might have tried to expose for the shadows (bringing those up to middle grey) - in which case 2 stops of exposure compensation are definitely not enough.

Don't despair - try to embrace it ;-)
 
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Luke,

On your waterfall shot there isn't much you can do except do hdr. Honestly, I don't worry too much with specular highlights, and waterfalls tend to have them. That shot looks fine IMHO.
 
I note jpeg is better than raw on my X10
I'd agree it shouldn't be so prevelant & more advice should be made available

That X10 is a little jpeg miracle.

I agree with Luke about blown highlights. To me they seem especially objectionable on slides and digital photos, but even doing black and white printing in a photo lab, I seemed to spend half my life trying to bring tone into blown highlights without, however, ending up with a gray, featureless blob. It ain't easy.

Question for Luke: Are you shooting jpeg or raw, and would the HL recovery in raw give you some wiggle room?
 
That X10 is a little jpeg miracle.

I agree with Luke about blown highlights. To me they seem especially objectionable on slides and digital photos, but even doing black and white printing in a photo lab, I seemed to spend half my life trying to bring tone into blown highlights without, however, ending up with a gray, featureless blob. It ain't easy.

Question for Luke: Are you shooting jpeg or raw, and would the HL recovery in raw give you some wiggle room?

I recently started shooting jpeg + raw. Makes no difference. They're unrecoverable in both. The only thing I haven't tried yet is turning on the DR function. On my old X100, I think I have it glued onto the 400% setting. Maybe I'll give that a go (and additionally under expose by 1 EV).
 
Fujifilm X-E2 Review

Luke.. Here is a good writeup on the xe2 dynamic range... I most likely applies to all the Fuji x cameras. I shows the effect of changes due to changes in the dr value. Which should work for raw or jpg as final output. It also shows other things that can be done such as using different film simulations which I would suspect only apples to a jpg file.

I happen to been looking at this today and copy the link for someone for his reference (xe2 new owner).

Gary
 
It's great to be able to use modern ILC cameras which have live view, real time exposure preview, highlight/shadow blinkies and histogram overlays; it means that the first exposure is always the final exposure, not the tester.
 
I guess I'm somewhat spoiled but I've typically been able to recover highlights in RAW most of the time with my E-PL5. I've played with ETTR a little and found it just too difficult in most situations. At the end of the day I will prefer noisy shadows over unrecoverable highlights. Flat dynamic range scene? ETTR is easy.
 
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