simone delonget, artist.                              1993 © paul posadas

So tomorrow around 2:00 am we all (if we're all awake then) set our clock's time forward. It's bad enough that we're going to adjust "ourselves" to this time, let alone the task of changing every clock, being analog or digital, in our homes and vehicles not to mention our wristwatch. I just know this might take another full hour.

Continued at 9:00 am. So, one of my favorite mags – "camera arts" has shrunk down in size, an inch taken off it's length and width. Publisher/managing editor – tim anderson's reason is purely marketing, for the mere reason of making it stand out on the newsstands. It's definitely working effectively, I wouldn't have come across mine, if it weren't for the "size". Btw, I enjoyed george dewolfe's article (intro to the series) on "the master print", and every article and artists feature, in this bi-monthly, is a winner! (no deliberate suck-up from my end.)

Again, this (here) family man, has limited time for anything personal, so I'm going to dive into what I've started initially, hoping to finish it up before any "necessary" household chore arises.

The idea of this lengthy write-up, might have been a mistake in the beginning, like a "foot in the mouth" sort of  thingy, but anyway, I will try to undo it  with some form of finesse.

What I am about to touch on, the concept of "E-T-T-R" (expose to the right using a histogram), is with "no" intention to plagiarize or capitalize, but to indicate an "affirmation" and "acknowledgement" to this great "vital and applicable" concept for my  photoshoots with a DSLR.  Thank you and Kudos, Michael Reichmann for the informative article in American Photo.

Ubiquitous "histogram" usage, from scanning negatives and prints on a flat-bed scanner, to tweaking image's color, hues or contrast during post-production in photoshop or any image-processing software, should (personally) from the get-go, start (if using a DSLR) with the usage of the camera's histogram-tool on it's  sensor-acquiesed image. Besides, the tiny monitor on any DSLR, renders itself partially unreliable in assessing "exposures" from the image viewed, because the screen (as mr. Reichmann verbatimly states) doesn't have the needed dynamic range or color accuracy, and the ambient light level in which it is viewed can make a bad exposure or a good one look bad. This is why camera makers provide a fairly unambiguous tool for judging exposure, the "histogram". He continues… "A histogram is simply a graph of a scene's brightness values as recorded by your camera, including their distribution and relative amounts. The dark tones are on the left of the graph, the brightest on the right; the height of the graph's peaks has no numeric value. If the peaks and valleys are bunched up against the right side of the graph, it may be overexposed."

Time is up.. interruption has occurred. I shall continue this on later. I just hope no one  reads this "blog entry"  before I ever finish it. Is this sloppy or what? What can I say? Spare yourself and purchase the latest "American Photo" magazine and while you're at it, pick up "Camera Arts", also.

(again) ciao for now.

I'm back.

Mr. Reichmann states - that most film exhibits a non-linear sensitivity to light: the top and bottom of it's tone curve, which represent light and dark tones respectively, start to "shoulder off" into a less severe, more gradual slope.

He continues - A digital camera's image sensor, on the other hand, responds to light in a one-to-one fashion, producing a "straight line" tone curve from lower left to top right. "think" of each pixel on the sensor as a bucket, and light as rainwater; once a bucket is full, any additional water (light) simply spills out, uncaptured. On the other hand, even when it isn't raining light, the pixel buckets are never completely empty: there is always a bit of water left at the bottom. In the digital world this is called the "noise floor"; it is there because electronics generate a residual random signal even when not recording anything. 

He continues to explain – that an electronic image sensor records fully half of all the available tonal data in the brightest stop of exposure. The next-brightest stop captures half of what remains, and so on.  As illustrated below, a typical 12-bit DSLR records a total of 4,096 brightness levels: 2048 in the first stop; 1024 in the second; 512 in the third, and so forth. By the time you get to the shadows there's little data left, so, given the ever-present noise floor, you'll want to put as much of that data as possible on higher reaches of the tone curve.  In simpler terms, you "bias" your exposure toward the brightest values. When shooting in JPEG mode and bias your exposure too much toward the brightest values, you risk overexposing the image and losing highlight detail. (the bucket overflows when it's full.) moreover, just 8 bits of tonal information, a JPEG's severly limited range of brightness – 256 levels versus 4096 that your DSLR's image sensor can capture – doesn't lend itself to major tonal adjustments after the fact, using software.

Before I continue  to scratch the surface on Michael Reichmann's ETTR concept, I just want to convey, firstly, that at the time I read his article, it truly made clear sense to me, that I instantly said to myself – "this is one helluva digital photography-evangelist" and he came at a time when I needed most.

He adds – "the story is altogether different when you shoot in RAW mode, which retains the sensor's full 4096 levels of brightness. While a JPEG emerges from your DSLR essentially as a finished photograph, with RAW files and software you can make substantial adjustments in the brightness of a captured image without compromising its overall quality. This post-processing flexibility allows you to apply an "exposure strategy" to digital photography that Michael Reichmann calls Expose to the Right, or ETTR for short. ETTR is simple to apply, but to do so you need to refer to the histogram – that mountain-peak graphic on your camera's LCD screen representing how the scene's tones are distributed. If you've set the camera to display it, the histogram will appear whenever you review a picture you've just shot."

In a histogram, the dark values are to the left and the light values are to the right.  With the ETTR technique, you deliberately bias your exposure, changing f-stop, shutter speed, and/or exposure compensation so that as much of the mountain range as possible appears to the "right side" of the histogram. (Diagram B). the extra exposure moves the dark tones away from the noise floor, producing cleaner-looking shadows. By moving the dark tones higher up on the curve (Diagram  D), it also places them where more data space is available. The result: smoother and more pleasing gradation. Diagram C indicates a typical normalized histogram.

When you Expose to the Right, though, be warned: the image that comes into your RAW converter program will probably appear too light. This doesn't matter as long you haven't "blown out" any important highlights; with the exception of shiny chrome, the brightest bits of white clouds, and the like, nothing should be beyond the right edge of the histogram. Once you've imported the image, you can rein in its overall brightness to produce the result you want.

Before I go any further with my own ".02" on the premise of  "digital" photography. I initially, want to reiterate that there is "no" true significance to this whole write-up, and being just a mere practitioner of this pervasive art medium, and "what" I may try to communicate across, would only be pertinent to those who are currently on the same page as I am. I would only hope that I may also come across clear to those who are experiencing the same "overwhelmed" high curve to it all. Besides I've taken this long hiatus of  lifting a camera, and only went back to it all when my little girl was born (for those kodak moments), and more so seriously, after reading Susan Sontag's "On Photography" book  the very day hearing on the radio of her passing, as a tribute to one of america's prolific writers of the time. Reading "On Photography" is  recommended reading for any photographer, I should declare, because this was the read "enzyme" needed for me to get back in the art. There, however, isn't anything mentioned on photo technique or creativity in her book, only her own assessment (take) on the realm of photography. Her book (personally) satiates  the "null and void moments encountered" when photographing becomes "too mechanical."

It's common knowledge that ansel adams brought to the photographic (black and white) world the "zone system". the whole premise being, that there are nine zones where the middle of the nine would be your "gray" and at the extremes "1" being "pitch black" and "9" being "pure white".  I'm not going to touch on this in detail, because, for one, - I  have to admit, I  was barred from taking the "zone system" course back in photoschool days because I felt a need to (at the time) and finally dropped the pre-requisite – "large-format photography" due to being flustered with the "schiempflug principle" usage with the view camera, and never-ever went back for it again, thus, my history of  no "zone" for me. My "zone" theory and it's hard-knocks application, however, was always intuitive and second-nature, whenever I photograph those quick "down and dirty" shots. Bracketing exposures, always, is a  luxury for film and time, and that there can never be a way you can do a quick "5-up/5-down" when photographing people.

At any rate, Mr. Adams, stressed that it would be of good intuitive-practice to always –

"EXPOSE FOR THE SHADOWS AND DEVELOP FOR THE HIGHLIGHTS". What this simply means - is meter for the dark areas of what's being photographed, and later, developing  the film at  a specific development time and standard chemical temperature. This consequently  puts your "target-subject" in the photograph, right around the area of the tone curve of the film. theoretically, this technique should give you the whole gamut of the 9 zones. I know this whole "zone" concept strictly applies to black and white photography, but you can actually apply this concept to colour-film only in the exposure aspect of your shot, but you'll need the cooperation of your photofinishing expert at the kiosk or custom lab. Okay, so you've got slightly over-exposed negs because you've exposed/metered for the shadows, The trained technician would easily see that your processed negs are "dense" on the main-subject area, no fear, he's trained, on his end, to push whatever "density button" it takes for you to have decent photos with interesting color-saturation. my preference of shooting in black and white during my earlier years of photographing, was due to nothing, but the lame logic that  black and white has 9 zones and colour has 6, and I've always deemed  these colors to be-zones.

 the six being the basic colors of  Red, Green and Blue and it's complimentary colors of Cyan, Magenta and Yellow. My immature sentiment, to which led to "why I love to shoot black and white?" is simple, that I like the idea of my own mind to give it's own interpretation on what colours could possibly be present in a b/w photograph. If you ask me now on my personal take, it would simply be that b/w photos are dramatic, timeless, gives that real feel of nostalgia (when viewed years later), and not to mention being of "archival permanence" (when properly fixed and washed). But in either case, a colour photo should equate as good as it's black and white counterpart. It's all in personal preference. That "each is own" sort of a thing. Color down the road, especially in digital photography, is very essential. Just like drilling yourself with a "multiplication table", I would always (back in the day) drill myself on colors. Example – what single color is produced when two primary colors of green and blue when they are equally mixed? Ans: Cyan. What is the primary color of "Cyan"? Ans: Red. And this can go on, with every photographic color on the wheel. Enough said.

I'm going to suspend my ".02" on film for now. But if you happened to be glued on this write-up and you just happen to enjoy it, stay tune for more. I guess I've made some form of valid introduction to the old school "exposing with film", that may have some direct relevance to this so-called digital-exposing technique called – ETTR, an acronym for "expose-to-the-right", (which I believe is every RAW shooters 'unrevealed' secret in using the camera's HISTOGRAM while shooting with a DSLR), that I would enjoy to cover on.

Ciao for now.