[BoredomFestival]

Was doing some cave photography this weekend with my K-5, and mistakenly took the following shot without re-adjusting the manual settings:



Oh well, wasted shot, right? Well, later, at home, I opened the RAW file in Lightroom, but before I deleted it, I thought, "Hmm, I wonder..."

Two tweaks later (Exposure +3.5, Luminance NR + 40), I came up with this suboptimal-but-actually-legible version:



I am pretty stunned, to say the least. That's more "leftover" dynamic range than my previous point-n-shoot camera had at its best...

(BTW: original shot was DA35MacroLtd, f/14, ISO400, 1/30 sec... I meant to open the aperture to f/2.8 or so.)

[dosdan]

BoredomFestival, good pullup.

While your intention is to show the lack of noise after a large amount of exposure boosting, I think it's worthwhile applying a bit more PP to improve the image further. I moved the Black Point & White Point in the Levels screen in XnView (you could get the the same effect by increasing contrast and moving the contrast centre, if needed), hitting it with Clarify(2) in PaintShop Pro X ( I believe similar to Clarity in LR) and applying a small amount of USM sharpening. Processed version on the right.

Dan

[Usuqa]

The dynamic range of the k5 is really something else.. at iso 80 it keeps an amazing amount of detail in the shadows, even a shot that looks completely black can on times be made to look nice.

[aurele]

So impressive !

(the dynamic range, and Dosdan PP)

[bobmaxja]

Great Dosdan in showing 50/50

[BoredomFestival]

Yeah, nice work -- in my defense, I didn't bother trying to optimize this photo past this point (I had properly-done exposures with compositions I liked better), but I was astonished there was enough data to make a decent image from. Thanks for cleaning it further!

[reeftool]

A very good example of the what the K5 is capable of. I have also shot almost black shots and on my K10D, I would just delete them unless I was by chance shooting at ISO 100 and could sometimes salvage one in PP. With the K5, a lot more of our "off" shots can be salvaged, even some high ISO shots.

[salceson]

Is exposure in ACR the same thing as in-camera exposure??
I made a following experiment to se if it is really possible to recover underexposed photo. I took one properly exposed picture and one underexposed (-4EV). After increasing exposure (+4EV) in Camera Raw I get something very diffrent from the first capture. It seems only light parts of the image were retrieved. Nevertheless I did manage to retrieve other parts of photo using sliders like "fill light" "blacks" "brightness" etc.
I really don't get it. :/


Picture 1: ISO 80 - F5.6 - 2s





Picture 2: ISO 80 - F5.6 - 1/8s (after adding +4 EV in ACR)

[dosdan]

Is exposure in ACR the same thing as in-camera exposure??

I think ACR does undocumented "optimisations". To get a straight exposure pullup, use RawTherapee: RawTherapee Blog

You may need to adjust the Black Point too.

Dan.

[Anvh]

Is exposure in ACR the same thing as in-camera exposure??
I made a following experiment to se if it is really possible to recover underexposed photo. I took one properly exposed picture and one underexposed (-4EV). After increasing exposure (+4EV) in Camera Raw I get something very diffrent from the first capture. It seems only light parts of the image were retrieved. Nevertheless I did manage to retrieve other parts of photo using sliders like "fill light" "blacks" "brightness" etc.
I really don't get it. :/

Which option did you use to change the brightness?
If you use the exposure slider then that's your problem.

[Zafar Iqbal]

Is exposure in ACR the same thing as in-camera exposure??

It is trying to be but will never be 100% the same.

You need to dial down the Black slider in order to get ACR to match the exposure better.

How much? Depends...

[salceson]

Today I downloaded Lightroom 4 beta and I must say that now all the sliders including "exposure" work as they should be working. The "brithness" slider is gone, but now we can freely adjust other (highlights, shadows, whites, blacks) so if you want "brightness" you just move "whites" and "blacks" equally foward or backwards.
Good job Adobe, but it's a pity something that basic took you so long to introduce.

[Anvh]

Today I downloaded Lightroom 4 beta and I must say that now all the sliders including "exposure" work as they should be working.

In lightroom 3 and older try the birghtness slider instead of exposure, it looks like you mixed the two up.
Now idea how it is with LR4, going to try it out soon.

Looks like exposure is white now and brightness is exposure.

[salceson]

Looks like exposure is white now and brightness is exposure.

No, brightness "touches" mostly midtones (in this case whites and blacks) while exposure should adjust everything equally ( i.e. highlights, whites, and blacks and shadows). In LR4 it finally works as it should.

[Anvh]

No, brightness "touches" mostly midtones (in this case whites and blacks) while exposure should adjust everything equally ( i.e. highlights, whites, and blacks and shadows).

Oh....

The main difference I’ve found is that Exposure really targets the brightest parts of your photo and makes them brighter. Almost to the point of over-exposure. And it does so pretty quickly as you increase (or decrease) the slider. Brightness on the other hand still brightens the overall photo but does it more in the mid-tone (middle gray) area.

lightroomkillertips.com/2010/lightroom-exposure-vs-brightness/


Even Adobes says so...
livedocs.adobe.com/en_US/Lightroom/1.0/help.html?content=WS31972031-DD1E-4a1d-8F6C-5A87EFD55E05.html

Exposure Sets the overall image brightness, with a greater effect in the high values. Adjust the slider until the photo looks good and the whites are at the right level. Use Recovery to bring highlight values down.

Brightness Adjusts image brightness, mainly affecting midtones. Set the overall tonal scale by setting Exposure, Recovery, and Blacks. Then set the overall image brightness. Large brightness adjustments can affect shadow or highlight clipping, so you may want to readjust the Exposure, Recovery or Blacks slider after adjusting brightness.