[condor27596]

I've been trying to learn my camera better. But why should I use exposure bracketing and such I forget the other setting when I can shoot raw and fix it in Lightroom ?

[dcumpian]

I usually only bracket when there is a lot of dark and very light areas in the image I am taking. That way, if the image is too dark or too light, I can recover the clipped or blown out data from the bracketed images.

Regards,
Dan

[mikeSF]

In challenging light situations (strong sunlight and dark shade in same picture), exposure bracketing plus blending* gives me cleaner shadow detail than just getting a single exposure with protected highlights and raising the shadows in post (which will reveal noise or color artifacts). In balanced light situations (cloudy days, twilight), a camera can handle it just fine, but when the dynamic range is pushed, bracketing is a useful tool.

there are other ways to use bracketing, but that is how i apply it.


*manual or selective blending, luminosity masks, HDR, blend-if, digital grad, etc, etc.

[Sagitta]

I mainly bracket for HDR use. being able to combine 5 images into one gives a LOT more data to work with than a standard RAW file will.

[interested_observer]

Up to about 18 months ago when I was able to shoot in an old car factory - a number of old antique cars, I was very confident with exposure bracketing (5 frames +/-2ev, as wide as possible). Especially when coupled with the K5's wide dynamic range. I had used it a lot in a wide variety of situations. I pretty much knew what I was doing. I had my head handed to me. I had the run of the museum and shot about 50 cars. The big problem was the poor interior lighting against the very intense lighting coming through the old original windows from outside. Checking the shots as I went, did not prepare me for what post processing showed.

The windows were still all blown out. I should have shot two bracketed sets, one for the windows and one for the cars, and combined both of them together. With a single set of just 5 images, I was able to do reasonably well. The cars, with the interior lighting of the old building turned out pretty well - even with most of the cars being black in color. But those windows still haunt me.

The moral of the story here - is that there are extreme situations where a single frame of raw will not be sufficient. Bracketing is the solution in these cases. There are still other very extreme situations where even 5 frame bracketing at the maximum +/- 2 ev between shots will not provide the desired results. You need to recognize these and figure out an appropriate workaround (while shooting), using the tools and skills you have at your finger tips. It comes down to the photographer behind the camera.

You can do a lot of magic in post processing - but there are limits. It still comes down to the quality of the raw information the camera/lens captures.

[Canada_Rockies]

An extra that you can do is bias the bracketing by setting the +/- EV compensation. That way, if you wish, you can set -3 stops EV, shoot 5 bracketing 2 stops and get -7, -5, -3, -1 and +1.

[Sagitta]

Another technique you can do is what they call the Orton affect. While its far easier to pull off in post, the original method was to take 2 shots - one overexposed, and one underexposed and thrown deliberately out of focus. In the film days they'd combine the two into one slide and it would give you a dreamy kind of surreal effect. If I'm feeling particularly artsy and not overly realistic with my shots I'll employ it either by itself or combined with some HDRing. Orton imagery plus HDR go really, REALLY nice together.

Orton (photography) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Some shots:

[Aaron28]

that's kinda neat