Originally posted by tomtor
Because I like details in the clouds in the sky, I often use the DR mode of the K-X. In that mode you camera will use ISO 200 under the hood, but use ISO400 exposure times, so halving the exposure. This will give slightly more noise, but that's no problem with the K-X.
The images are still really clean.
Originally posted by yotam
I just don't remember this happened so often when I used a P&S. Probably this is one of the things I have to learn now with a DSLR, or maybe it is just an issue of metering (in my P&S there was only spot metering AF and I used to point it to the shadowed areas when focusing to get them exposed correctly - maybe I misused the center-weighted).
It was also surprising that the simple "shadows" adjustment in Aperture improved the images so much without HDR - why wouldn't the camera itself do it...?
tomtor - what is DR mode?
In the config setup screen which you get when you press info twice, there is an option DR200. That's the DR mode I was discussing.
Many P&S expose brighter than DSLRs, but the problem is that you than loose detail in brightly lit areas. The clouds, white buildings, but worst often also the skin of peoples faces in the sun when there are dark areas in the same image. You cannot recover that in post processing, also because most P&S cannot produce raws which offer more post processing options. Note that when you use the default matrix metering mode of the k-x that this will normally result in brighter images than the weighted-average mode you used.
The advantage of brighter (P&S) images is indeed that you get more detail by default in the shadows.
The K-X could indeed raise the shadows more. In the same setup screen which contains the DR200 mode is a shadow compensation mode (I believe to the right of the DR200 mode) that exactly does that!
The disadvantage of always raising the shadows is that you will also loose the deep blacks and some room is taken from the midtones and highlights, so you will loose some detail there. In higher ISOs you'll also get more noise in the shadows. When you have the RAW you can always change your preferences later.
Note that I used RAW+JPEG in the past, but I stopped doing that because of the space it takes on the memory card. Without the jpeg, the raw file is not that much larger than the jpeg. EG the average jpeg is 6mb and the average raw is about 10mb. I find that an acceptable size increase, for the advantages it offers when you take that special image. Often the occasion is gone when you want to reshoot it and then you're glad you have the raw image to work on.
Last edited by tomtor; 09-22-2010 at 09:45 PM.