Try Setting Your Camera to Preview in B&W

Technique - B&W, Technique - Exposure  Comment
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Many people find it easier to see composition in black and white. If you’re one of them, try setting our camera’s preview to black and white. When you do this, seeing line, shape, form, and relative light and dark relationships may become easier. Doing this will also help you get a better sense of how an image will look in black and white. Remember though, the saturated hues in your image can be converted to black and white as either light or dark, so the relative tonal distribution of your image is quite fluid – and seeing the hues in the image (whether with your naked eye or on the camera’s LCD) will inform you how fluid you can expect it to be, where it will be fluid and where it won’t.
Setting your camera’s preview to black and white will only affect the JPEGs your camera creates; your Raw files will still be in full color.
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Setting Camera File Format

Technique - Exposure  Comment
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Here are some commonly asked questions that, once answered, will demystify setting camera file format.

"Should I set my camera to JPEG, Raw, or JPEG and Raw?"

If you want to create files with the highest quality, set your camera to create Raw files. Raw files contain the widest color gamut, highest big depth, have flexible white point, can have highlight and shadow detail recovered, can be reprocessed infinitely, and are free of compression artifacts. Raw files are larger and require post-processing before presentation. They take up more room and they take longer to use.
If you want files to create files to share immediately without (or with minimal) post-processing, set you camera to create JPEG files. JPEGs are excellent for transmission, posting to the web, and print on demand. (Remember, the highest quality JPEGs are the ones created by post-processing Raw files, not the ones created by your camera.)
If you want both Raw and JPEG, set your camera to create both.
A camera creates a Raw file every time it makes an exposure. Setting a camera to create a JPEG file requires it to make a conversion to JPEG, which it does with incredible speed. If a camera is set to JPEG, it will replace the Raw file. If a camera is set to Raw, only a Raw file will be created. If a camera is set to Raw + JPEG it will create a JPEG copy in addition to the Raw file.


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Setting Digital Camera Color Space

Color - Management, Technique - Exposure  Comment
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Here are five commonly asked questions that, once answered, will demystify camera color spaces.

“Why do my digital camera files have an sRGB profile?”sRGB is the default color space for most digital cameras today. Most camera interfaces will allow you to change this default. Interfaces and options will vary. The widest gamut default color space most digital cameras support is Adobe RGB (1998). The profile for the camera’s default color space is attached to JPEG files but not to Raw files.

“Is Adobe RGB (1998) the widest gamut I can get with my camera?”
No. The camera sensor is capable of quite a lot more. To access color spaces with a wider gamut than Adobe RGB (1998) you typically need to shoot in a Raw file format. This also allows you to acquire a high bit file – 16-bit instead of 8-bit.

“Where do Raw files get their profiles?”
Raw files don’t have profiles until they are converted into a standard editing space, either with the manufacturer’s software or another Raw file converter like Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom. Most Raw converters offer a choice of editing spaces including sRGB, ColorMatch, Adobe RGB (1998), or ProPhoto RGB.

“Which color space do you recommend using?”
Use ProPhoto RGB for digital output. It’s the only editing space that can encompass the full gamut of both your camera and your inkjet printer. Use ProPhoto RGB for master files. Make all output specific derivatives from them.
Use sRGB for the web. If a browser isn’t color management compliant, colors won’t be distorted as much as wider gamut color spaces. Use sRGB for derivative files.

“How do I set color space on a digital camera?”
Camera interfaces and terminology vary widely. On the Canon 1Ds Mark II, you can toggle between sRGB and Adobe RGB (1998) by pressing the Menu button and going to the Recording menu (the first icon, a camera), then dialing down to Color matrix and continuing within that to Set up.

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Time the Light

Technique - Exposure, Workshop  Comment
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ArabesqueVII_2003_5
During my White Sands, New Mexico workshop, we’ll be photographing in the same area for the next four days. On our first sunrise shoot, I timed the light and how it affected subjects.
5:45    Color on horizon
6:00    Color in sky
6:15    Color bright on horizon
6:30    Highlights on dunes
6:45    Strong texture    Large areas of shadow
7:00    Less            Less
7:30    Less            Less
8:00    Less            Less
8:30    Dark sides of dune affected by substantial fill light
12:00  No shadow
3:30    Long shadows
4:00    Substantial shadow
4:30    Fifty percent shadow
4:40    Highlights are accents only
4:50    Sun below horizon, definition falls, pink mountains to east
5:00    Color in sky blooms
5:30    Color in sky largely gone
5:45    Dim light in sky
Now I know what the light will do and when. I’ll use this information everyday for the next three days. So will everyone else. Making notes on site can really pay off. And this is just one kind of note you can make.
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Noise – Reduce It At Capture

Magazine, Magazine - Digital Photo Pro, Technique - Exposure  Comment
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noise-capture
Noise comes in three types or patterns:
1) Random noise 2) Fixed-pattern noise 3) Banding noise
Noise often has two components—brightness and color:
4) Image noise 5) Luminance noise 6) Chrominance noise
Knowing the type and kind of noise produced will help guide you to solutions to reduce it. There are three types of noise: random noise, fixed-pattern noise and banding noise.


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Dave McDonell on Noise

Interviewed, Technique - Exposure  Comment
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noise1
Dave McDonell, cofounder of Imagenomic, the company that makes Noiseware, my favorite noise reduction software weighs in on noise.
JPC    Where does noise come from?
DM    There are several factors in a digital camera capture process that contribute to noise. The most prevelant are temperature, the actual capture circuitry, sensor size, and the process of sub-sampling which induces errors between adjacent pixels.
JPC    Why is chrominance noise so much easier to reduce than luminance noise?
DM    It’s really not in application. It’s just that you perceive changes in luminosity or brightness much easier than you do in color.
JPC    Fine color noise is easier to reduce than coarse color noise, like the color patterns created by demosaicing bayer patterns. When are you most likely to encounter this type of noise? How should you treat it differently? How far can you go?
DM    There are no hard and fast rules for any of the above questions as all are dependent on the capture situation and subsequent output medium.


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Scanning Black & White Originals

Technique - B&W, Technique - Exposure  Comment
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Here’s a simple formula for scanning black and white originals (film or prints). Scan in Grayscale (there’s no benefit to scanning in RGB), in 16 bit, and at the native resolution of a scanner (upsample in Photoshop only if needed, not during scanning). Make sure sharpening is turned off. Test a scanner’s lookup tables for negatives; if they clip shadow or highlight detail scan negatives as transparencies and invert in Photoshop.
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Digital Exposure

Photography, Technique - Exposure  Comment
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The histogram on the back of your camera is generated by a processed JPEG version of your Raw files. Your Raw files are unprocessed / uncooked, high resolution, uncompressed, wide-gamut, 12-14 bit, and so have more information in them, particularly in the highlights. This means the histogram can be misleading. What looks good is usually underexposed. Weight your histograms high. How high? At what point do highlights clip? It’s uncertain. Practically, it depends on the scene; higher if the scene doesn’t contain delicate highlight detail; less high if it does. To be safe, bracket, one slightly high and one very high. You can even program your DSLR to do this automatically for you. Here are four histograms.
–
1   Underexposed
2   A good exposure
3   A better exposure
4   Overexposed
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How The Camera Sees

Photography, Technique - Exposure  Comment
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Like the human eye, film has a nonlinear response to light. For film, we adjust the EV to fit the amount and contrast ratio of the available light into the most useful area of its curve response. Using film, you expose generally, and when compromises need to be made, you favor shadows or highlights. Details lost at the point of capture are irrecoverable.


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