How to determine when the midtones are properly exposed using the exposure module?

[garibaldi (Andrew)]

@ggbutcher

IMHO bracketing is a good tool to capture a high dynamic range scene if the subject allows. What I’m finding with my shooting is 1) certain subjects like moving railway trains just don’t work with it and 2) the still lifes I’ve recently taken up may have significant shadow components but i usually end up just pushing them down into dark oblivion.

I’ve gradually shifted my thinking about exposure at capture from the midtones to the highlights. I now work to anchor the exposure to preserve highlights and work the rest of the image in post. That isn’t usually ETTR, as I currently lean heavily on my camera’s Highlight-Weighted Matrix metering, which is JPEG-based. With the Nikon Z 6, I’ve found there’s enough dynamic range to let me get away with that in most cases; with the old D7000, not so much. A lazy approach, no doubt, but I grew rather weary of the ‘stupid pet tricks’ required to do balls-to-the-wall ETTR…

Agreed that it doesn’t make sense in all situations, though I have found that reducing noise in the shadows (even if the scene doesn’t have that high of a dynamic range) can still be valuable since I often end up wanting to brighten them at least a little. Not having to try and calculate values for ETTR and “just shoot” the AEB is a nice feature to this approach.

@ggbutcher

The Z 6 also has a two-exposure HDR mode, lets you capture two successive images and it makes the merged JPEG for you. Decent performance, and it’ll let you retain the two captures as NEFs to be played with in post with HDRMerge or the like. The two captures are very close to each other in time, which makes a disciplined hand-hold viable in a lot of situations.

That is a great feature. Does it let you take the successive images at different ISO values, or just different shutter speeds like AEB?