[Leica] About to take M8 plunge - but worried about blown highlights...

[mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner)]

You are over exposing. Just set the override down. Its just like shooting
slides. Expose for your highlights. Even the darkest stuff can be lightened
later.



mark@rabinergroup.com
Mark William Rabiner



> From: Wyndham Pulman-Jones <simonpj@mac.com>
> Reply-To: Leica Users Group <lug@leica-users.org>
> Date: Tue, 02 Sep 2008 10:10:04 +0100
> To: Leica Users Group <lug@leica-users.org>
> Subject: [Leica] About to take M8 plunge - but worried about blown
> highlights...
> 
> The one thing that has held me back from buying an M8 is my dislike of the
> look of blown highlights in digital photos. Almost all of my shooting is of
> people interacting in social and working situations - and I always expose 
> by
> taking incident readings for people's faces and letting everything else 
> fall
> where it may. This frequently means that lighter exteriors visible through
> windows or doors are overexposed - but when using fast colour negative film
> there is almost always some tone and character to the overexposed area. The
> same also applies to highlights on people's hair when strongly backlit.
> 
> When I have used digital (Epson RD-1, Canon 1Ds) I have not liked the 
> totally
> white blown out highlights, fringed with un-natural looking chromatic
> aberation, that often result from shooting in this way (when you are not 
> able
> to worry about exposinig for areas of the photo not carrying the narrative
> interest, which might end up significantly overexposed.)
> 
> Does the M8 suffer from this just as much as any other digital camera? If 
> so,
> what's the best technique for stopping those 'outside the scene' highlights
> from blowing out? Or is it just not possible with the M8 to 'set and 
> forget'
> exposure in the way that you can with incident metering for the latitude of
> negative film?
> 
> (I found some M8 DNG samples which show totally blown out 'through the 
> window'
> highlights which have the digital look that just doesn't look right to me:
> http://rpo.eranet.tv/)
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Simon.
> Cambridge, UK.
> 
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