[Leica] Question about M8 exposure

[henningw at archiphoto.com (Henning Wulff)]

A suggestion has been made that the clipping shown on the histogram 
for the jpeg might not be accurate, so just give a bit more exposure 
and check the clipping in the RAW later.

As long as _NO_ channel is clipped, things are fine. The problems 
arise if one or two channels are clipped, and the other(s) aren't. 
Then when you try to bring some of that highlight info back, you'll 
get the info from that one or two channels, but the other will have 
nothing. You then get unbalanced information which is erroneous, and 
distorted.

It's true that the jpegs aren't accurate, but you can't therefore 
assume that the DNG's will be fine. That doesn't follow.

If you see no clipping, and have information in the furthest right 
short of clipping, you have the best chance of having as much 
accurate information as possible.

My Canons certainly do not give me that with a + exposure 
compensation on average subjects on matrix metering, and with my 
metering technique (which works perfectly on my M6's with the meter 
set to 400 for Tri-X developed in D-76 1:1 etc.) I generally leave my 
M6 set to -2/3.

When I bring the DNG's into LR, I try to use the highlight recovery 
as little as possible, and the exposure slider doesn't get used much 
unless I'm shooting in very dark circumstances (I've explained my 
technique there previously). Mostly I use the curves tool to do 
contrast adjustments, although the LR curves tool tries to outsmart 
me and not allow me the fine control I'm used to in PS.

If I do have to use the exposure slider, I'm much happier to increase 
the exposure than decrease it, as I know that while I might be 
increasing some noise in the shadow areas which is quite easily dealt 
with, I won't be introducing uncorrectable distortion in the 
highlights.

-- 

    *            Henning J. Wulff
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