Expose to the Right (ETTR)

[Jeff D. Welker]

OK - I'm trapped in the house with a sick grandson and clearly have too much time on my hands to contemplate photography.

Yesterday while shooting in the soup at Willie, my old film brain told me I should increase my exposure a little to compensate for the poor lighting. Specifically, I wanted to avoid my camera being fooled by the background lighting and underexposing the planes. I asked a couple of the guys out there at the same time if they were doing the same. Both told under exposing was better than over. Now I'm not talking about significants exposure compensations that would result in blowing out the image; just a minor push to gather more light for the main subject matter.

When I got home, I did some research on the matter and found an interesting article on the merits of exposing to the right. http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/expose-right.shtml

This article is from the Luminous Landscape website and provided some interesting food for thought. While most folks on the LL website shoot landscape images, it seems to me that it should be applicable to aviation photography. Once again, I'm the dumbest guy in the room. Please don't hesitate to share your thoughts that may disagree or contradict those in the article.

Just seemed like an interesting subject for a dreary day at home.

[jslugman]

I'm an ETTR guy. I generally go +2/3 stop on most "normal" situations and dial back to +0 on white/highly reflective situations dependent on what I see on my histogram. I adjust the exposures in the RAW conversion process. On my 20D I go a bit more because I know my meter is almost a 1/3 stop off in that camera.

Experiment ad nauseum, your experience may vary.