To Bracket or not to bracket
 

I thought this weekend I would have a go at bracketing. Having read the manual it appears that you set the bracketing to the amount you want to expose by: i.e. 1/2 or 1/3 of a stop, under and over exposed and one in the middle.

So here comes the bit I dont understand.

If I am taking a Photo in Manual mode and have composed, metered, selected aperture and taken a shot which I assume is correctly exposed using the viewfinder indicator, why bracket when I can just adjust the sub command wheel to over or under expose the shot as I want?

What is the difference and why is one better than the other?

Nogbad

What if you are photographing a bird that won't hang around, bracketing would be very quick, about 1/2 s providing you are in continuous mode and you would not need manual mode. For bird shots I use partial metering but for landscapes I prefer manual. I used to use the zone system, but since going digital which has histograms, the zone system has fallen into disuse by me.

I understand what you mean but as I dont take that many shots of birds i dont think it matters. I tend to be more interested in Macro and still life.

Nogbad

I don't see much point in bracketing, as I aways shoot in raw, if I have problem I can aways create two tiffs from the raw file at differing exposures and blend them together

I think your find it's a feature that dates back to the first automatic film cameras. Probably not much use these days with digital. The very rare occassions I would use it is where I am not sure what part of the scene to expose for.

Remember loads of the features on a camera are only there as a tick box in the advertising. If camera A has it so must camera B. The fact that most people will never use it is of no consequence.

I assume you are speaking of fixing a photo that has both very bright areas and deep shadows. RAW does not allow you to be a miracle worker. Working from a single exposure does nothing to increase the dynamic range, your method simply compresses the range towards center - making the dark areas lighter and perhaps making the light areas darker. To truly have a wider dynamic range you must bracket! Also, increasing the levels like you are speaking of increases the noise at the same time - an undesirable side effect!

You have it right but, in saying "very rare occassions" you most likely seldom photograph subjects that have high contrast levels such as landscapes. These can benefit greatly from bracketing.

The Bracketing feature is not some dinosaur or a marketing gimmick - you may not need it every day but you should get familiar with it. Here is a tutorial showing some examples: http://luminous-landscape.com/tutori...blending.shtml

I understand that the newer PhotoShop has a feature where it will take bracketed images and automatically merge them.

Another article: http://www.outbackphoto.com/workshop..._03/essay.html

If bracketing is used for bird photography you often get three different poses and you can pick the best. Here's one I would have missed if I hadn't bracketed. True two of the shots, at least, will not have optimum exposure!

I used to bracket when using slide film, as I did sometimes misjudge the correct exposure. Somtimes I would take as many as 5 frames of the same subject with varying shutter speeds. But with digital I find the histograms are accurate, and usually only take 2 exposures if that. But then again I usually photograph static objects.

There is no difference, having the "feature" means the camera does it for you, rather than you having to twiddle the dial. The result is the same, the difference is how you got there.

Duncan.

As Jim says, RAW will enable you to rescue shaddow detail if you under expose, but at the expense of noise. If you have an overexposed area that has become burnt out, RAW will not help you. This is likely to happen on very bright days where the dynamic range of the sensor, at about 5 stops, is less than that of the scene you are trying to capture. This is where bracketing can save the day.

Bracketing usually requires you to press the shutter 3 times, unless you have the camera in drive mode. If you have it in drive mode, you can fire in bursts anyway which I would have thought is a more reliable way of recording multipule images to capture that magic shot (but I'm not really a bird photographer so what do I know :D )

As Duncan says you can achieve exactly the same effect manually by adjusting the camera settings - but it takes longer.