TOP SECRET: Bracketing

Hi everyone! I have been taking some pictures over the past few days and some of the views that I have gotten the chance to see have been beautiful. The weather has been pleasant and mostly sunny. I have been out shooting with very limited equipment, for the most part just a camera and one lens. While the photos have turned out good I have had to pretend that I'm shooting a film camera because I also do not have my loop which is a fancy name for a eye piece that blocks out the sun so you can get a very good look at the camera's LCD. Without it getting a reliable idea of how the picture looks is difficult if not impossible. So I thought we could do a Pro Pix Tips covering this very issue.

Pro Pix Tips: One of the many great benefits of the digital cameras vs. the film cameras is the opportunity to view the picture instantly instead of sending the film off for development with the hope you got the shot. The pros had to have the shot every time, that's why they got the big bucks. In order to accomplish this the pros developed a technique called "bracketing". They would take a picture at the setting indicated by the light meter. Then they would take several additional pictures above and below the indicated exposure readings. The number of pictures above and below that the photographer would take was a personal preference. In doing this the photographer would be able to get some measure of insurance of make sure they had the shot. The exposures that were taken added to the cost due to the film used and the development cost.

Today, pros still use this technique even though they can view the picture instantly. Why? Well that is a very good question. Sometimes it's because the photographer doesn't have a view screen loop in order to see the screen in the sun light. Now let me quickly throw in this at no extra charge. Be careful to have your meter setting, spot, center weighted, or matrix/dynamic, cause that can effect the exposure of the subject of the photo (go ahead and ask how I know). Other reasons include that sometimes photos look better a little under or over exposed and you won't get that picture if you hadn't taken it. Sometimes the effects that are caused by the change in settings are quite interesting and give a special contrast to the photo. And one additional issue is that the photo doesn't always give an exact look due to the settings of the LCD.

So what do you do to use this bracketing technique? In the film days it was the shutter speed that was generally used by increasing or decreasing shutter setting. With the digital cameras there are several ways to do this and I would suggest in refer to your manual but in many cameras there is a exposure compensation setting that can be used to increase/decrease the aperture in small increments. There is even in many camera a bracketing setting were you can set the camera to automatically change the settings in a systematic way so you don't have to manually change the setting taking up time.

But bracketing doesn't end there. Many of todays digital cameras will also bracket the white balance settings and flash units. With the white balance settings (we will have to have a PPTs on this subject at a later time) the warmth and coolness of the picture can change the whole feeling of the photo adding to it's softness or dramatics. For flash units the power setting is changed to control the brightness of the flash with similar effects produced by changing the aperture settings.

Bracketing is an old technique that hasn't been out dated due to the digital revolution. With the technological advancements bracketing has been improved and become an even more important secret weapon for the pro photographer. Without the bracketing technique you are losing a lot of great photos. Try this out for yourself. Go take a photo of something and then try changing the shutter speed, aperture, and yes even the ISO setting and check out the result. Take bracketing and put it into your photographers tool box and use it to help improve the quality of your pictures. I've said before that taking lots of picture is one of the chief pro top secrets and now you'll need to take even more due to bracketing.

Well that's it today but before I close I would like to do something that I've done before but is worthy of repeating. No one is an island. Behind every good company is several crazy but great employees and I have a few of those. I would like to give a big thank you to two of them for handling a situation they are not hired to do. Jackie and Chris are both outstanding workers (even though I could shut them from time to time) and have stepped up to the plate in order to handle some unexpected problems and handled them like champs. Thanks Guys!

Have a great day everyone!

Richard