on 2012-01-29 14:13 Godfrey DiGiorgi wrote
Knowing the characteristic curve of a sensor and how digital image data exposure operates, it's very easy to 'place' the exposure where you want it with a spot meter and a moment's thought: with the brightest area of significant detail 5% below the saturation limit.
okay, if the spot meter is cued to 15% gray, that means i'd meter as above, then adjust exposure plus whatever the fractional number of stops between 15% gray and 5% below saturation might be on my camera; i suppose i could test that and memorize the adjustment for key ISO values (as the headroom varies); i could preset that bias and be fairly efficient when highlight clipping is my main concern
but often i want to choose how much highlight to blow based on how much of my shadows i want keep from turning to mud; and sometimes i'm willing to blow one channel if i can count on keeping some contrast in the other two ... that's when the histogram helps because the best exposure is often not absolute, it's a creative compromise
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