10 kinds of photographer.

[Mike Buckley]

arguably, you don't need to understand the maths behind [the principle of exposing to the rght]

I would agree with you entirely if you had left out that word, "arguably." You might have to go purely on trust that people use the histogram successfully exactly for the reasons that it is meant to be used without understanding the related math.

but [the principle of exposing to the right] works entirely because of those maths and it only really makes sense if you know that is why it works.

True, but using the principle effectively doesn't require having to make sense of it. Again, you may have to go on pure trust to fully appreciate that.

By the way, you're right that there are certain maths, especially the maths behind the physics of sound, that are behind all music. Some of the great opera singers of yesteryear were famous for being so good despite that they did not know how to read music. I learned upon Dave Bruebeck's death (a famous jazz musician), that he was well into his illustrious career before he learned to read music. I would be shocked to learn that any of those people knew anything about the math behind music.

As I mentioned in my first post, there are many roads that lead to the same place. Some of them include understanding the math behind getting there and some don't.

[Wayland]

Urban, I think there is a great danger with modern technology that we are encouraged to believe the terms that are applied by designers and engineers.

You're right, I've never seen a camera that can actually evaluate anything. I've never seen a flash unit that is really intelligent and I've certainly never worked out why Adobe consider a reversible algorithm "smart".

The problem is that many people do take such labels at face value in a way that comes close to the meaning of Clarke's quotation used earlier.

I've met people that seem to believe a camera really can see and understand what it is pointing at just because it responds and works in the way it's been designed to.

When things go wrong they then naturally blame the camera instead of the operator.

[Wayland]

Mike, I see your point that the principle of "Expose to the right" could be followed by rote rather than understanding.

In most cases that would indeed work perfectly.

However, as Colin so eloquently points out, there are some drawbacks to that method which only a level of understanding, if only a basic understanding, could really avoid.

The one thing that I hope we can all agree on is that there are indeed many roads that can take us to the same place.

[Inkanyezi]

I think there was a risk of misunderstanding in the start. No maths are necessary to creatively use the technique applied in modern digital cameras and image-making. Still the 10 kinds does apply, in the figurative way (mind that 10 binary is 2 decimal). Either you care about it or not. The ETTR mantra might have been sung a few times too much, particularly when cameras are hitting the 14 stop dynamic range. But still, the essential part of the zone system is to understand how light and shadow will be recorded in the final image. When using image processing software, the underlying maths are taken care of by the program makers, all we need is the eye for how we wish to see it.

But to avoid a too dark or too bright image, to get it perfect at the moment of exposure, we need to know when we have to adjust the measured value to something brighter or darker than the camera is supposed to make by its averaging measurement system. Often we won't need to do any adjustment, but sometimes a tweak will improve the result. The know-how in the technical sense, regarding exposure, is to have a feel for when and how to apply such tweaks. Then there's the whole scope of composition, motion blur, depth of field, image matter and other considerations, but for simplicity, I leave that aside.

I think it is a good thing that we can often disregard some pretty basic things, as exposure measurement and evaluation, because modern camera systems often can do that pretty well. But still I think we need to understand that a dark tone will not be dark if we expose it too much, and it is worthwhile to know that burned out parts of the image cannot be saved with any operation in the computer after exposure. I think the software engineers that named one of the software controls "exposure" did not do us a favour, but the opposite. The basic knowledge that there are limits in both ends has a value for any photographer, and knowing how to control all variables to get the best possible combination of all factors involved is a great help when you wish to use the medium creatively. It improves the hit/miss ratio.

[RustBeltRaw]

Well, this got complicated. If I may step back for a minute, did Wayland refer to binary math as a rhetorical, geeky inside joke, or as a legitimate suggestion that photographers should know it? I strongly suspect it was the former.

The technical/artistic topic has been raging forever and will never be settled. When have art and science ever gotten along? Though I won't kid myself about settling anything, as I see it, there are three types of knowledge (approaches, mindsets, skillsets, or whatever your preferred term may be) involved in photography. They're listed below, but the sequence does not represent a progression or any kind of ranking. Every photog will blend these three (consciously or not) as they see fit.

• Aesthetic insight (The What): This is the class of insight that tells you a photo is too blurred, undersaturated, poorly cropped, underexposed, need flash, etc. Everyone has it, and every opinion is valid. While aesthetic insight can tell you what's wrong or right about a photo, it doesn't tell you how to attack it. Aesthetic insight tells you when you see a good photo, where to stand, which perspective you want. It's separate, but inextricably linked to things like knowing how to set up your tripod and which lens to use.
  
• Technical Insight (The How): Once you know that a photo needs more depth of field, greater sharpness, less noise, etc., as informed by your aesthetic insight, you apply your technical knowledge and fiddle with your camera. Change lenses, stop down, get a more stable support, slow down the shutter, program flashes... However, technical insight can also predict aesthetic results - this is what a photographer does when determining their settings and equipment before pressing the shutter. It's your ability to adjust white balance, crop, use a grey card, archive your work, clone, color correct, etc. Technical insight is the collision of aesthetic targets and equipment setup and use, which derives from scientific knowledge.
  
• Scientific Insight (The Why): This, I believe, is the crux of this thread. Scientific knowledge is probably the least necessary of the three, but it's the driving force behind the actions (technical insights) we use to achieve our aesthetic goals. Chromatic aberrations appear on heavily backlit subjects, since light dispersion is dependent on its wavelength. Narrowing your aperture only works to a point because of diffraction, as predicted by optics. Certain glass compositions produce higher-quality images, as predicted by materials science. Photoshop's Bicubic Sharper reduction algorithm can produce an oversharpened image because of the pixel-averaging mathematics. To get a good photo, you don't necessarily need to know any of these mechanisms, but their effects affect our aesthetic judgement, and they are dealt with by our technical knowledge.

I hope that clarifies some of what I think people are talking about. Personally, I can count in binary on my fingers (up to 1,023), so it's probably obvious where I stand. At the end of the day, more knowledge of any kind will not hurt your photography.

[William W]

Evaluative? Anyone care to explain? . . . etc

Canon has a TTL Mode “Evaluative” and Nion a similar “Matrix” – but I am sure you know that.
I am just as certain that you understood the meaning of the whole paragraph which you have selectively quoted.

+++

Meanwhile, as you are commenting, you might cast your mind back here – where you seemed to make more blustering and definitive statements rebuffing the maths of a particular situation: there is now a practical example – perhaps it is easier to see a photographic outcome to show the facts rather than a couple of pages of trig and mathematical calculations.

WW

[GrahamH]

I have found this discussion to be interesting on several levels. I made a comment about it being lighthearted (post 49), Lex reiterated it in post 65. Wayland made a comment earlier about a discussion allows for the character of an individual to be displayed (post 45, .... gleaned much about members that I did not know before....) and about it not descending into a fire fight.
Most other boards, this would have descended far more rapidly. Although I do feel that it is slowly descending to that level. A lot of semantics is going on about a non-serious presentation about a potentially interesting topic about this statement or that - as if these statements were made in all seriousness and were rigid. I know of other threads where the same thing has happened, some people don't seem to be able to understand the tenor of some threads and take offence at the slightest whiff of a comment not 100% correct.
I've heard it said that there is no such thing as a joke that does not offend someone (joke as opposed to puns and word play - definition not rigid, go along with the general tenor and try not to subject it to the twists and turns that are not intended). I would agree with that (love to hear a joke that is universally deemed inoffensive and is yet still amusing).

In summary, it's an interesting topic - is it possible to prevent it from descending to the bowels of hell?
Graham
word play, some antics with semantics

[pnodrog]

Well, this got complicated. If I may step back for a minute, did Wayland refer to binary math as a rhetorical, geeky inside joke, or as a legitimate suggestion that photographers should know it? I strongly suspect it was the former.

The technical/artistic topic has been raging forever and will never be settled. When have art and science ever gotten along? Though I won't kid myself about settling anything, as I see it, there are three types of knowledge (approaches, mindsets, skillsets, or whatever your preferred term may be) involved in photography. They're listed below, but the sequence does not represent a progression or any kind of ranking. Every photog will blend these three (consciously or not) as they see fit.

• Aesthetic insight (The What): This is the class of insight that tells you a photo is too blurred, undersaturated, poorly cropped, underexposed, need flash, etc. Everyone has it, and every opinion is valid. While aesthetic insight can tell you what's wrong or right about a photo, it doesn't tell you how to attack it. Aesthetic insight tells you when you see a good photo, where to stand, which perspective you want. It's separate, but inextricably linked to things like knowing how to set up your tripod and which lens to use.
• Technical Insight (The How): Once you know that a photo needs more depth of field, greater sharpness, less noise, etc., as informed by your aesthetic insight, you apply your technical knowledge and fiddle with your camera. Change lenses, stop down, get a more stable support, slow down the shutter, program flashes... However, technical insight can also predict aesthetic results - this is what a photographer does when determining their settings and equipment before pressing the shutter. It's your ability to adjust white balance, crop, use a grey card, archive your work, clone, color correct, etc. Technical insight is the collision of aesthetic targets and equipment setup and use, which derives from scientific knowledge.
• Scientific Insight (The Why): This, I believe, is the crux of this thread. Scientific knowledge is probably the least necessary of the three, but it's the driving force behind the actions (technical insights) we use to achieve our aesthetic goals. Chromatic aberrations appear on heavily backlit subjects, since light dispersion is dependent on its wavelength. Narrowing your aperture only works to a point because of diffraction, as predicted by optics. Certain glass compositions produce higher-quality images, as predicted by materials science. Photoshop's Bicubic Sharper reduction algorithm can produce an oversharpened image because of the pixel-averaging mathematics. To get a good photo, you don't necessarily need to know any of these mechanisms, but their effects affect our aesthetic judgement, and they are dealt with by our technical knowledge.

I hope that clarifies some of what I think people are talking about. Personally, I can count in binary on my fingers (up to 1,023), so it's probably obvious where I stand. At the end of the day, more knowledge of any kind will not hurt your photography.

Is this skillful use of fingers required for all digital manipulation? (I suspect you must also use your thumbs as my fingers only make a byte)

A pretty good analysis and ranking of importance of the skills required for photography.

I wonder how much our world champion F1 drivers know about the intricate mathematical workings of the computers that manage the systems in their cars. They only need to be familiar with the outcomes not the processes.

[Inkanyezi]

Canon has a TTL Mode “Evaluative” and Nion a similar “Matrix” – but I am sure you know that.
I am just as certain that you understood the meaning of the whole paragraph which you have selectively quoted.

+++

Meanwhile, as you are commenting, you might cast your mind back here – where you seemed to make more blustering and definitive statements rebuffing the maths of a particular situation: there is now a practical example – perhaps it is easier to see a photographic outcome to show the facts rather than a couple of pages of trig and mathematical calculations.

WW

Oh, I do know they call it "evaluative", although it is just as misleading as "intelligent" in marketingbabble. It does not evaluate. It measures in an integrating fashion, more or less over the entire area, and that's it. I think it is good to know that there is no evaluation of a number of fields in the viewfinder area, as stated in the blurb, but just a simple light meter, proposing a value of what's presented to it.

I also think it would be a good thing if we could get rid of the concept of "automatic white balance", AWB, as there is of today not one single camera manufactured that by itself can evaluate the quality of the light that illuminates the scene. Most of us know that a neutral reference is necessary to properly set white balance, and all sensors within our cameras measure what comes in through the lens. If my light is a source with 6500K colour temperature, and I direct the camera at a red wall, the sensors in the camera, wherever they are, whether the image sensor itself, the AF sensors or the ones in the viewfinder, all of them, would see the red colour of the wall, and not the colour of the light source that illuminates it. If there is a mass of green leaves, the sensors will see green, but not the light that illuminates the scene. There simply is no such thing as automatic white balance, it is impossible to create, unless you have a sensor that senses the light source(s). I have seen examples of compact cameras that produce a purple tint on pictures in the park and a reddish one when there's a lot of sky and water in the picture. I guess that this truly is some kind of erroneous products of an automatic balancing system running amok. Those more advanced cameras that I have used invariably set daylight white balance to any shot taken with the "AWB" setting. YMMV, maybe your camera does something different, but it cannot be an automatic white balance adjustment, if it does not have a sensor designated to measure the light that is illuminating the scene.

And as stated, there is no such thing as an evaluative metering mode in most cameras, even if marketroids want us to believe so. I think it is counter-productive to use their lingo for real world photography, so I don't ever suggest that anyone adjust exposure in PP or try to make believe that the camera can actually take an evaluative reading, if it does not incorporate hardware designed to do just that, as the little camera in the viewfinder of many Nikon models. Maybe I am a little hard on Canon there, because they indeed have some more advanced models that can evaluate, but from a number of readings taken in spot mode.

So there are essentially two types of exposure readings you can take with most cameras, average (sometimes averaging a bit differently depending on setting) and spot.

In order to use the spot reading creatively, you must understand the underlying concept of the zone system, even though you need not know more than the simple fact that you must place the area you measure in one of the zones. I.e. if you take a reading from the face of a light-skinned person, you probably would like it to land somewhere in zone V or VI, and if the skin is dark, you might prefer zone IV or perhaps zone III. If you on the other hand take a highlight reading and you want to preserve structure in that highlight, you might place it in zone VII by setting compensation to +2 with a particular camera, but maybe higher with another. To know these things, you needn't do any maths, but you have to learn just how your camera and its light measuring system functions, and what tone it might render with a particular compensation for the spot reading.

Often we might find it simpler to use the histogram, and with some cameras we can get not only a histogram, but also highlight or under-exposure warnings in real time, even before releasing the shutter. Still we need not know more about the technical part than the facts that blinkies is what will be pure white with no structure, and the black areas will be black, and for most pictures we might want the histogram between the end points without climbing the wall at any end, or in particular cases we might allow whites to be blown or that the image will have large pitch black areas. The histogram and blinkies are valuable tools, and learning to use them creatively is essential in order to control basic things regarding exposure. Yes, eight year old kids can do that.

And I think we should not forget that all advanced camera models are not DSLR. There are also EVIL and compact cameras that share many of the features of DSLR:s, and some of them also have more advanced tools for exposure evaluation, as real time histograms and over/under warnings.

[Wayland]

(love to hear a joke that is universally deemed inoffensive and is yet still amusing).

Two parrots standing on a perch.

One says to the other "Can you smell fish?"

[William W]

Oh, I do know they call it "evaluative", although it is just as misleading as "intelligent" in marketingbabble. It does not evaluate.

Good.

As mentioned: I thought as much, that you understood exactly what I was writing. It goes to the suspicion that your purposes of selective quoting was to make an hook onto which you could couch a direct reply to that selective quoting.

I understand your subsequent reply, which is now in the form of general commentary: and I agree with the general thrust and content of it.

WW

PS - Have you read the other thread?

[nimitzbenedicto]

Oh, I do know they call it "evaluative", although it is just as misleading as "intelligent" in marketingbabble. It does not evaluate. It measures in an integrating fashion, more or less over the entire area, and that's it. I think it is good to know that there is no evaluation of a number of fields in the viewfinder area, as stated in the blurb, but just a simple light meter, proposing a value of what's presented to it.
..............

Hi,

Just wondrin. what did Canon reply to you when you told them their "evaluative" is misleading marketingbabble. It does not evaluate....etc.,etc.etc.

TIA

[William W]

I have found this discussion to be interesting on several levels. I made a comment about it being lighthearted (post 49), Lex reiterated it in post 65.

That’s an interesting comment.
I did not interpret the OP as a light hearted topic. I understood the humour in the entrée, but I interpreted the topic set for debate as viable, real and serious.
I also interpreted the author as viable serious and professional and that the author set up the debate by taking “the Devils’ Advocate Stance” – and thus by the terms of a debate, allowed for any example provided by the author to be rebuffed at that example level by accurate and precise quoting and subsequent rebuff, point by point .

***

Wayland made a comment earlier about a discussion allows for the character of an individual to be displayed (post 45, .... gleaned much about members that I did not know before....) and about it not descending into a fire fight.

Maybe. I am not now nor was I interested in that.

***

Although I do feel that it is slowly descending to that level. A lot of semantics is going on about a non-serious presentation about a potentially interesting topic about this statement or that - as if these statements were made in all seriousness and were rigid. I know of other threads where the same thing has happened, some people don't seem to be able to understand the tenor of some threads and take offence at the slightest whiff of a comment not 100% correct.

In a written forum we only have the written word.
Perhaps this thread was meant to be “a discussion” – in which case maybe the introduction should not have been so specifically directed toward “a debate”?
Certainly there have been ‘attacks’ on personality, rather than debating the topic and the subsequent points as presented in-toto by the participants.

WW

[Inkanyezi]

Hi,

Just wondrin. what did Canon reply to you when you told them their "evaluative" is misleading marketingbabble. It does not evaluate....etc.,etc.etc.

TIA

Oh, as I understand it, they decline, because I have not heard an answer. It might be an interesting discussion, although it is so simple in this case to scientifically disprove, falsify, the marketing lie, that I regard it akin to stealing the lollypop from a small kid.

[William W]

Oh, I do know they call it "evaluative", although it is just as misleading as "intelligent" in marketingbabble. It does not evaluate. It measures in an integrating fashion, more or less over the entire area, and that's it. I think it is good to know that there is no evaluation of a number of fields in the viewfinder area, as stated in the blurb, but just a simple light meter, proposing a value of what's presented to it.

Please supply a first reference source to substantiate this statement which you claim is fact, that which is underlined in the quoted section.

WW

[nimitzbenedicto]

I also think it would be a good thing if we could get rid of the concept of "automatic white balance", AWB, as there is of today not one single camera manufactured that by itself can evaluate the quality of the light that illuminates the scene.

.......

Hi,

When/how do you intend to start that "good thing" advocacy of yours to get rid of that
concept of "automatic white balance", AWB ?

Will you push through your quest via an online "signature campaign"?

Please let us know.

Thanks

[William W]

. . . it is very difficult to get rid of "concepts".

[Wayland]

[pnodrog]

Oh,

I also think it would be a good thing if we could get rid of the concept of "automatic white balance", AWB, as there is of today not one single camera manufactured that by itself can evaluate the quality of the light that illuminates the scene. Most of us know that a neutral reference is necessary to properly set white balance, and all sensors within our cameras measure what comes in through the lens. If my light is a source with 6500K colour temperature, and I direct the camera at a red wall, the sensors in the camera, wherever they are, whether the image sensor itself, the AF sensors or the ones in the viewfinder, all of them, would see the red colour of the wall, and not the colour of the light source that illuminates it. If there is a mass of green leaves, the sensors will see green, but not the light that illuminates the scene. There simply is no such thing as automatic white balance, it is impossible to create, unless you have a sensor that senses the light source(s). I have seen examples of compact cameras that produce a purple tint on pictures in the park and a reddish one when there's a lot of sky and water in the picture. I guess that this truly is some kind of erroneous products of an automatic balancing system running amok. Those more advanced cameras that I have used invariably set daylight white balance to any shot taken with the "AWB" setting. YMMV, maybe your camera does something different, but it cannot be an automatic white balance adjustment, if it does not have a sensor designated to measure the light that is illuminating the scene.

Wholeheartedly agree. Even if WB was evaluated accurately the camera has no way of knowing how to adjust the WB to produce an image outcome in accordance with the photographers aesthetic requirements. Who wants a sunset to look like it is midday lighting.

[AB26]

How about this guy http://www.brettflorens.co.za/ . Heard him stumble over technical data and mega pixels. Makes me wonder how great he is with binary maths. Do you think he is any good at Photography?