Leaves

[xpatUSA]

Ted - carefully said, I did not say just at capture, although that is critical.

OK, you said "we try to take images where at capture we have NO values that show up as either 0 or 255 when we examine the histogram."

Perhaps I misunderstood "where at capture"? I did understand all the other advice about post-processing, so no need to say all that again. Stay well ...

[Manfred M]

OK, you said "we try to take images where at capture we have NO values that show up as either 0 or 255 when we examine the histogram."

Perhaps I misunderstood "where at capture"? I did understand all the other advice about post-processing, so no need to say all that again. Stay well ...

Again, we agree on capture. I'm also saying that we have to watch what we are doing in post as well.

In B&W work, I will generally try to have a full tonal range from 0 to 255. This was popularized by the modernists like Edward Weston and Ansel Adam. This style still strongly influences current B&W work. The exception are the example Dan cites; images that do not have a full dynamic range; fog, rain, etc. Something that was quite common with the pictorialists (Ansel Adams actually started out as a pictorialist). The pictorialist images often have very a constrained tonal range.

In colour work, I will generally try to avoid pure black and pure white, i.e. no 0 and no 255. That is typically the accepted practice, but there certainly are times when one has to clip highlights or crush shadow detail. That is less of an issue than it used to be with modern sensors and the 14+ ev many now provide, but there are still times we shoot in hard, high contrast conditions or shoot at light sources...