Park stream late afternoon

[photosbyvito]

here are two pictures i took (lol..so far, so obvious )

i have a question....which one looks exposed right?

thefirst one is "histogrammatically" sound....

and thesecond one is considered "dark" on the histogram...

i personally think thesecond onelooks better....but...wat's your opinion...which should i go with most of the time? histogram?....guess by "eye"?

Vito

[photosbyvito]

second...

[aladyforty]

I like the first shot. Only thing i dont like about this shot is that the shoreline looks messy, like the leaves along the edge look like debris or something.

[photosbyvito]

you talking about just the leaves? or the black-ish stuff too? cuz i could move the leaves...if you think the shot would be better without them....but i can't do anything about the roots...without a couple hours and a shovel....lol....

thanks for taking the time to post...i appreciate it....

Vito

[GoCubs]

I also like the exposure in the first shot better. The second one seems a little dark to me, but they are your photos and whichever one you like best is right for you! One thing I try is a quick auto level in photoshop and then the undo and redo arrow to see which I prefer, then go play with the sliders, and after all the playing I usually leave it how it was to begin with.

[photosbyvito]

lol..i do that too....i didn't on these though...wasn't sure they needed it...

hmm...two votes for the brighter..i guess the histogram don't lie...lol

thanks for your post!! i appreciate it!

Vito

[aladyforty]

vito, the areas outlined are what I was talking about. This is only my opinion though, I may be as wrong as H***:-)

[chuck biddinger]

As everyone knows I am no expert but I like the second photo better.

[ohenry]

Personally, I think the first one looks washed out due to slight overexposure. The second is better exposed but a tad underexposed. You didn't give the details of the amount of -ev there is in the second shot. Were these shot in RAW or JPG format?

You say that the first one has a sound histogram and the second indicates it is dark. Could you clarify what you mean there? Does the 2nd histogram indicate that the darker tones are clipped or is the histogram simply further to the left? There is no such thing as a perfect histogram as they only measure the intensity of the various tones from 0-256. As long as you are not clipping data at either end, you have a sound histogram.

The advice most routinely accepted is to "expose to the right" (speaking of your histogram) ... as far to the right as you can without clipping the highlights then using photoshop to adjust the exposure back towards the left. This works easiest when shooting RAW. but can be acheived with JPG. If you're not going to do post processing, you're probably better off slightly underexposing rather than overexposingso as to not lose the details in the highlights or getting a washed out appearance such as you see in your first shot. Obvioiusly, getting the exposure right is the best option. The tonal range of the sensors is not as wide as that found in film and cannot capture some of the high contrast scenes as effectively without some post processing manipulations. Many times, it's best to shoot two shots (one exposing for the highlights and one exposing for the shadows) and then blend them in Photoshop.

[mactek]

I also like the second one better, but I tend to prefer dark, moodier landscape shots.

mactek