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Shooting in RAW query ?
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Pookeyhead
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Woah... stop right there. There's absolutely no right, wrong, or recommended method... it ALL depends on what you want.
There is no reason to underexpose, and ordinarily, over expose. It's all down to what you want to achieve. In the shot above, where you have a very bright sky, slight under exposure would have been beneficial. In a shot where there are predominantly dark tones and few highlights, then slight over exposure would benefit.
However, the D800 has a very wide dynamic range, and unless you're in extreme exposure circumstances, AND you know what you're doing, I'd expose how the meter suggests when on matrix metering.
Over exposing will reveal more detail in darker areas at the expense of the highlights, and under exposure, the opposite. If a subject does not make use of the camera's whole dynamic range (doesn't fill the histogram) then you can shift everything up (ETTL) or down (ETTR).. but you need to fully understand what you are doing here. Research "Expose to the left" and "Expose to the right" to fully understand this.
Seriously though... you've got 14stops of dynamic range.... just use Matrix metering and do as the camera suggests until you've fully researched this more.
What level of experience would you say you are at? Just so we know at what level to pitch the replies.
There is no reason to underexpose, and ordinarily, over expose. It's all down to what you want to achieve. In the shot above, where you have a very bright sky, slight under exposure would have been beneficial. In a shot where there are predominantly dark tones and few highlights, then slight over exposure would benefit.
However, the D800 has a very wide dynamic range, and unless you're in extreme exposure circumstances, AND you know what you're doing, I'd expose how the meter suggests when on matrix metering.
Over exposing will reveal more detail in darker areas at the expense of the highlights, and under exposure, the opposite. If a subject does not make use of the camera's whole dynamic range (doesn't fill the histogram) then you can shift everything up (ETTL) or down (ETTR).. but you need to fully understand what you are doing here. Research "Expose to the left" and "Expose to the right" to fully understand this.
Seriously though... you've got 14stops of dynamic range.... just use Matrix metering and do as the camera suggests until you've fully researched this more.
What level of experience would you say you are at? Just so we know at what level to pitch the replies.
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Chappers
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With Raw, as a general rule you have more information within the highlights than that in the shadows. Also you need to be aware how a camera metering system operates. I have found that Canon are generally cautious when it comes to exposure. Tending to under expose, to protect highlight detail. This I can understand as I am constantly shooting with +1 stop dialled into my Canon camera. This has been the case from 20D. 5D 1Ds lll 5D lll and now 6D . For this reason I generally use the ETTR ( Expose To The Right ) philosophy. This enables me to maintain shadow detail yet recover lots of highlight information using the highlight and white controls in Lightroom.
Nikon I am told tend to be more generous with exposure, allowing detail in the shadows rather than protect highlights.
The problem is that the histogram on the camera is little help when shooting RAW. It's a 8 bit JPEG interpretation of the image. Not much help when you've 12-14 bits of data.
It does, in the end come down to what you are trying to portray. If it's a dark subject, with lots of shadow detail then you really need to get the exposure right for that. A light subject may be the reverse, however RAW does tend to favour detail in the highlight area, so a simple ETTR option may suffice
You may like to read the following article from the Luminous landscape on RAW it may throw some light on the matter
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/u-raw-files.shtml
It really comes down to understanding what data is recorded. Personally when in doubt I bracket and choose the exposure that best suites. Now I'm not suggesting you do that with every shot, but it may be worth trying , to see what the different results you get are. I'd opt for 2 stops either way. That way you get both ends of the exposure
Nikon I am told tend to be more generous with exposure, allowing detail in the shadows rather than protect highlights.
The problem is that the histogram on the camera is little help when shooting RAW. It's a 8 bit JPEG interpretation of the image. Not much help when you've 12-14 bits of data.
It does, in the end come down to what you are trying to portray. If it's a dark subject, with lots of shadow detail then you really need to get the exposure right for that. A light subject may be the reverse, however RAW does tend to favour detail in the highlight area, so a simple ETTR option may suffice
You may like to read the following article from the Luminous landscape on RAW it may throw some light on the matter
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/u-raw-files.shtml
It really comes down to understanding what data is recorded. Personally when in doubt I bracket and choose the exposure that best suites. Now I'm not suggesting you do that with every shot, but it may be worth trying , to see what the different results you get are. I'd opt for 2 stops either way. That way you get both ends of the exposure
Pookeyhead
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It's enough to give you a guide on whether you're close to the limit. After reading similar things myself, I tested this. I've compared histograms from the camera preview and those generated in Photoshop from the 16bit TIFFs, and those in LR from the 14bit RAWs and there's not a great deal of difference between them. I genuinely think it's one of those things that while being technically correct (previews on camera being 8bit) is argued about pedantically. The histogram is only ever meant as a rough guide as to how "full" the exposure is anyway, and not a means of accurately measuring anything.
However, if you notice that everything is at the left, and almost nothing at the right, you can decide that over exposing would probably help the image, and vice versa. As a guide to facilitating that kind of judgement, the histogram is absolutely adequate.
