Bird and wildlife photography tutorial: Why Expose To The Right (ETTR) is so critical

If you find ETTR interesting but are still a bit confused on how to optimize it, please check out my free one hour training at tinmanlee.com/...

[@dogs4399]

You are the first one that I've watched that thoroughly and simply explained why we should use ETTR! Thx so much. I've been overexposing, but have been guilty of reducing shadows or bumping up exposure a bit in post, rather than overexposing a bit more and then bringing down the highlights. You helped me fathom why so many of my early pics two years ago of birds in flight (especially white birds like egrets) were missing too many details and not looking real.

[@TinManLee]

So sorry for the delay. I’m so happy to hear that. Yes me too. I struggled for years until I found it out. So glad to share here.

[@Lunafilms12]

Hello new sub. So I have always been told that it’s better to under exposed than over expose. I am going to try this next time I go out . Great video thanks!

[@TinManLee]

It’s a game changer. Give it a try.

[@JJ-ef7lb]

Tin Man….. you’re bricklayer needs to come back and fix that wall mate 😂 on a serious note, thank you for all your work, it’s important to the novice ….me!

[@Jessehermansonphotography]

Thank you! This was great.

[@tobiasyoder]

Really isn't it mostly the amount of light you get that determines how much noise will be in the final photo? If you took two shots at the same aperture and shutter speed but one with the ISO a 2-3 stops higher and then raised the exposure of the of the darker image they would have almost the exact same noise with current good sensors. So, I am not certain that exposing to the right would improve image quality much in real world situations unless you are doing so by increasing shutter speed or aperture, but I'm sure as you know with wildlife other factors tend to dictate those settings.

[@arnab9211]

I agree to this. There is no real benefit to ETTR if the extra gain in exposure is by increasing the ISO in-camera. If ETTR can be achieved by lowering the shutter speed or opening the aperture more, then it definitely improves image quality.

[@Raevenswood]

It definitely produces less noise and much better shadow detail to expose to the right but yeah in wildlife situations where you would want to shoot close to wide open and with a fast shutter speed to stop motion your only option might be to raise the ISO. I think if you are cranking the ISO crazy high to make it happen then you might be better off going with the "perfect" exposure over the ETTR but with usable ISO settings it would still look less noisy to pull back highlights in post than it would to raise exposure globally in Lightroom.

[@tobiasyoder]

@@Raevenswood Im not sure about that, a term that is thrown around with modern sensors is that they are become increasingly "ISO invariant". Meaning that if you kept SS and f-stop constant and took one shot at iso 100 and the other at iso 400, they would have some amount of noise, meaning there isn't an advantage in ETTR if it is being done by simply raising your iso in camera. Where ETTR still makes a lot of sense is when you are already at ISO 100 and are getting more detail/light by increasing you shutter speed or aperture.

[@DavidCrooksPhotos]

@@Raevenswood This is the senario that I am and struggling with photographing birds. ETTR slows down my SS and I need it as fast I can to stop the bird in flight. Nowthe software cleans up the noise so it is not an issue.

[@gautam54362]

Isn't that better to recover shadows rather than highlight???

[@TinManLee]

When you bring up shadow, you are also bringing up the noise hidden in the shadow. And since it’s already dark, the signal to noise ratio is low in the shadow area so the noise would be bad. Yes you can handle in topaz denoise but you also lose details there. But if you lower highlight you are not losing any details or bringing up any noise.