The SECRET for BEAUTIFULLY EXPOSED PHOTOS

Everyone knows exposure bracketing, most however never use it to its full potential! Here is how I hugley improved photo quality by adjusting the AEB settings!
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0:00 Intro
0:33 Why use AEB / Exposure Bracketing
4:10 More Dynamic Range with 5-Shot AEB
5:40 Small downsides
7:02 Editing 5 shot HDR
7:30 Merging HDR
7:58 Basic Adjustments
11:03 Masking
15:00 Color Grading
16:07 Sharpening

[@ADR1ANBUTT0N]

As someone new to using lightroom, this is a simple straight forward video, really helpful, and the added resource files to work along and learn is a brilliant move. Looking forward to picking up more tips.

[@scandinavianthinking1251]

Christian, You have made a clear point about exposure to capture all the perfect details in the highlights and in the shadows! Your demonstration of the beautiful exposed photos, and later on, about the HDR merged photo adjustments in the Lightroom is brilliant and insightful. I am very inspired by what you have crated, I learned more about exposure. I am grateful for your help! Thank you so much!

[@ThePhlogPhotography]

Thank you sooo much, these kind of comments really help me to keep working and stay focus on this channel! Very happy I was able to help with this video!

[@charleswillson1236]

Hello Christian, I just wanted to thank you for all the work you put into your posts. I have learned so much from you about editing in Lightroom.

[@ThePhlogPhotography]

Hey, thank you so much, I'm very happy to hear that!

[@doneagle8]

Great tutorial Christian!!! I can't wait to get out and try this...

[@stephenschmid492]

Nor sure about other brands, but on Fujifilm cameras, you can bracket in one direction, + or -, rather than both + and -. I like to set my base photo to maximum exposure, and then bracket with darker exposures from there. That way I always know my slowest shutter speed.

[@ThePhlogPhotography]

Oh I didnt know that, I thought its always +/- x for all brands out there!

[@slowtrain162]

On my Nikon D850 I can also bracket in one direction

[@chrisfor]

Running to my X-T5 to set up! Not sure how I missed this. Thanks so much.

[@colinmelhuish1254]

Superb result. Food for thought.

[@donhendricks3190]

Outstanding! I love your art and your style of teaching. Thank you so much for your dedication to excellence. With love from Atlanta.

[@ThePhlogPhotography]

Thank you so much, that means a lot to me!

[@robertgiguere875]

Great video! Clear and accurate presentation

[@smalltalk.productions9977]

fabulous tutorial. thank you for the effort and the sharing. i am an intimated LightRoom novice so I find this vid very helpful. thumbs up.

[@keithfoster3831]

Thank you Christian , I will check the video out. In the end I exposed 5 images all at different exposures manually, they blend perfectly in HDR in Camera Raw . I have watched many editing videos, none of them match the quality of your teaching or your methods in CR , I have used CR for many years, to be honest, there is little else needs doing in Photoshop with the new Camera Raw features .keep up the good work.

[@ThePhlogPhotography]

Thank you so much! setting up the 5 different exposures manually is another great way to create the HDR, it just takes more time and thus makes it harder with moving objects like clouds as an example

[@GusMcCrae01]

Excellent info in this vid.

[@imadesukabuwana2841]

Thank you so much for sharing

[@dance2jam]

Christian, First time to your channel. I really have to commend you, for a nice, concise, and relatively complete review and explanation. I'm a relatively new photographer (wonder when I'll stop saying this) and landscape is not the typical thing I shoot. That said, I did catch all the reasoning you used here and am just proud of not only your completeness, but both the graphic and photos that accompanied your video. Nicely done. The only portion I missed, if you said it, is that you're varying only your shutter speed for the higher DR/HDR shots, not ISO or focal length - but you may have covered that in other videos. Nice that you covered the few problems with HDR as well. Thanks for the video. I'm sure I'll look through your channels other topics since you were so good with this one.

[@ThePhlogPhotography]

Thank you so much for the kind comment! You are right: I only showed the bracketing with shutter speeds. Thats because personally, I only use this method for my workflow. I might look into the others (mainly adjusting ISO) to see if it helps with certain problems!

[@steelynick]

Thank you, I have recently discovered your channel, and already I have learnt so much, very well presented and explained.

[@ThePhlogPhotography]

Thank you so much for the support, that means so much to me!

[@smalltalk.productions9977]

i so much enjoyed your tutorial on AEB that i went back to your full KZbin playlist. wow, there are so many thoughtful vids. except as an utter NOVICE, i am not sure where to start. have you ever done a vid on getting started in LightRoom and Photoshop? how do you ingest, organize and cull? i have watched vids about ingesting but it's how to organize and rename on ingest that i would appreciate knowing more about. again, thank you for the effort and sharing. thumbs up.

[@ThePhlogPhotography]

Thank you so much for the comment! Unfortunately I dont have a video on organizing photos yet. To be honest, my photos are a mess of folders on my ahrd drive so I'm really the wrong person to share information on that topic haha

[@ianbrowne9304]

well explained

[@str8boogerflikn102]

Would have loved for ypu to edit the one single image with same settings and then do a compare at the end. We could see how much the final HDL improves the image

[@veselinvasilev9362]

Thank you!

[@telkirton]

Just came across your channel interesting video, nice image and edit,

[@ThePhlogPhotography]

Thank you very much!

[@tdako]

Hi Christian, vielen dank for the video. Really insightful. I have known about the 5 stops versions, or even 7, but always seemed to use the 3-stop one to create my HDRs. I am definitely going to try some 5-stop examples. The way you explain the masking is very very helpful. One question though. I use an R6II and putting the focus square at a point in the image (could move it after focusing as I use BBF), determines the exposure. So 5 stops will be relative to what is read at that point, right? So I guess it means trying to find a midpoint exposure in the scene before taking the bracket?

[@ThePhlogPhotography]

Hey, thanks for commenting, very happy the video was helpful to you! I would suggest to manually set up the exposure, this way you will always get the right amount of light! On my camera the Histogram is always visible, so I can set up a nicely balanced histogram by adjusting iso, aperture and shutter speed. If you want to use auto settings, then you would need to find some kind of midpoint, so you are correct with your approach!

[@tonyferrell3456]

Excellent explanation of HDR. In your 5 shot example how many stops are you placing between each image? Thanks.

[@ThePhlogPhotography]

Thanks a lot! It was 2 stops, I have the best experience by going with 2 stops with these kinds of photos (sun in the image + dark shadows in the trees)

[@patrikyribeiro1680]

Goodnight!! Congratulations on the videos! Can you bracket photos of waterfalls or long exposures perfectly? I was wondering if it would be a problem when doing HDR in Photoshop.

[@ThePhlogPhotography]

Thanks for the comment! Bracketing photos of moving objects like waterfalls or waves is tricky and a lot of times you end up with strange, tiny black spots spread over the moving areas. Sometimes it can work however, so I would just try it!

[@pauldevereux9501]

Hi, I have always used 5 AEB at either 1 or 1.33 stop steps on my canon 6dii. I’m going to have to go back and apply your masking steps Christian, they are just amazing especially the way you use multi sky masks. I have only used 1 mask in the past and it always comes out too harsh and weird looking. Might try a 7 AEB for future shots. Cheers

[@ThePhlogPhotography]

Thank you so much for the kind comment, that means a lot to me!

[@JohnJohnson-bo5sv]

I will look into changing it like you said it never occurred to me. I was wondering because I just received a set of Freewell Magnetic ND filters, I was wondering what you thought about bracketing with ND filters or when you are using ND's to make an HDR image. It would be a much greater time commitment to be sure.

[@Louis87777]

I have run into issues with 3-shot HDR before but didn’t consider 5-shot (erroneously) because of shutter-speed considerations at the lower ends. I should add that until recently I didn’t have the sturdiest tripod so it’s time for me to go out and try this approach! Thank you!

[@ThePhlogPhotography]

Hey, I hope you will get some cool results with the 5 shot AEB! Wish you the best of luck!

[@darrenmjones1]

Thank you for another excellent tutorial Christian. I have a couple of HDR beginner questions. 1) Do you need an HDR monitor to be able to do this process? 2) When you complete your editing steps in Lightroom Develop, can you export the final image as a JPG, and is it a normal JPG viewable by any device or is it a special HDR file that can only be viewed on HDR-compatible devices? Thanks again.

[@jormit1]

1-no, 2-yes, you can export as jpeg

[@ThePhlogPhotography]

Thanks for the comment! As @jormit1 pointed out correctly, you dont need a special HDR monitor to edit this photos and you can export them as normal jpeg files later on so they can be looked at on any device! :-)

[@darrenmjones1]

Great, thank you!

[@scandinavianthinking1251]

Tack!

[@ThePhlogPhotography]

Hey, thank you sooo much for all your support! That means so much to me!

[@dukeofurl999]

If I use DXO Pure Raw 4 would I need to run the final version through it or each frame separately?

[@radekzajac7846]

Whats the scienece about full frame automatically having better dynamic range than smapper sensors?

[@keithfoster3831]

On the R5 , how do I set the camera to take all 5 shots automatically? When I set either Function Control or Continuous, it stops at the 3rd shot ? Are you in manual mode ? Thanks

[@markochenduszko1868]

This is an excellent tutorial, particularly about masking techniques. I was unfamiliar with the masking intersection function. Learning that technique will be really helpful. Great video.

[@ThePhlogPhotography]

Ahhh Canon, I struggled to find the settings in the menu for my 6D and it seems on the R5 it is rather hidden as well! Check out this video which shows it at around 1:14 kzbin.info/www/bejne/eqOnpoiXeLd5ncU

[@edmundhayes7982]

Great tutorial. Instead of using multiple images at 2 stops, would it not be better to use more images at 1 stop?

[@ThePhlogPhotography]

Thanks for the comment! 1 Stop will give you less dynamic range, but when using 5 images, 1 stop should still be enough, I just like to be very very save and go with 2 stops :D

[@moritzgyssler]

Have you ever compared the results between merging 3 out of the 5 shots (-2 / 0 / + 2) versus merging all 5 shots (-2 / -1 / 0 / +1 / +2) ?

[@ThePhlogPhotography]

I actually havent tested that, but it would basically be a 3 shot HDR which would net less dynamic range

[@moritzgyssler]

@@ThePhlogPhotography Just being curious: why would it be less dynamic range ?

[@moritzgyssler]

@@ThePhlogPhotography I've run a few tests with the RAW photos you supplied to this video using LRs HDR merge as well as DxOs HDR Efex and found the results quite interesting ... Maybe you might want to do something similar and present your insights in a separate video ? Note: I've ran tests for following bracket sequence options: -4/-2/0/2/4, 4/0/4, -2/0/2

[@dylansalt1]

Having shot with a Nikon D750 for many years it gave me around 14 stops of dynamic range with a 14 bit raw file - I had around 6 stops of shadow recovery and 3 stops highlight - canons earlier sensors are notoriously bad in both - now with my Sony A7C I have now at least 3stops highlight recovery & 6 stops shadow recovery with no noise - no need for AEB as you can do all that kind of editing without using AEB

[@ThePhlogPhotography]

Its true that some cameras come with an insane Dynamic Range, but even the best cameras cant handle scenes like the one in this video, shooting from inside a dark cave agains the bright sky. You need the bracketing to be able to recover all the details here

[@jezmink]

👍

[@mostlymessingabout]

You can do 7 shots AEB

[@ThePhlogPhotography]

Yes, my Sony A7III even has a 9 shot AEB! :-) So far I havent encountered a scene that needs that many shots however :-)

[@SuperSSystem]

Isn't it all too much?

[@ThePhlogPhotography]

Not for me. But everyone is different, this is not something EVERYONE HAS to do.

[@andrewsimpson5436]

Why not go 13 frames, job done!

[@BernhardSchwarz-xs8kp]

Great presentation - the digital solution of Ansel Adams/Zone 5 method. A photographer" 's eyes are "sensors only. It is the brain that creates the image to "see".The brain is very kind and plays tricks with us. It evens and smoothens out the density of light, textures of surfaces such as skin, and wrinkles in the fabrics. That's why people never see themself the way they actually look in a mirror and are shocked when looking at a picture of their face.(apart from the reverse effect of mirrors) Lenses are brutal - as every wedding photographer understands. A veil over the eye, or one shoe hidden under a dress, are easily overlooked in the heat of the moment. Therefore good photographers do have somebody who is looking out for such imperfections that can ruin a perfect shot.

[@jassimmadan9851]

Where is the secret !?

[@DavevanharenCarpfishing]

Lumonosity mask its better.

[@bobbybobob123]

'Beautifully exposed photos' really makes no sense. Exposure is a quantity, the amount of light (strictly per area) at the sensor. It's more or less. Maybe you're confusing it with tonality, or technically 'lightness' - how light or dark the photo looks. Exposure and lightness are related by the processing - or if you use OOC JPEGs, by the ISO. Rather than bracketing exposure, then spending time on your computer after choosing the best it makes more sense to shoot raw, expose to maximise information - essentially the biggest exposure you can manage without blowing the highlights and meeting your requirements for DOF and motion blur, and then get the lightness 'beautiful' when you process the raw.

[@scottfreckle237]

if it's only one thing to change why is your video almost 17 minutes long just to say one sentence?

[@ThePhlogPhotography]

Hmmm lets see: 1. If its too long for you, the most important thing is right in the first minute. 2. Some people want to know how and why something is done. I'm explaingin this in detail. 3. I'm also showing the complete edit process for a 5 shot bracket in this video. Maybe its the best for you to just skip my videos if you cant handle 15 minutes watching this and skip over to tiktok