![]() ![]() Now that you’re familiar with the basics of bracketing, I’d like to offer a simple process for bracketing your shots, which you can use regardless of your camera equipment. How to bracket your photos: a step-by-step process Just know that the higher you boost your ISO, the worse your images will look, so be very careful before pushing your ISO to significant heights. However, if you need to keep your shutter speed at a particular value, you can bracket using ISO. If your subject is stationary and you’re working with a tripod, you shouldn’t have any issues increasing and decreasing your shutter speed, and you’ll get the desired underexposure/overexposure effect. In general, you should bracket using the shutter speed. So when bracketing, which variable should you target for adjustment? ![]() The ISO will affect the noisiness, sometimes referred to as the graininess, of your image.The shutter speed will affect the sharpness of your image, especially when photographing moving subjects.The aperture will affect the amount of the scene that is in focus, also known as the depth of field.But each variable will also affect your photo in other ways: Image exposure is determined by three variables: aperture, shutter speed, and ISO.Īdjust any of these variables, and you’ll get an incrementally lighter or darker shot. That’s the hardest part about bracketing: deciding exactly how many images to capture! Bracketing and camera settings One final note: While many scenes only require three bracketed shots – a standard shot, a light shot, and a dark shot – in extreme situations, you may want to use five, seven, or nine images instead. And post-processing programs often include an auto-merge feature, where you select several images and they quickly combine them together for the best (HDR!) result. ![]() The bracketing process is the same as I described in the previous sections. This may sound difficult, but it’s really not. It doesn’t matter if each individual shot is missing details at its extremes, because all the detail is present, just spread across the three images. ![]() That way, you can use the detailed highlights from one image, the detailed midtones from another image, and the detailed shadows from a third image. Instead of capturing one image of the scene, you bracket.Īnd then you blend all of your bracketed images together in a post-processing program. See the problem? Scenes that feature bright areas and dark areas can’t be easily rendered by a camera sensor, no matter the exposure value. For instance, cameras characteristically overexpose (over-brighten) dark scenes (e.g., a nighttime image of a city skyline) and characteristically underexpose (over-darken) bright scenes (e.g., a stand of white aspen trees in snow). But while camera meters are powerful, they often get the exposure wrong. You see, every modern camera is equipped with a meter, which analyzes a scene and determines the proper exposure settings for beautifully rendered detail. It depends on your exposure skills and the scene itself, as I discuss in the next section: Why is bracketing useful?Īt its simplest, bracketing increases your odds of nailing a difficult exposure. However, this isn’t a requirement some situations need only two images, while others call for five images, seven images, nine images, or even more. Note that bracketing most commonly occurs in groups of three. Generally, this is done on a tripod to prevent camera movement between images, but there are also photographers who bracket handheld (and I discuss this option below!). Each composition is identical, yet the exposure level varies from shot to shot. ![]()
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