Bracketing

Barbieri, OlivoSiena (2) 2002

Exposure bracketing has been used by photographers since the early days of photography.

It means to take several pictures of the same subject, each with a different exposure.

One of the exposures will give better results than the other exposures, thus providing you, the photographer, with the best image in terms of tone and depth of field...

Exposure bracketing is possible with any camera which allows you to determine the shutter speed and aperture yourself, or which provides some form of exposure compensation. This includes analogue and digital SLR cameras.

You take a number of pictures, shooting one exposure at the settings recommended by the camera, then additional pictures at different exposures.

For example, if the camera’s light metre recommends an exposure of 1/125sec at f/8, your exposures could be:

1/125sec at f/8, 1/60sec at f/8 and 1/250sec at f/8.

Here, you have taken the basic exposure and bracketed it using shutter speeds that are slower and faster.

You could also exposure bracket by keeping the shutter speed at 1/125sec and use apertures of f/8, f/5.6 and f/11.