> if I imported the raw image to Lightroom and looked at the histogram, and turned on the "show shadow clipping" and "show highlight clippling" that would not necessarily agree with what FRV was telling me
That is one of the major FRV design goals - to provide statistics and histogram directly from raw data, independent of any conversion settings and algorithms. Using a good raw converter, you will always be able to bring the data existing in raw to the converted image.
If, say, FRV indicates clipping of highlights, it means the highlights are truely clipped in raw data. If some raw converter shows those as not clipped, it means highlight recovery is applied.
If FRV indicates raw data in highlights is not clipped, but a raw converter shows it as clipped, it means the "exposure" slider in raw converter can be pulled back without any fear of "inventing" data in the image.
Underexposure setting and warning in FRV seems to be not very well-understood. It does not mean the shadows are clipped, one still can push those shadows; it only means noise and non-linearity are higher than a user wants.; while what exactly he wants depends on the desired quality and experience. For high quality on the resulting images I would not go above 9 stops below highlight clipping point, keeping it mostly at 8. With accurate ETTR 8 stops is what the "beach scene" on the home page here has; so it is quite a lot for many shooting situations.
Dear David,
Dear David,
> if I imported the raw image to Lightroom and looked at the histogram, and turned on the "show shadow clipping" and "show highlight clippling" that would not necessarily agree with what FRV was telling me
That is one of the major FRV design goals - to provide statistics and histogram directly from raw data, independent of any conversion settings and algorithms. Using a good raw converter, you will always be able to bring the data existing in raw to the converted image.
If, say, FRV indicates clipping of highlights, it means the highlights are truely clipped in raw data. If some raw converter shows those as not clipped, it means highlight recovery is applied.
If FRV indicates raw data in highlights is not clipped, but a raw converter shows it as clipped, it means the "exposure" slider in raw converter can be pulled back without any fear of "inventing" data in the image.
Underexposure setting and warning in FRV seems to be not very well-understood. It does not mean the shadows are clipped, one still can push those shadows; it only means noise and non-linearity are higher than a user wants.; while what exactly he wants depends on the desired quality and experience. For high quality on the resulting images I would not go above 9 stops below highlight clipping point, keeping it mostly at 8. With accurate ETTR 8 stops is what the "beach scene" on the home page here has; so it is quite a lot for many shooting situations.