Bracketing with Ease

I'm going to do this post in two sections for those of you that got lost at the word bracketing. Section one will give a small explanation about bracketing. Section two will explain about AEB and how it makes bracketing a cinch.

Section One: What is bracketing?

I will do my best to explain bracketing without turning this post into one on F-Stops and Shutter Speeds. I'm hoping that you all understand these two terms. If not, fear not, there will be posts coming up that go into more detail on both counts.

Say you go to photograph the field next to your house to create a HDR image and the correct exposure is f-11 at 1/125. To keep the correct exposure you would use the "take a stop/give a stop" rule. In this case we don't want to keep the correct exposure. We want to over expose by 2 stops and under expose by two stops. You can do this by either changing the shutter speed or the f-stop.

Here is what your exposures would look like for that image if you changed your f-stop 2 stops in either direction.

f-5.6 @ 1/125     f-11 @ 1/125       f-22 @ 1/125

Here is what your exposures would look like for that image if you changed your shutter speed 2 stops in either direction.

f-11 @ 1/30     f-11 @ 1/125       f-11 @ 1/500

In a nut shell, bracketing is when you take multiple shots of a subject changing the setting on your camera. Typically you wouldn't bracket your shots by 2 stops. I used that example because in the previous post I talked about creating HDR images and you want your shots 1 to 2 stops over and under exposed for creating beautiful HDR images. When bracketing for correct exposure you may only choose to compensate 1/3 or 1/2 stop in each direction.

Section 2: Using the AEB setting on your camera.

Many Digital SLR camera have an AEB (Auto Exposure Bracketing) setting. This makes bracketing easy. Once set up you can take 3 consecutive shots and the camera will adjust the shutter speed and aperture for you. You can set the AEB to bracket for you in 1/3 step increments.

I'm not going to do a tutorial on setting up AEB on your camera at this time. A would highly recommend reading your user manual for your camera and learning the exact directions for your specific SLR. Using AEB can save you a lot of time if you are shooting many images for HDR photography or if you choose to bracket all your shots for correct exposure.