Fuji exposure recovery.

AKA oops I forgot to change the settings

We’ve all done it.  Been shooting some amazing artistic shot, surely a prize winner (or at least that’s what our mum tells us)…

Amazing artistic picture, surely worthy of an award of some kind.

Then suddenly a wild  Australian brushturkey appears!*  You move the camera down and snap!  Prize winning picture part 2 surely! You check to see the masterpiece and what do you see? …

You mean ISO 400, f/5.6 and 1/1250 isn’t a universal setting?!

Luckily you shot RAW and can recover this!  With Fuji’s ISO-less sensor you should be able to just push it and simulate a higher ISO setting at least… YAY… well let’s see.

Push it +5 exposure in LR…

+5 exposure

and 100% details

Still looks a bit dark and definitely noisy…  so let’s…

PUSH BLACKS ALL THE WAY UP

I’m… talking about Lightroom settings…

So… I non-racistly pushed blacks all the way up (it’s a setting…)…

Blacks pushed to +100

100% detail

So does it work?  Kinda…

JPEG CAN DO THAT!!!!!!!!

Now some will say “I don’t need RAW I can do that with a Jpeg!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Jpeg lol

Anyway to prove the point, I converted the RAW to a jpeg and edited it exactly the same way as I did to the RAW above…

Ahhh hahahahaha…

Here’s a 100% comparison you can slide left and right (which one was from RAW and which one is JPEG?!):

Conclusion

Fuji apparently have an “ISO-less” sensor, which basically means pushing it in post is the same as upping the ISO.

While the results are pretty noisy, considering it was basically a black screen it’s not bad.  RAW helps of course as it maintains more details.  Jpeg does have a little latitude, but not nearly as much as RAW.

I know there’s a LOT of photographers out there who shoot nothing but JPEG.  Because they ALWAYS get it right in camera…

For the rest of us.  Shooting RAW is probably a better choice.  I would recommend trying your best to get the exposure right in camera of course, but RAW offers a lot of advantages over JPEG.

*This is really what happened, I was shooting the birds on the horizon and forgot to change the settings when I saw the brushturkey.