Exposure Bracketing - Nikon D300 Complete Manual

• An image taken at
numbered ISO (hint: JPEG Small). If you're going to use
the photo at smaller than captured sizes (e.g. for Web or
computer display), you can probably use any of the ISO
values, though HI ISO values will have definite dynamic
range compression and lower color fidelity. When you
reduce the image from full resolution to a smaller image
size, you'll often find that some or all of the noise pattern
disappears (especially true if you get to 1/4 size or 1/8
size). Plus, you'll have far fewer pixels to correct if you do
need to fix something. Color saturation is still a problem at
the highest ISO values.
• Noise from ISO values with NEF images will be more
visible than JPEG. The in-camera noise reduction routines
aren't applied to NEF image data. Capture NX uses the
camera settings to apply a post-processing noise reduction
similar to what the camera does (if you don't change the
conversion defaults), but other converters don't recognize
the camera settings; instead they make an attempt to
reduce noise based upon ISO and sometimes proprietary
profiles. I don't find that to be an issue, as I prefer post
processing noise reduction under my control, anyway.

Exposure Bracketing

Obtaining correct exposures is important in digital work, as
any overexposure kills highlight detail; significant
underexposure tends to mask (hide) shadow detail and
produce noise.
This is a good place to remind those of you shooting JPEG or
TIFF files that the limited bit depth of those formats comes
into play with exposure mistakes. While the camera does its
processing in 16-bits, both JPEG and TIFF produce 8-bit final
data.
If you have underexposure in that final image data, the small
number of bits being used means that when you "expand" the
data to the full 8-bit width in post processing, you'll get
posterization in your data. Moreover, in 8-bit data, the bottom
Thom Hogan's Complete Guide to the Nikon D300
the largest size usually allows any
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