What Is Auto Exposure Bracketing and What Is It Used For?
Auto Exposure Bracketing (or AEB) dates back to the film days. Color reversal film, or slide film, was very sensitive to exposure. If your exposure was off by even a half a stop, it would not be acceptable for critical work. So, photographers got into the habit of taking three shots – one at the exposure they calculated, one a half stop overexposed and one a half stop underexposed. This ensured that one of the frames was correctly exposed.
In the digital world, AEB plays a different role. With the power of the tools available to us in the digital darkroom, we can easily compensate for exposures that are not perfect.
But now we can photograph scenes that were not possible in the film days. These are scenes in which the dynamic range exceeds the ability of the sensor (or film) to capture. In the film days you could use a graduated neutral density (grad ND) filter if there was a clear and straight dividing line between the bright and dark parts of the image. But for scenes where no such line existed, such as dappled sunlight on a forest floor, you had to forego the photograph.
In the digital world you have the ability to capture scenes with even the most difficult dynamic range challenges. The technique is HDR and it involves taking multiple shots with enough different exposures to capture the full dynamic range and blending them together in the digital darkroom.
And this is where AEB comes in. Instead of a bracketing interval of 1/5 stop, you can set a bracketing interval of 1 stop, 2 and even more stops. The bracketing interval depends on your camera. Not all are the same. And many digital cameras will allow you to take two, three, five or even seven shots to ensure you capture the full dynamic range of the scene, again, depending on your camera.
You can use AEB by pressing the shutter once for each shot up to the number of shots you specified. Or you can put the shutter on burst mode and press and hold it until the camera takes all of the shots.
Finding the Control
Different camera manufactures have their own ways of applying auto exposure bracketing. This may even change from model to model.
Consult your camera’s manual to learn how to use it.
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