Another week of isolation outside of work means you get another photo of Mac. Moose Peterson has the Teddy Bear Exercise. It’s a no-right-answer test of how your camera responds to extreme tonal differences and finding where in that response you like the outcome the most. Moose uses his kids’ teddy bears. I have my Macadoodle.
Much like a Zebra, Mac is a pain in the butt to photograph. Do you want the whites going nuclear or the blacks going into the abyss? One of those two things is going to happen unless you’ve got perfect lighting. Dynamic range on my old d700 was 8 stops. The z6 adds over 50% to that with a bit over 13. And still, I’m having to make the call on which tones are going to have detail and which are going to go away.
In Mac’s case, it’s an easy call. I’m going to expose for details in the blacks every time. Despite his little white bits, the black is the majority of the subject, and especially so in the face which is where all the expression is. If I were shooting a couple Addax in the dead of summer when they’re all white, I’d be doing the opposite. If it’s 50/50 like a Zebra? Well, I still can’t help you there. I haven’t figured it out myself. There’s a reason I don’t post a lot of zebra pictures.
The Zootographer 