I used to use sunlit grass for in camera metering when I first started out and was shooting sooc jpegs only. Sunlit grass was still very hit and miss depending on the lighting and the colour of the grass.
But to maximise the quality of the raw data you don't need sunlit grass or any other surface as I described earlier.
You clearly don't know how a person goes about ETTR and maximizing exposure, It is not about setting your target exposure over a target that meters over an object that is 3 stops lower from saturation of the sensor, for the majority of the time it is about where the highlights and more importantly
the clipping point of the three channels as I have said you can have clipping in a color channel that is not on a neutral target.
What happens if in your scene nothing falls near 2 stop greater than 12.7% grey this would allow you to further increase your exposure an additional stop over what you are already doing. It is about protecting your highlights from clipping and these highlights can be in color objects
Ok im going to give it away now only because i just went into the studio and shot my Hand in my normal position for head shots and then run it through bobs program and my midtones are PERFECT Im the man 😎😎😎
do me a favor and shoot the palm of you hand in any auto exposure mode ,view it in bobs program and it should have the EV0 perfectly in the middle of you readings , hope that makes sense. you dont win a lolly pop 😁
agree but its a good exercise just the same. am i going to use it in the future , cant think of any reason so far over my normal procedure, but you never say never. and its been a great discussion to push the boundaries anyway and play with a new software program that ive been hearing about for 10 years and whether the topic went off the rails or not it doesn't really matter.😎
I did that exercise years ago when I started out shooting sooc jpegs until I started shooting raw and realised I don't need any surface to maximise the quality of my raw data as described earlier.
My experience has been that I'm usually happier and more productive if I can resist prejudging or generalizing much with regard to individuals or groups based on their occupation or other categories with which they may be associated.
No problem. The point I am making is that if I have choice whether to ask a camera manufacturer's marketing person or their engineer about anything relating to how a camera works or about any of the technical aspects of photography I will always ask the engineer.
Of course if a marketing person is the only choice I would still ask but I would have less confidence in the accuracy of their information.