My lessons learnt from this exercise:
- The three RGB channels do not clip the highlights and shadows in the same way and it’s usually possible to recover some detail in highlights and shadows using the Recovery and Fill Light / Blacks tools.
- Although highlight and shadow clipping usually represents a problem, it’s also possible to use it creatively to achieve special and unusual effects.
- Film and digital images react differently to over and under exposure. With film, the tones in overexposed areas are likely to have a gentler change to whites. With digital images, there likely to be a sudden break with highlights changing to pure white. A loss of detail and some colour cast are also likely to occur.
- Highlight clipping warning is a very useful tool to be used on a location and when processing images on a computer.
- To avoid loosing highlight detail, it’s helpful to bracket around the original exposure and check the highlight clipping warning regularly.
