Bracketing ? on the M9

[Steve Fines]

Hello,

I was setting up to do an HDR pano and found it challenging with the M9. Maybe I'm missing something here and someone can point it out.....

What I want to do is ( on a pano head) point the camera left and have it take 3 shots (0, -1ev, +1ev), then point it to the middle and take the SAME exposures, and then again to the right. I will then stitch these and hdr them later.

Here's the M9 issue:

The bracketing function only seems to work in A mode. This is fine for a single shot HDR.

However, when doing a pano I need the middle and right shots to be exactly the same exposures as the left shots.

If I leave the camera in A mode it likely will determine a different base exposure for the middle and right shots.

So, my question: is there a way on the M9 to bracket in manual mode - i.e. where I set the shutter speed?


The workaround is that I manually bracket the shots by turning the shutter speed dial. However, this takes time, introduces camera movement and is less sophisticated than my Panasonic P&S.

I like doing HDR panos, and was planning a large series soon - hopefully I'm just missing an easy setting here.

 

[mjm6]

Nope, must be in manual for stitches to work, and the bracketing won't work as far as I'm aware.


---Michael

 

[Chris C]

... hopefully I'm just missing an easy setting here.

Steve; you are and it's called manual exposure. Set aperture, determine exposure for brightest scene using the histogram and meticulously examining the right hand corner, errr; that's it [unless you really do need to add extra multiple increased exposures for HDR].

Expose for highlights, add a slower shutter speed if necessary, move camera and repeat the same exposure. Oh yes; use a manual setting for White Balance too, e.g. Cloudy for outside.

............. Chris

 

[Steve Fines]

Hello,

Thanks for the reply.

I've been fiddling with the camera and it seems that bracketing only works in the A mode.

This makes the M9 a pretty poor choice for anyone doing HDR panos.

Seems a bad reflection on the firmware programming as I cannot think of z reason the camera would need to impose this limitation.

I'm going to write Leica about it and would encourage others to do so if you see this an important feature.

 

[GrahamWelland]

Steve,

I agree with you that it's somewhat limiting having the exposure bracketing restricted just to A mode. It certainly makes locking base exposure difficult for multiple bracket sets. I can't think of a good reason not to provide the feature in the future as it should just be a firmware upgrade/option. Hopefully they'd make it smart about auto-ISO too as an alternative approach to shutter speed bracketing.

I use this feature with my Nikons & Panasonic GF-1 where it works as expected - M mode, set base exposure (aperture/shutter) and then let the camera run a bracket set changing shutter speed as required.

 

[GrahamWelland]

Steve; you are and it's called manual exposure. Set aperture, determine exposure for brightest scene using the histogram and meticulously examining the right hand corner, errr; that's it [unless you really do need to add extra multiple increased exposures for HDR].

Expose for highlights, add a slower shutter speed if necessary, move camera and repeat the same exposure. Oh yes; use a manual setting for White Balance too, e.g. Cloudy for outside.

............. Chris

The issue isn't whether you can do this manually (obviously you can), but whether you can fire off a bracket set from a base manual exposure WITHOUT having to touch the camera between the bracket shots in the set. Changing the shutter speed on the dial potentially introduces movement between frames that make HDR combo sets less accurate and require more post processing/correction later.

I also shoot HDRs sometimes off a tripod and use a cable release to minimize shutter movement. The feature Steve wants would allow you to simply set a manual base exposure and hold down the cable release (or timer) so that the bracket set completes. Limiting the function to A mode makes it impossible to force consistent exposure over multiple bracket sets.

 

[Paratom]

I agree it would be nice to have it in M mode.

And it would be nice to see the exp time in the viewfinder in M mode as well. Or are the arrows in the way?