06-19-2026 04:22 PM - edited 06-19-2026 04:24 PM
There has been some discussion of Auto Exposure Bracketing recently,and it got my curiosity aroused.
There are a couple of ways of doing exposure bracketing; two of them are in-camera, and one involves HDR post processing
I have a T8i and one of the Special Scene Basic Modes in my camera is called HDR Backlight Control. The camera takes three quick shots in succession, and brackets them as a jpg.
One of my Creative Filters Modes is called HDR and you have several options: Standard, Vivid, Bold, and Embossed. In these scenarios, the camera again takes three quick shots in succession and brackets them as a jpg.
The third option is to take three shots in a Creative Mode like Manual, or Av, or Tv, etc. in three exposures: one standard, one under exposed, and one over exposed and do an HDR Compisite in post processing.
Just out of cutiosity, I decided to compare these three methods.
The first picture is an in-camera Special Scene HDR Backlight Control jpg
The second picture is an in-camera Creative Filter HDR Standard jpg.
The third picture is a post-processed HDR Composite RAW, composited in DPP4 and converted to jpg.
I tried to include some elements that were bright and some elements that were dark to give some veracity to the bracketing process. In the third picture, (the three RAW shots) the exposures were one stop apart.
What do you think?
(I personally think pictures 1 and 3 are more true to life and the HDR Backlight Control (#1) is a little darker than the post-processed HDR (#3).
Steve Thomas
06-19-2026 05:31 PM
Hard to critically analyze the images, which appear to be a screenshot. I prefer #3.
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