Should I be using Exposure control?

[jab]

This is a question which has baffled me for a while. Should I use Exposure controls or not? My work generally includes Architectural rendering and product rendering using V-Ray. For the past year or two I haven't used any type of exposure control and haven't seen the need for it. To me it just seems like more settings to have to control for no gain.

 

I realize there must be a good argument for using them but I haven't found it yet? Do most people use these settings, and if so, what are the benefits they are seeing? What am I missing? If it is simply to make the camera act more like a real camera in the real world I can do without them.

 

Is there any benefit between using and not using these setting for V-Ray or MR?

 

Thanks for clearing up this for me!

 

Jimmie

[Stephen Thomas]

I tend not to use them unless I have a specific need, but the main benefit I can think of is that if you are doing a series of renders within a scene that has a wide range of lighting conditions (inside/outside or just dark corners etc.) then you only have to light the scene once for all images, then expose the cameras individually. As for features, the only one worth having that you can't recreate with a standard cam is the built in white balance in my opinion.

[Scott Schroeder]

One benefit is in your workflow. Rather than adjusting your lights for various lighting set ups, you simply adjust your exposure. When you take a photograph indoors, you don't (or can't) turn down your lights. You adjust your camera's exposure. Your workflow can be simplified in that all of your light props have correct lighting set up in a base line scene. Then, whichever or however you need to use them you simply adjust your camera exposure. As Stephen pointed out, I think this is the real only main advantage. I tend to adjust my white point in post no matter what I use, it's non destructive editing in case I change my mind about what mood I want during post editing.

 

However, the disadvantage is that exposure can be a funky beast at times. It works, but doesn't work like real life cameras. It will generally throw issues at you when you need them the least. So for that reason I tend to try it out then lean back to doing it the old way with the standard camera.

 

Mental Ray tends to really push you towards MR Exposure Control. MR behaves better when using exposure, so if you are using MR you really want to use exposure. Vray, it's a little bit more feature intensive than MR Exposure Control. It's a pick-and-choose battle for sure.

[Nic H]

if by exposure control you mean using physical camera - then it makes everything easier once you get used to it...lighting adjustments are simpler (multiple cameras - one light condition) white balance, motion blur, focus - its *based* on real camera settings so it takes some of the guess work out of alot of things.

 

It doesnt ever do 'funky' things if you use it in teh correct way imo!

[RyderSK]

I love exposure control, it's how I learnt to understand camera that I never owned before :- ).

 

To be honest, I usually just use traditional camera, and use Vray Exposure at Environment settings, which is new feature from 2.0. I don't think many people discovered it, it makes life easier, because I can render any viewport angle, orthogonal views, everything with same exposure.