Q3 manual exposure + exposure bracketing quirk

[beewee]

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I don’t often use exposure bracketing but I did use it extensively the other day and noticed that some of my bracketed shots didn’t actually change exposure. After a bit of investigation, I noticed the following when using exposure bracketing with manual/fixed aperture (set on aperture ring) and manual/fixed shutter (set on top shutter dial):

1. If you also set a fixed ISO, the camera will bracket by changing the shutter speed +/- from your nominal shutter speed
   • This could cause issues where, if you have a very wide bracketing range, some of your shutter speeds might be longer than what could be held steady by hand
      
2. If you set ISO to AUTO ISO, the camera will bracket by changing the ISO while keeping the shutter speed and aperture set as you intended
   • This could cause issues in bright environments where, the Q3 cannot go below ISO 100 or ISO 50 it means your ‘under exposed’ bracketed shots will not actually be under exposed!
   • This could also cause issues in low light environments where, the Q3 may bump up the ISO so high that your it cannot go above the AUTO ISO high limit, or the ‘over exposed’ bracketed shots will become very noisy

At the end, I think the described behaviour makes logical sense and I don’t think Leica should change anything. However, it’s definitely worth being aware how auto vs fixed ISO can change the behaviour of the exposure bracketing feature.

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[SrMi]

The Auto-ISO behavior is similar to other manufacturers' cameras.

Note that exposure bracketing with Auto-ISO does not make sense as you do not change the exposure (shutter speed and aperture combination).

[Stephen_C]

6 hours ago, beewee said:

If you set ISO to AUTO ISO, the camera will bracket by changing the ISO while keeping the shutter speed and aperture set as you intended

That's interesting because it contradicts what is stated in the manual at page 124:

Quote

With automatic ISO sensitivity control enabled, the sensitivity calculated by the camera automatically for the raw files will also be applied to all other shots in the series, i.e. the ISO value will not change during bracketing. This may mean that the slowest shutter speed specified under Shutter Speed Limit is exceeded.

(I'm not for a moment doubting what you said but merely flagging the apparent error in the manual.)

Stephen

[beewee]

5 minutes ago, Stephen_C said:

That's interesting because it contradicts what is stated in the manual at page 124:

(I'm not for a moment doubting what you said but merely flagging the apparent error in the manual.)

Stephen

Interesting. Perhaps it’s a bug?

I’m using FW 1.2.0 in case anyone is wondering.