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Here is a little hack if you have a good modern (mirrorless or in my case dslr) camera: "forget" to set your exposure!

With 14 stops of dynamic range you can afford to miss exposure. Moreover, on at least my k1 ISO is basically just a flag on the raw file; raising the ISO does the exact same thing as underexposing your shot; so if you're lazy you might as well do the latter.

Just make sure to not blow out your highlights; if they go above your camera's native ISO they might be unrecoverable. But yeah, setting the exposure is a totally optional part of the experience in these cases.

This is not the case for all digital camera's, on many there are at least some analog stages where setting the right ISO will help control noise. But you can still get away with a lot more than you'd think.

I even do this hack on some analog camera's. Delta 3200 has tons of latitude (it's arguably an ISO 1000 film that just pushes and pulls really well, and rodinal auto-dials your development quite well). Here the rules are inversed; I set the exposure for the darkest area's and let the highlights fall where they need to fall; you might not be able to get your shadows back but you can burn a hole right into these silver halides and it'll turn out.

Do note that if you're shooting older digital camera's (think CCD or early CMOS or even a phone camera) or slide film this little hack will super turbo not work. No worries, there are enough ways to make sure your exposure will work out.
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