Part of process control is anticipation on the front end what the final product will look like.
To avoid clipping in the reds start with 1/3 less exposure when you shoot. The reason I recommend the towel next to the face trick is because the towel clips in all three channels about the same time as red clips in the skin. So if you keep the towel which you can see 1/3 stop below the point it clips in the playback, then you will also be keeping the red channel in the skin you can\'t see in the playback 1/3 stop below clipping.
Now that you know what to look for, shoot a bracketed test series and run them through the complete RAW > JPG cycle. Find the best looking one, then go back to the same file in the camera and examine the playback warning and how much more exposure it takes before the towel clips if it isn\'t already. That will tell you how much to back off the exposure from the point of clipping when shooting to preserve the highlight detail all the way through the JPG for web stage.
Don\'t worry about the slight underexposure that might result in the RAW file, consider it insurance against blown detail in areas closer to the lights than where the towel indicator is located. Another advantage of the towel trick is you can use several around a scene to determine how even the lighting is on face vs shoulder, etc.
Chuck
Nov 02, 2009 at 05:38 PM
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