Dijitaal Ink

If you’ve played around with your G9 enough, you’ve probably come across a setting regarding BKT. What is BKT, you ask? BKT is bracketing. Bracketing is simply the act of taking the same shot with different exposure settings to ensure that you captured your moment correctly. Bracketing can be done manually by changing the exposure time +/- a stop from the ‘perfect’ exposure time. The G9 offers an Auto BKT feature that I find lacking since it is only available when using the P, Tv, or Av setting on your Mode Dial. Personally, I try to use M (Manual) whenever possible.

If you have the opportunity, you can easily see the usefulness of bracketing by photographing clouds. When shooting clouds, bracketing becomes natural since you can see the drastic effect that the shutter speed has on the detail of the clouds. On a sunny day, I keep my G9 set to M (Manual) on the Mode Dial with the ISO at 80 and the aperture at 8.0 The shutter speed or exposure time is the attribute that I like to play with to bring out details in the clouds. If it is indeed a sunny day, there should be ample light to keep your shutter speed above 1/60 of a second (the minimum recommended speed for clarity in your photos when not using a tripod) By playing around with the Shutter Speed, you can see the effect it has through the LCD Viewfinder. The longer the exposure, more light is allowed to enter the G9, giving the clouds a brighter feel. The shorter the exposure, less light is allowed to enter the G9, giving the photo a darker and richer feel. The details of clouds become more apparent at faster shutter speeds. This is because the extreme brightness of the Sun is controlled and is not allowed to wash out the cloud detail with its super bright light.

The human eye cannot control its ’shutter speed’ but, the G9 can and that’s what makes photography so special to me. It captures the same exact moment from a different ‘eye’ so to speak. Revealing details that the human eye cannot see without the help of photography. Bracketing can increase your chance of getting that one great shot. Through a melding of creativity and science, photography is the art of manipulating light. Plain and simple. In summary, BKT is simply taking multiple shots of the same subject and composition at gradiently different exposure times. It all sounds so fancy for something that may come pretty natural to you. Anyway, I hope you no longer have to wonder what that BKT setting is for. I wondered for months =)