Bracketing

In photography, bracketing is the general technique of taking several shots of the same subject using different camera settings. Bracketing is useful and often recommended in situations that make it difficult to obtain a satisfactory image with a single shot, especially when a small variation in exposure parameters has a comparatively large effect on the resulting image. Autobracketing is automatic bracketing by using a setting on the camera to take several bracketed shots (in contrast to the photographer altering the settings by hand between each shot). Given the time it takes to accomplish multiple shots, it is typically, but not always, used for static subjects.

Types of bracketing

Exposure bracketing

–4 stops

–4 stops

–2 stops

–2 stops

+2 stops

+2 stops

+4 stops

+4 stops

Without further qualifications, the term bracketing usually refers to exposure bracketing: the photographer chooses to take one picture at a given exposure, one or more brighter, and one or more darker, in order to select the most satisfactory image. Technically, this can be accomplished by changing either the shutter speed or the aperture, or, with digital cameras, the ISO speed, or combinations thereof. Exposure can also be changed by altering the light level, for example using neutral-gray filters or changing the degree of illumination of the subject (e.g. artificial light, flash). Since the aim here is to alter the amount of exposure, but not otherwise the visual effect, exposure compensation for static subjects is typically performed by altering the shutter speed, for as long as this is feasible.

Bracketing (phenomenology)

Bracketing (German: Einklammerung; also called epoché) is a term in the philosophical school of phenomenology describing the act of suspending judgment about the natural world to instead focus on analysis of experience.

Overview

Phenomenology, developed by Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), can be understood as an outgrowth of the influential ideas of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Attempting to resolve some of the key intellectual debates of his era, Kant argued that Noumena (objects of inquiry, investigation or analysis of the workings of the world) must be distinguished from Phenomena (noumenon as experienced and interpreted by the human mind). Kant thus argued that humans can never have direct access to reality, but only to the contents of their minds.

Bracketing involves setting aside the question of the real existence of a contemplated object, as well as all other questions about the object's physical or objective nature; these questions are left to the natural sciences.

Bracketing (linguistics)

In linguistics, particularly linguistic morphology, bracketing is a term of art that refers to how an utterance can be represented as a hierarchical tree of constituent parts. Analysis techniques based on bracketing are used at different levels of grammar, but are particularly associated with morphologically complex words.

To give an example of bracketing in English, consider the word uneventful. This word is made of three parts, the prefix un-, the root event, and the suffix -ful. An English speaker should have no trouble parsing this word as "lacking in significant events". However, imagine a foreign linguist with access to a dictionary of English roots and affixes, but only a superficial understanding of English grammar. Conceivably, he or she could understand uneventful as one of:

We can represent these two understandings of uneventful with the bracketings and , respectively. Here, bracketing gives the linguist a convenient technique for representing the different ways to parse the word, and for forming hypotheses about why the word is parsed the way it is by speakers of the language.