JimFox Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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jonnyt5050 wrote:
Justin: Thank you. I think you may be right that the D610 sensor is allowing me to do what may not have been possible with many (most?) other cameras by bringing up shadows so severely.
JimFox: Thank you as well. I agree that I generally wouldn't focus stack on an ultra wide lens. But in this case, I think the foreground was close enough that I couldn't both get closest foreground AND horizon in crisp focus. So I think the focus stack made the first image marginally better than it would have been otherwise. Although, duly noted that should one need to choose, the background is less important to be in crisp focus.
Regarding HDR: I wonder if HDR has gotten a bad reputation from all of the ridiculous ways it's been used? After using the photomatix plugin from LR5, I can't imagine a simpler way to get a natural look that increases dynamic range of a photo. But I'm relatively new at this and I'm all about learning new/better techniques. Will masks & blending produce a more natural looking image or have some other benefit that makes it better than HDR?
Thanks again....Show more →
Hey Jonny,
In the end, it's all what ends up working best for you. And often it's an evolution of processing techniques anyway. Odds are no matter what you do now, a year or two as you continue to process and try new things, your processing methods or steps will change.
With HDR it was an ugly monster out of the gate, and I think in part it was meant to be. To create images that "popped" with false light. People tried to get the HDR program to give them more natural results. But out of the box, it sure didn't. Now, some people are using it with better results. And for many of us, in the end if the results look natural it doesn't really matter.
But for me, I am totally happy with just using layer masks. As our cameras improve and give us more dynamic range, like the D800 series of cameras, the amount of blending decreases significantly, because ACR does a great job with pulling detail out of the shadows with realistic results. It's not like it was 6 or 7 years ago when trying to pull detail out of shadow areas resulted in a horrible noisy mess. Now, with most of the newer cameras, the details are much cleaner in the shadows.
So again, it's what works best for you.
Jim
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