It took 4 mornings before I got this nice of a sunrise at coyote buttes south, in the frigid windy 10 degrees F... and I figured I wouldn't waste a moment of it.
A few tech notes - This is a stack of 10 of the most exciting (consecutive) 25 second exposures, each properly exposed, brought down in exposure in ACR and converted with a linear conversion, stacked with screen layers, and fixed up - similar to astrophotography processing. As a by product this is the cleanest image I have ever seen. Sure, iso 100 5D images are pretty clean, but you start PSing them a little and you always get some grain. This thing looks like it was run through neat image on highest settings, but without a single loss of detail! The sky is as smooth as a PS generated gradient.
3 stop ND filter, polarizer, 2 stop hard singh ray GND. I didn't have time to put in my other 3 stop, hence I tried the sequence.
bshamilton wrote:
Floris, that's just magnificent! You're right....amazing clarity and detail! And sunrise color to die for!
I totally agree with Barry. Stunning image!
Henry W wrote:
Fascinating! Both the magnificent photo and your technique. I'd love to understand your workflow.
It took me a while to figure out, but it's pretty simple really.. here's the idea:
1. convert your image in ACR (or whatever program you use), and make it a 'linear' conversion. That is to say, use a linear tone curve, keep 'shadows' at zero, keep brightness at 0, contrast at 25. Adjust saturation, white balance to taste, and drop the exposure to -4 (lowest it will let you).
2. import all images to PS, stack them, set them as screen layers. This will simulate a long, smooth, exposure. If you have too many images you may need to further drop the exposure in PS of each individual shot (I didn't have to).
3. Add some levels and curves adjustment layers to fix up you shadows, brightness, contrast as you would have done in ACR. You can use the levels layer to change the exposure of the stack too.
4. Done
Fascinating image and thanks for the technical info.
While I adore the view and the composition, the colours are a bit too much for me. A little less would work better - personal taste of course!
Ute
Gorgeous shot and really cool idea Floris! Can you post a 100% crop? I'd love to see just how smooth it is.
Did you 'properly expose' at the scene in order to get the blurred clouds? Just wondering why you properly expose then under-develop it. It would seem easier to take 10 2.5 second exposures and stack them that way.
ajkessler wrote:
Gorgeous shot and really cool idea Floris! Can you post a 100% crop? I'd love to see just how smooth it is.
Did you 'properly expose' at the scene in order to get the blurred clouds? Just wondering why you properly expose then under-develop it. It would seem easier to take 10 2.5 second exposures and stack them that way.
This is really cool
Thanks the point was to collect light over a long period of time. So each exposure is timed to the point where the highlights are just barely not clipped. This gave me ~4min of exposure total, 10 2.5 second exposures would be no different from one 25 second exposure, and the color and clouds would not be as blended and blurred (and there would be no noticeable difference in noise).
As far as the smoothness goes, suffice it to say that it is as smooth as a gradient generated by PS, or an image treated with noise removal software on it's highest setting (without sacrificing any detail). There is no noise, no grain, period. None. It's smooth as satin
I understand how the combination of multiple long exposures help blurring the clouds, but I don't understand how it allows to reduce noise, since all images are exposed the same.
In Thimothy Farrar's approach ( http://www.farrarfocus.com/ffdd/shooting.htm ) various exposures are merged and only the best data from each one (to the right of the histogram) is kept in the final image. It works because the unavoidable "noisy" parts of each exposure is discarded.
But here all exposures are the same, so I don't quite understand how the noise is reduced by the merging process, especially in the static parts (the rocks). I trust what you see, but I don't understand
Anyway, great processing, splendid view, framing, light, and commitment ... 10 degrees F ... brrrr !
nico_p wrote:
Nice image but I find it too saturated.
I understand how the combination of multiple long exposures help blurring the clouds, but I don't understand how it allows to reduce noise, since all images are exposed the same.
In Thimothy Farrar's approach ( http://www.farrarfocus.com/ffdd/shooting.htm ) various exposures are merged and only the best data from each one (to the right of the histogram) is kept in the final image. It works because the unavoidable "noisy" parts of each exposure is discarded.
But here all exposures are the same, so I don't quite understand how the noise is reduced by the merging process, especially in the static parts (the rocks). I trust what you see, but I don't understand
Anyway, great processing, splendid view, framing, light, and commitment ... 10 degrees F ... brrrr !...Show more →
I like colors I'll probably adjust the saturation levels when I go to print it, since these kinds of colors are always a little hard to predict.
As for the noise - consider taking an image, and purposely over exposing it (but not blowing highlights), then in ACR you drop the exposure, the result is a less noisy image than a 'properly' exposed shot that does not need to be adjusted in ACR - because the rightmost part of the histogram has the most information. The old 'shoot to the right' idea.. So this process just takes that to an extreme, I've dropped the exposure by 4 stops for each shot. Then the brightness is brought back through the screen layers. The noise is basically handled by canceling out through averaging in a sense. I hope that makes sense.
Man that is awesome! I love it. Thanks for sharing your workflow on this, that is very interesting for sure. As a few others have said, I am not sure I understand why it would work, but seeing is believing. I do understand why you went for the 25 sec exposure to get the cloud movement, but the underexposing part in raw... I guess at some point I will have to try it and just see it...
floris wrote:
As far as the smoothness goes, suffice it to say that it is as smooth as a gradient generated by PS, or an image treated with noise removal software on it's highest setting (without sacrificing any detail). There is no noise, no grain, period. None. It's smooth as satin
Awesome! But...I want to see!! If you don't mind could you post a little 100% crop from the shadow area in the bottom left or of any part in the middle or something? This sounds so cool that I want to try it! I've never seen a real satin smooth shadow area before so this is really exciting.
... I guess at some point I will have to try it and just see it...