rji2goleez wrote:
This is what happens when you let your photoshop skills deteriorate and you rely too heavily on Lightroom.
It's also what happens when you play tourist versus photographer!
Guilty on both counts!
Depending of course on how large the DR of the scene is, getting something looking good and natural with one RAW file is pretty hard, bracketing is pretty essential in large DR scenes.
I prefer Unified Colors HDR Expose for landscape HDR as it renders the most natural looking color due to its proprietary very large floating point based color space which the other HDR guys don't have. I prefer it to Nik's HDR efex which I also have, and to Photomatix my old favorite.
Try out the trial version. See what you think.
wayne seltzer wrote:
Depending of course on how large the DR of the scene is, getting something looking good and natural with one RAW file is pretty hard, bracketing is pretty essential in large DR scenes.
I prefer Unified Colors HDR Expose for landscape HDR as it renders the most natural looking color due to its proprietary very large floating point based color space which the other HDR guys don't have. I prefer it to Nik's HDR efex which I also have, and to Photomatix my old favorite.
Try out the trial version. See what you think.
Thanks Wayne. I may give it a try. Bracketing would have been possible but potentially troublesome as I was on a moving boat. I don't know how capable the software can be regardless of a fairly steady hand.
wayne seltzer wrote:
Depending of course on how large the DR of the scene is, getting something looking good and natural with one RAW file is pretty hard, bracketing is pretty essential in large DR scenes.
I prefer Unified Colors HDR Expose for landscape HDR as it renders the most natural looking color due to its proprietary very large floating point based color space which the other HDR guys don't have. I prefer it to Nik's HDR efex which I also have, and to Photomatix my old favorite.
Try out the trial version. See what you think.
Thanks for the tip Wayne, I have failed at HDR before but maybe a different software will do the trick Downloading as we speak and some fresh bracketed exposures on my CF-card.
rji2goleez wrote:
Thanks Wayne. I may give it a try. Bracketing would have been possible but potentially troublesome as I was on a moving boat. I don't know how capable the software can be regardless of a fairly steady hand.
Yes, moving boat is hard, probably won't align right even if you did a burst of bracketed shots at the camera's max fps. I know Uwe Steinmuller of OB photo uses the bracketed exposure burst method handheld and it works for him but he is not moving at the time. Exposure blending in PS with the same RAW shot developed differently twice, once for highlights, once for shadows is the old other way to try too.
Samuli does this well, I remember.
my Photoshop attempt with Bob's picture (done with the JPG downloaded from here). I looked at the histogram, the problem with it is, that there is two spikes, one for the sky and one for the dark areas, there is abig gap in the middle, so there is no way to bring that into the image. And it is sure lacking colour and contrast due to dull lighting. I thinkt the HDR is a bit overdone.
I tried to stay realistic - but it still looks dull.
Abram: your tree shot has an interesting twist to it - very goof exposure for such a shot.
MJWong: I like the tonality of your spider shot- nicely done!
FlyPenFly: are these the "neutral" colours of the Sony, or did you set it on "vivid"? For my taste they are a bit oversaturated - the yellow on the flowers and the red on the flag.
FlyPenFly, Bob, Abhijeet, Samuli and Joakim: thanks for your comments on the layer shot.
with your HDR shot, the colors look ok but the trees at the end of the pathway look unnatural - so those transitions need to be worked on.
you are right, Abhijeet, they are actually from the dark frame, since it was impossible to mask those filigran branches without getting lighter bits from the sky. It is actually a bad image for doing layers, since foreground and background are not separated, but overlap. You can see the problem even better at the bush at the left, where the lower part is from the light frame, and the upper part from the dark frame. It is interesting though, that only Samuli and you noticed. I was testing with how much "bad processing" I can get away (since it is actually impossible to do with this picture).
cyra, that is a very well composed and dramatic photo but it doesn't look really natural. More like the image used on a movie poster (The perfect storm II ), the colours look right but a little to saturated.
Joakim, the funny thing is, I DID NOT tweak at all with the colours. The layers are straight out of cam (bracket). No Lightroom standard or anything done to it. The colours just seem more intense due to both parts of the image exposed properly. The ZF 25 is just that contrasty sometimes. But you are right, I thought about taking some contrast out, but then left it as is.
ZF 25/2,8 bracket 1.3 stops apart, merged layers
here is a shot for akul complaining about missing bicycle shots from Bob's Salzburg series.
"Thou shalt not steal"
wayne seltzer wrote:
Exposure blending in PS with the same RAW shot developed differently twice, once for highlights, once for shadows is the old other way to try too.
Samuli does this well, I remember.
Well I can but it's so time consuming that I won't anymore do it, and recent version of Photomatix Pro do work really well compared to 4-5 year ago versions.
abhijeeth wrote:
Samuli: I think you were referring to me? If yes, I will post my thoughts sometime this weekend No I don't think I referred to you (sorry didn't get it)
cyra wrote:
It is interesting though, that only Samuli and you noticed. I was testing with how much "bad processing" I can get away (since it is actually impossible to do with this picture).
Well on film many people used ND-grads and some people didn't find the überdark treetops annoying. Even in digital era some people use ND-grads. So in some sense it's ok - for me personally this kind of effects are as bad as badly done HDR. What comes to impossible, I doubt it, but it would take 5+hours to do the layer masks perfectly with 5D and I don't dare to guess how long it would took for 5Dmk2 image with such scene.
However this look very good candidate for PhotoMatix Pro, if you want I can process it for you next week, but I need low contrast (in Apple Aperture I adjust black point from standard 3 to 1.0 to get low contrast input files for HDR) 16bit Adobe RGB files or RAW-files to do that.
Thanks Samuli, that would be interesting. My bracket shots were done handheld, so they are not properly aligned. I turned and moved them in the layers. Would a 16bit Adopbe RGB TIF work? Unchanged otherwise. Don't know how to tweak the black point accordingly, since I don't have Aperture.
Better than working for 5h+ on some branches ;-)
I just receive my first Zeiss: 2/50MP (for my 5DII body).
I really enjoy this thread with more than 300 pages (I only have read the first 78 since 2 days).
Thanks a lot for all images & experiences
Right now I really like "Denoir", "Hugo", "Makten",... images.
Thank you for the comment. This thread, still does go very quickly. Amazing.
Cyra, I agree that the mountain laurel shot got a little dull. These little beauty are quite light in color and they bloom at the bottom of foliage, making them stand out in the dark. pretty little things. I was struggling to not to blow out the highlight, while keeping it not too dull, but lost sense while pp ing. I thought about re-trying, but sort of lost interest while trying. Will try shooting them again, and that time, try to do a better pp too.
cyra - Your second shot, a shot of a fence with 35 at f2 is my favorite. I have been always fond of 35 f/2's boke. The layered landscape shot looks very cinematic. Slightly un-natural, yes, but I like the effect though. Thank you for the bicycle shot. Love those bags.
prosep - magical light it is. Great capture of light. Gee, I am so struggling to get that when shooting nature.
victor -welcome to the thread. I like the B/W coffee mug shot. Looking forward to see more.
Bob - Gorgeous sets from Norway. You certainly know how to maintain your photographer while being a tourist. HDR experiments are very informative. I stopped trying a while ago, but might pick up again. I am with you on HDR, when it looks un-natural, it loses interest, and I am still struggling with PS 5's HDR function. Wine bottle in Norway, must be rare to see those.
Perfect trilogy from Bergen. Great color, and all vertical composition really works.
Juan - nice shot from the beach
Uzay - Great stair shot of infinity. Mesmerizing.
Abram G- I like the low point of view of the tree shot.
Samuli - Every time I make compromise and focus between "targets" or hyperfocally "to cover all the DOF needed" I fail. The way how my lenses show contrast and sharpness inside DOF makes the only successful way to focus to the main target. I could get away using hyperfocal for webthumbnails (1000px or so) but any printout will point out my failure right away, or fullscreen size (2560x1600) in computer.
'Hyperfocally in focus' fails me most of the time as well. In landscape situation, determining 'what' to be the 'target' is an on-going question to myself.
Beautiful tree shots. Horizontal composition versus vertical - horizontal gave me the expanse and density of forest, whereas vertical gave a clear 'star' of the shot and the sense of height of these trees, but not as much for the 'expanse' of the forest. I like them both. My favorite was ( hard to choose) the first ( horizontal ) and the third (vertical) decaying tree(?) Great texture. And beautiful flower shots ( vertical ) in the next set. Tree shot with 35 is also stunning page opener.
Paul - Kodak body seems to produce very different color. I assume it is a CCD camera ? ZE 100 ! I thought you were a ZF guy..... Great to see your work again. Please post more. #3 was stunning. How do you find ZE100 versus ZF100 and CY ?
MJWong - Great spider shot. Sharpening did something a bit strange to boke ?
FlyPenFly - Wonderful series of street in low angle. very nice shot of a gate with padlock. I also like the B/W shot of subway station.
Downloading as we speak and some fresh bracketed exposures on my CF-card.
No I don't think I referred to you (sorry didn't get it)
