SOOC - Disappointing Exposure Issues - Please Help

[Polar01]

Dean, Darwin is a very good photographer however looked at your link the last comment on it was 2010, and if you look farther down you will see that the original post looks like it was 2006. Now jump to today's cameras with the newer sensors the range has increased. So yes you correct, however since the original posting that info has not been updated to the range of the newer cameras.

Cheers: Allan

[William W]

This was written on an online magazine by one of my favorite Landscape Photographers
. Darwin Wiggett
Do you have any references to back up your disagreement

It is assumed that this is the extract from the link which is relevant:

“The human eye can see detail in scenes with extreme contrast such as a person backlit against a fiery sunset sky. Film and digital cameras do not have this ability. Where the human eye can see about 20 f-stops of difference in brightness film can see only 5 to 9 stops depending on the film type. Digital cameras are even more limited in their tonal latitude (5-7 stops is typical). One if the keys to successful landscape photography is to learn to see contrast as the camera does and then use techniques to either work with contrast or manipulate the contrast. Let’s take at look at how we did things then and now and which techniques still give us the results we want.”

I read that as meaning ‘the human eye will, when scanning a scene of extreme contrast open and close the pupil as the scene is scanned by the eye to allow the brain to interpret in detail the bright and the dark areas.’

That’s exactly what Colin wrote the eye does.

That is the predicate of HDRI.

*

Examples of Dynamic Range of a modern camera sensor at base ISO:
EOS 7D – 10.3 stops: http://www.imaging-resource.com/PROD...DIMATEST.HTM11
EOS 7D with Magic Lantern 14 Stops: http://www.dpreview.com/news/2013/07...-dynamic-range
There are many more reputable tests for all cameras and I suspect that the article might be quite old with reference to the Digital Cameras.


*

As to the data to back up what I wrote about the dynamic range of a typical open air backlit scene:

one simply has to go outside into a natural scene - as depicted in the OP’s Photograph backlit scene in the open) - and take an incident light meter reading in the open and then another in the backlit shadow area and the EV range will be between about 3 and 4 stops on a lightly cloudy day and maybe up to 5 to 6 stops and an extremely sunny day. On a deeply overcast day the EV range will be only about 1 Stop. That is, by definition, the Dynamic Range of the Scene.

*

. . . Statements maybe but I never called them facts . . .

That’s a semantics game.

Maybe it's some people biggest fear but it never fazes me of being called out incorrect because that is when I learn most.

Good . That was the point of me taking the time to correct what was incorrect, for your benefit as well as others’.

This is a forum and by its definition this is "where ideas and views on a particular issue can be exchanged" and I did just that.

So did I.

But I also understand quite well that every forum has an aggressive, non-constructive critic, or an obnoxious, or a bully or all of the above and that also does not faze me.

And what you just did is what I did NOT do.
I stuck to the facts; countered incorrect facts; answered each of your direct questions in much detail and then also gave advice apropos how one might better learn.
What you have just done is to scribe a public, personal attack.
That is unacceptable and is also is not warranted and incorrect as far as the phrase 'non-constructive critic' as by your own words you've already stated that you learn when your mistakes are pointed out to you.

I do not tolerate such personal attacks and belittling comments.

That’s a very silly action to take and you should note that such an action directly contravenes this forum’s policy.

Our conversation is terminated.

WW

[Colin Southern]

Dean,

I don't have much time, but here's a quick primer on dynamic ranges of a scene.

- Where you have a dark object next to a bright object (think "groom and bride") the difference between them will be around 4 stops - rarely more.

- Those two contrasting reflective objects will be receiving their light from an incident light source.

- If you "turn around" and measure the power in that incident light source it typically adds around another 3 stops

That's pretty much what the OP's scene was (so around 7 in total).

Modern cameras have around 12, so 12 - (4 + 3) leaves around 5 stops spare - but - normal metering usually leaves a couple of stops of "safety margin" so we may have been down to around 3 to spare, but most likely the highlights were pushed quite hard and we probably only had 1 stop of safety margin. So best guess for this scene is that the darkest tones that we need to see were probably around 4 stops above the noise floor.

At that point they'll be getting a bit of visible noise, but if the tone remains towards the darker side then it's not going to be an issue.

With reference to Darwin's article (I'm very familiar with his work -- we both write for the Singh-Ray blog), two things need to be considered:

1. Some scenes contain more dynamic range that needs to be captured; both Darwin and I (and I'm sure many others) often target those kinds of scenes, but they're not "typical" landscape scenes. A "typical" landscape would be 4 stops for your basic reflectivity spread - 2 more for shadow detail - and 3 more for incident light - so around 9 in total.

2. At the time Darwin wrote the article, no professional photographer would shoot a 9 stop DR scene with a camera that had a similar DR; the shadow detail would be too noisy. These days though we have cameras with higher DR ranges and thus it can be done more safely.

I'm not saying that HDRI isn't a valid set of techniques (I use them often), but like any other tool, there are times where their use is appropriate and times when it's not. In Suzan's case it's clearly NOT appropriate because (a) the scene will fit comfortably within the camera's DR capability, and (b) the scene has movement (the water), with the latter creating problems when the multiple images are merged into the HDRI composite.

So I'm not saying you're wrong for suggesting HDRI as a valid tool - just that it's the wrong tool for this job.

My apologies if it appears that I'm "getting at you" - I'm just at pains to point out to people that the real issue here ISN'T a capture issue - it's a DISPLAY issue, and many don't seem to be grasping that - which in my opinion has some very real wider-range implications across general landscape photography. People just don't seem to realise that the cameras are capturing a LOT (one hell of a lot) more information that monitors are capable of displaying. The camera ISN'T the weak link in the chain here - it's the monitor - and that can only be fixed by re-mapping the tones to reduce the captured DR into a displayable one.

Hope this helps.

[dragon76]

Dean,

My apologies if it appears that I'm "getting at you" - I'm just at pains to point out to people that the real issue here ISN'T a capture issue - it's a DISPLAY issue, and many don't seem to be grasping that - which in my opinion has some very real wider-range implications across general landscape photography. People just don't seem to realise that the cameras are capturing a LOT (one hell of a lot) more information that monitors are capable of displaying. The camera ISN'T the weak link in the chain here - it's the monitor - and that can only be fixed by re-mapping the tones to reduce the captured DR into a displayable one.

Hope this helps.

Apology is unnecessary Colin. Your replies are always coupled with good explanation that helps me learn more about photography.

I have been on many forums for other interests (ie High-end Audio, Oil painting) and the same flaw is always surfaced and I know that it is the nature of every forum but photography is such a great hobby and this is a good forum, I still have hope that civilized replies like yours would prevail over the "Just to point out you wrong only" posts which have soiled many, many great online forums.

Ever since I joined this forum, I always appreciate the time you took to form these complex explanations to reply to my posts and share your knowledge. That’s a great attitude which I think most old-school photographers should have. Joel Grimes is another Photographer with this great attitude. I believe without shared knowledge, our civilization would not have existed.
Cheers

[dragon76]

Dean, Darwin is a very good photographer however looked at your link the last comment on it was 2010, and if you look farther down you will see that the original post looks like it was 2006. Now jump to today's cameras with the newer sensors the range has increased. So yes you correct, however since the original posting that info has not been updated to the range of the newer cameras.

Cheers: Allan

Allan

I agree as I've read this awhile back and this article came out in April 2010 and I think Canon 5D mark II was available at the time and many 5D II owners would have able to capture more than 9 Fs at base ISO back then. I dont dispute the increasing capability of capturing DR with today top DSLRs. However, his points about taming contrast are still relevant today.

Cheers

[Colin Southern]

Apology is unnecessary Colin. Your replies are always coupled with good explanation that helps me learn more about photography.

I have been on many forums for other interests (ie High-end Audio, Oil painting) and the same flaw is always surfaced and I know that it is the nature of every forum but photography is such a great hobby and this is a good forum, I still have hope that civilized replies like yours would prevail over the "Just to point out you wrong only" posts which have soiled many, many great online forums.

Ever since I joined this forum, I always appreciate the time you took to form these complex explanations to reply to my posts and share your knowledge. That’s a great attitude which I think most old-school photographers should have. Joel Grimes is another Photographer with this great attitude. I believe without shared knowledge, our civilization would not have existed.
Cheers

You're welcome Dean.

I feel that I also need to mention though that in any forum it's easy for people to take things in ways other than which they were intended; there are many here with a lifetime of what I like to call real-world experience - you know the ones that can say from experience "that's fine in theory, but in practice it's not that cut and dry", and sometimes we too get to feel frustrated when we end up in "effluent fights" defending something we've written from experience only to feel like we're sliding 2 steps back for every step we take forward. We're more than happy to explain, but we can get a bit grumpy when we feel we're pushed to "justify" what we've written (not directed at you per se; I can assure you that there are quite a few here who see me as anything but "a nice chap with the helpful replies!").

Either way, places to go, people to see, bill to pay ...

... so onwards and upwards.

[Colin Southern]

Allan

I agree as I've read this awhile back and this article came out in April 2010 and I think Canon 5D mark II was available at the time and many 5D II owners would have able to capture more than 9 Fs at base ISO back then. I dont dispute the increasing capability of capturing DR with today top DSLRs. However, his points about taming contrast are still relevant today.

Cheers

Dean,

This is probably a good "case in point"; some will look at the OP's image and conclude "blacks are clipped because of the back-lighting", whereas the likes of Bill and I can look at that scene and know "although lack of sensor DR CAN be an issue, it's unlikely to be an issue with that kind of scene".

In contrast (no pun intended), here's an image where I've used 3 stops of DR compression that the sensor just wouldn't have been able to handle on it's own; the shadow detail was just too buried:

[ajohnw]

When I read threads like this one I am glad I hadn't much of an alternative to adjusting images with just curves, brightness and contrast adjustments for many years. I didn't like levels for the simple reason I wanted to avoid doing any further work on them. These days I do make more use of that. Personally I feel that people have no real alternative to getting to grips with curves especially if they want to eventually do serious PP work. Local work for instance often means brushing a curve over the area that needs modification - or using some brush that a package may refer to as something else that does a similar thing.

Good tutorials on the use of curves are thin on the ground but as usual CinC has a decent one here

https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tu...hop-curves.htm

Unfortunately it doesn't mention what to do about contrast loss but does show one style of curve that will do something about the OP's shot. It will increase contrast and brightness in the problem region - exactly what's needed. Contrast can be recovered with an ordinary contrast slider but as these usually both brighten and darken areas of the shot undoing some of what has been done with curves so the brightness slider has to be used as well. This can mean restricting contrast even more with a curve by darkening bright areas to leave room for a brightness increase. Packages often have other forms of contrast adjustments that work in various ways. Basically it's a case of trying them and maybe back stepping on adjustments as later changes cause problems of one sort or another such as highlight clipping.

The alternative as Colin mentioned is a fill light slider. Buy a package that has one or use the one that comes with even the free with camera Nikon software. Aperture has a huge range of plugin sets available but I see no signs of what they actually contain or do. A fill light slider and gradient filters plus other easy to use adjustments aught to be there some where or the other. This approach suits many but doesn't help get to grips with the basics of PP. Eventually that usually means getting to grips with layers as this allows all sorts of other things to be done.

One thing for sure the screen is a big problem. Colin mentions 6 stops. In real terms that is probably 5 real ones and one iffy one. It probably is 5 stops for web safe images given the state of many monitors connected to the web. I mentioned years of adjustments earlier. From compact camera jpg's. Many taken on walks with a group. People liked them and wanted to know what camera I used. I always pointed out that I had adjusted them mainly to lighten/remove shadows - 30 odd in a couple of hours. These shots don't look too good on a decently set up monitor. There are still a few kicking around on here. Also a few with a decent camera.

https://www.facebook.com/linda.woodhouse.56/photos_all

Yuck. Mind you I suspect Facebook does some strange things to images after some years.

John
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[dragon76]

Dean,

This is probably a good "case in point"; some will look at the OP's image and conclude "blacks are clipped because of the back-lighting", whereas the likes of Bill and I can look at that scene and know "although lack of sensor DR CAN be an issue, it's unlikely to be an issue with that kind of scene".

In contrast (no pun intended), here's an image where I've used 3 stops of DR compression that the sensor just wouldn't have been able to handle on it's own; the shadow detail was just too buried:

Colin

Beautiful shot!. Did you compress the DR with ND filter? and possibly with GND in addition for the horizon & sky?

Cheers

[Colin Southern]

Colin

Beautiful shot!. Did you compress the DR with ND filter? and possibly with GND in addition for the horizon & sky?

Cheers

Thanks Dean,

The lower portion is 3x 1min exposures (was going to be 5 but water splashed the filter for frames 4 & 5). The upper portion is one of the previous 3 frames with some different settings. A Singh-Ray 3-Stop hard edge reverse GND was used for all of them.

[dragon76]

Thanks Dean,

The lower portion is 3x 1min exposures (was going to be 5 but water splashed the filter for frames 4 & 5). The upper portion is one of the previous 3 frames with some different settings. A Singh-Ray 3-Stop hard edge reverse GND was used for all of them.

Very interesting! could you use "de-ghosting" to rescue the 4th and 5th frames for the set?