Post Dark Photography

[Polar01]

I see what you mean when you state that you like it dark. Great job on the lights on the walls, usually they really blow out and you have them just right. If I was trying to print I would use a rag stock, I may brighten it up just a bit, so as not to lose the detail on that wooden panel on the left side of the image. Also love the slope and pitch of the walkway between the two walls.

Cheers:

Allan

[arith]

Thanks Allan; turns out the last one was just a rendering problem then I got to think that actually this monitor is only a few months old and that was the first dark image printed via this monitor.

Don't know how it got to be on relative but until now I've just printed trains, planes, cars and trams. It is a hidden attribute though and now I'm wondering what they would have looked like, I increased brightness on them by 5% but don't know if I had to since the pictures are viewed in daylight.

I've now got some paper and have printed the above second image in post #31 again at 30% brightness, and you know it looks very close but is still brighter, wonder what will happen if I use 0% brightness.

Now you've said how you would print the alley I will give it a go in black ink only and 5% brightness; then I will know if this monitor is so much more accurate than the last.

[arith]

Absolutely spot on Allan With only 5% more brightness I got a brighter print than the monitor image and lots more detail. The left hand one doesn't qualify for this thread but since the right was done on a 10D I restricted its size.

[gilliebg]

I have recently become very interested in long exposure night shots, and I found lots of good tips from Harold Davis's book, Creative Lighting. He also posts on Flickr, and includes instructions on how to achieve his effects, which is very civil of him, since he writes books on the subject. If you are interested here is a link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/harold_...7594249911965/

[arith]

Thanks gillie, it is a good help up to learn from those doing it all the time.

[Polar01]

Steve: here is just a thought, you print with the Canon Pro9000 II, good printer, however only one black, maybe as you like a rich deep black that one black can not handle the tonal differences going from a very light light black to a deep balck in one pass so it has some trouble and prints dark. Once you lighten up the image, it is not having as hard of a time to lay down the correct amount of black ink. In my case I know that the screen is too bright when that happens, I print with the Epson 4900 which as 4 blacks (light light black, light black always in use) Photo Black for gloss stock and Matt Black for matt stocks.

Cheers:

Allan

[arith]

Thanks Allan; I think a printer like yours would be fantastic. This is the first B+W i've done with this printer and I'm quite pleased, I've done lots near B+W but setting black ink only is something new.

[Polar01]

Steve it is a excellent printer I was looking at one, however Epson put mine on sale at a price that you could not say no to. Here is another image and this one is a night shot. It was my first attempt at a night time shot, I had taken a number of long exposure shots but never one at night. Again it is the Toronto skyline in the back ground, I wanted a long exposure as there was a little wave action in the foreground to still the waters. I took a great number of images with the hope of creating an HDR image, but that did not work as all the images were brighter background light than I wanted, so I setttled on just one image. However there was one coloured light on a tower near the right hand side of the image that was blowen out on all the images. I had gone back the next night to take a couple of more as I had stayed in Toronto. On getting home that was when, I found most of all the images taken over two days had that blowen out light at the top of the tower except for two images I had taken while setting up on one of them only about a dozen lights could be seen but guess which one was perfect. Well do not tell anyone but a little select, copy, paste then just a little cloning to blend in works wonders. It wa shot at 11:30 PM early December 2011 at f8 4 sec and 400 ISO.

Cheers:

Allan

[Polar01]

This is the image to above as I had posted the wrong one, and tried to repost correct one it did not want to do it.

Cheers:

Allan

[arith]

Wow; that is lots of colour. Great shot Allan.

[arith]

Had a few problems with this taken this morning on a 50D; the lens was too heavy for the tripod and it kept slipping. I don't think it is as sharp as it could be.

70mm f8 HDR 1/5, 4/5, 16/5 seconds @100iso of the South Transcept of Lichfield Cathedral.

[Polar01]

Steve: I think you are right about it being out of focus, it maybe because the auto focus was on the stain glass and was having a problem with the contrast, because as lovely as that glass is it is slightly blowen out. Here is something you might try. Take the file with the best glass, open it as a new file, place this image on it (second layer) aline them up, turn off second layer then mask out everything but the glass, turn on the second layer, blend down darken and see what you get. The focus could be better on the one with the darker glass if you did not turn off auto focus when you took the images. Sometimes I forget to do that when I do an HDR, but if it is in a building I find that it does not matter a lot of the time as the distance is quite short. It can be a lot of work to do what I suggested lord I had done it a number of times and keep wondering if there is a better way.

Cheers:

Allan

[arith]

I completely forgot about the AF Allan; the lens I normally use, the Tamron below, hasn't even got AF because it doesn't work. The one I used on the 10D was sold years ago and I forgot about setting manual focus on HDR.

I assumed it was motion sickness because the screw in the base of the camera moved slightly and in all other attempts the long exposure showed movement, so I fixed a remote switch but I haven't figured out how to do multi shot with mirror up so still got mirror slap.

Despite being a national treasure I'm amazed by the amount of rubbish left lying around in this cathedral. This does not suffer the fate of the above; the North Trancept:



70mm f8 @100iso 2/5, 8/5,30/5 secs

[arith]

I did in fact do a horizontal version of the South Transept because it placed less strain on the quick release screw, again I forgot about AF but I think the registration point is on the gate.

I adjusted exposure in PSE10 to remove overblown bit; so this HDR 0.3, 1.3,5 secs is changed to 0.15, 1.3, 5 secs and manually applied in Picturenaut. This is slightly quicker than 1/5 but it did start out slower

I do not know what the mist is, but I've been here alone after dark and it isn't recommended.




f8 @100iso 0.3,1.3,5 seconds 70mm

[Polar01]

Steve: I liked the first one, however now seeing the second image I lean more towards it, it is darker but it shows more of those beautiful columns, giving it more depth and richness im my view. Now for a Monty Phython (something completely different) I now take you deep underground in the subway system of Montreal. Boy is this a fun place to play, for a subway the lighting is quite good and colourful, I have only been in two different subways Montreal and Toronto, we will leave Toronto out of it. They have an overpass that you can pick a spot on, setup your tripod as few people use the crossover and just shot. This image as a 3 second f13 ISo was at 200, I used a 16-85mm DX set at 24mm. As I said it was fun so much so I went back the next day for somemore.

Cheers:

Allan

[arith]

I like these kind of shots Allan; the blurry people give it a city feel.

[Cantab]

Steve, I purchased the Pro9000 a few days ago. I've yet to print B&W so was pleased to see you're happy with its B&W printing.

[arith]

They look pretty good to me Bruce; of course if you have more grays you get better. But if you hardly ever print B+W then that is very expensive for a few prints.

Looks really good to me actually, enuff said

[arith]

Here we go; I think I can do better with the processing since @f8 the podium is out of focus. f16 would give twice the dof but will still be out of focus.

I think the difficulty is working out how far away something is, and in high contrast it is simply difficult to see.

One thing I thought I could use, is to Ortonise the image with Pin Light and the indistinct podium will become blurred hopefully.

So I will do that maybe tomorrow; in the meantime this is a hard light image.

Again f8 but 90mm @100iso, speed 0.3, 1.3, 5 secs with 2 stops overexposure recovered in ACR, as is useful for getting shadow detail.

[Cantab]

To my mind, this a stunning photo as it is. It grapped me when I saw it.