Still Struggling with Mountain Scenes

[Manfred M]

Hi Manfred,

Thank you for taking the time to drop in and advise.

I always visit this place at sunrise or sunset with the intent to capture beautiful light but it's not working.

At sunrise the light comes from behind the mountains which if I understand correctly helps me create a more 3D image... Later in the morning (a time I have yet to visit) the shadows on the mountains will likely be too harsh... I only visit the day after a heavy rainfall to minimize haze but these mountains are on the North Shore of Vancouver and far enough away from the city that the haze should be minimal, yet it's still there.

At sunset the light is front light which I think also creates flat lighting, especially on those two snow capped peaks... Perhaps a better strategy might be to visit at sunset and focus on just one part of the scene which is partially lit from the side?

On this morning I was happy to capture the pink sky (not always seen) but I didn't recognize the flat lighting in the rest of the scene, likely because I was so enthralled by the pink sky that I didn't pay enough attention to the other lighting ...

I will keep working on seeing the right light, and just learned what can and cannot be pulled out in post. Walking away is something that I also have to learn to do, more often than not

Sunrise and sunset are probably only relevent if you are looking out over the ocean (just kidding, but trying to make a point).

Sunrise and sunset are great when you are up high enough and you catch both the sun disk over the horizon giving you that nice warm tone light that comes from travelling through the atmosphere and all that reflected cool light being pumped down by the sky. The problem is that you don't really get a good sunrise or sunset when the sun is behind the mountains (or buildings in a city or the upper edge of a valley, when you are sitting in the bottom of the valley. In those cases the sun actually has to above these features to throw enough light down to give you interesting illumination. Depending on the location, time of year, time of day, etc. you may or may not get the overall lighting pattern that you want.

You say that the sun rises behind these mountains; I would look at shooting them at sunset to see if this does anything for you lighting wise. Otherwise, wait for the time when the sun is high enough to drive some light into the scene. Your shots are effectively backlit; and in portraiture, the photographer would use either a reflector or fill-flash to drive some light into the scene from the front. Not a practical solution in landscape work, I know....

[Brownbear]

Thank you Manfred!

Your explanation is very helpful to my understanding of the scene. I will try both! (excluding the giant reflector )

Sunrise and sunset are probably only relevent if you are looking out over the ocean (just kidding, but trying to make a point).

Sunrise and sunset are great when you are up high enough and you catch both the sun disk over the horizon giving you that nice warm tone light that comes from travelling through the atmosphere and all that reflected cool light being pumped down by the sky. The problem is that you don't really get a good sunrise or sunset when the sun is behind the mountains (or buildings in a city or the upper edge of a valley, when you are sitting in the bottom of the valley. In those cases the sun actually has to above these features to throw enough light down to give you interesting illumination. Depending on the location, time of year, time of day, etc. you may or may not get the overall lighting pattern that you want.

You say that the sun rises behind these mountains; I would look at shooting them at sunset to see if this does anything for you lighting wise. Otherwise, wait for the time when the sun is high enough to drive some light into the scene. Your shots are effectively backlit; and in portraiture, the photographer would use either a reflector or fill-flash to drive some light into the scene from the front. Not a practical solution in landscape work, I know....

[ajohnw]

I doubt if anyone will like the "pink" in the sky but here goes. A quick attempt. First thing is colour temperature adjustment which is best left to the individual but the camera is way out so there is a need to push it way up, something like 22000K in this one. It's fairly critical. This may be the best pink the camera can produce as they are not well known for accurate colour reproduction without calibration. I used the 10 -1.3EV exposure.

Basic adjustments to get tone levels and contrast hopefully where they need to be and a boost in contrast and brightness. In this package shifting black is independent of the curve adjustment and -ve values brighten. The highlight adjustments are needed to keep the red hump in the histogram in a sensible place. The curve adjustment is increasing contrast. Black point set for minimal luminance clipping, hardly any at all. This was done after the other adjustments so the software does the others 1st and then applies the curve.



Next step contrast boost type sharpening as I am working on a full sized image. Larger than normal radius and amount. These numbers wont relate to other packages.



Next a bit of a saturation increase as I didn't like the look of the trees.



At this point I left Rawtherapee, saved, opened with another package, reduced and the usual minimal sharpening.
Rawtherapee wont touch the original image. It runs the processing pipe (steps taken) on the image when it's saved to a new file name. I prefer a package that actually does the reduction.

Then a type of micro contrast adjustment. I should have fiddled with this more. I just used the + contrast button which applies predetermined graded steps.



Last a tiny lift of the tone curve at the mid tone point to lighten them a little.



Not able to do much about the mist and I see Christina is rockin' on water again. Maybe try some at 400 ISO as well next time. Maybe even 800. The only way to find out what happens is to try it.

The thing that interested me is how far the colour temperature had to be pushed up. I know it can get alarmingly high in these sorts of situations and the camera can't cope. It can't have been pushed too high as the water has the right sort of colouration I thought it was snow and wondered what the little red things were.

John
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[FrankMi]

Hi Christina, as the sun is rising behind the mountains in these images, a sunset will provide a completely different image.

However, that doesn't mean that you can't capture the pink in the sky, in fact, as you'll be dealing with the 'backside' of the sunset, you could end up with an image similar to this one where the sun was setting behind me.



A lot will depend, of course, on the position of the clouds as the sun drops below the horizon, and also, if you have mountains to the West blocking the light as well.

[Mike Buckley]

these mountains are on the North Shore of Vancouver and far enough away from the city that the haze should be minimal

Based on my experience, proximity to a city has nothing to do with the amount of haze; I have seen huge amounts of haze hundreds of miles away from anything larger than a tiny town. As an example, see the photo shown below.

As much as I agree with Manfred and also mention it often myself that we need to recognize when to pass on the light, keep in mind that I did just that when I was at a particular place in Death Valley. I never took the camera out of the car. My wife took the photo shown below and I post-processed it.

The first photo is straight out of the camera and shows how bad the light was. Hopefully the other two photos indicate that the original was worth taking and post-processing.

[ajohnw]

Instead of posting shots why not try to do something with it. Marking posts as helpful doesn't really help the OP's problems either.

Me, well when I get so far it's time to stop, look at the problems and think what else could I do with it. There are several people on here that could sort this shot out and post methods of doing it,

John
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[Brownbear]

Hi John,

Thank you for taking the time and showing the steps. Very much appreciated.

I absolutely adore the way you brought out the detail in the trees. When I am ready to look at this image again, I will try your bit on the trees...

About the colour... Your sky is orange! 'm really trying to capture in my images the scene that I see before my eyes, as nothing is more beautiful than the natural skies I see and in this particular scene the sky was a beautiful pink, and the mountain-scape dark...

Nevertheless truly appreciated! Your trees are wow! Yes, mist is most everywhere...

I doubt if anyone will like the "pink" in the sky but here goes. A quick attempt. First thing is colour temperature adjustment which is best left to the individual but the camera is way out so there is a need to push it way up, something like 22000K in this one. It's fairly critical. This may be the best pink the camera can produce as they are not well known for accurate colour reproduction without calibration. I used the 10 -1.3EV exposure.

Basic adjustments to get tone levels and contrast hopefully where they need to be and a boost in contrast and brightness. In this package shifting black is independent of the curve adjustment and -ve values brighten. The highlight adjustments are needed to keep the red hump in the histogram in a sensible place. The curve adjustment is increasing contrast. Black point set for minimal luminance clipping, hardly any at all. This was done after the other adjustments so the software does the others 1st and then applies the curve.



Next step contrast boost type sharpening as I am working on a full sized image. Larger than normal radius and amount. These numbers wont relate to other packages.



Next a bit of a saturation increase as I didn't like the look of the trees.



At this point I left Rawtherapee, saved, opened with another package, reduced and the usual minimal sharpening.
Rawtherapee wont touch the original image. It runs the processing pipe (steps taken) on the image when it's saved to a new file name. I prefer a package that actually does the reduction.

Then a type of micro contrast adjustment. I should have fiddled with this more. I just used the + contrast button which applies predetermined graded steps.



Last a tiny lift of the tone curve at the mid tone point to lighten them a little.



Not able to do much about the mist and I see Christina is rockin' on water again. Maybe try some at 400 ISO as well next time. Maybe even 800. The only way to find out what happens is to try it.

The thing that interested me is how far the colour temperature had to be pushed up. I know it can get alarmingly high in these sorts of situations and the camera can't cope. It can't have been pushed too high as the water has the right sort of colouration I thought it was snow and wondered what the little red things were.

John
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[Brownbear]

Hi John,

Just to say so others know... All of the post processing edits demonstrated so far are more than enough for me to learn from.. Mike has demonstrated one edit, as have you and Frank. Processing overload for me...

I posted the raw images only so others can try, if they wish, and only to learn how to deal with haze and flat images, if only to learn it is impossible.

This image is only for learning purposes. I will try photographing the scene again, likely several times until I can capture what I see, and at that point in time I will try all the post processing tips shared by Frank, Mike and you.

Thank you.

Instead of posting shots why not try to do something with it. Marking posts as helpful doesn't really help the OP's problems either.

Me, well when I get so far it's time to stop, look at the problems and think what else could I do with it. There are several people on here that could sort this shot out and post methods of doing it,

John
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[Brownbear]

Frank...

Thank you for sharing your sunset image. Very helpful to see! I once photographed a mountain at sunset shrouded in pink clouds. The image did not do the scene justice. I deleted the image... And I'm still dreaming about capturing that scene once more, but better.

Mike...

Thank you for sharing your wife's image. Very helpful to see and yes the image demonstrates that it was definitely worth post processing. The mountains in the colour version are beautiful.

Aside.. I took some mountain images shooting straight into the sun, and through tons of haze... Something about the brightness and the layers I could see appealed to me. I haven't touched them yet but I suspect it is very likely they will end up in the trash bin...

[Stagecoach]

Hi Christina,

I'm going to add my little bit having now read through all the latest additions to this thread.

The reality is that you are the only one who knows the colours and lighting at the time you viewed this scene and you are the only one that can decide if a 'finished' picture either meets what you saw, or it's manipulation is suitable for your tastes.

I have also been experimenting with the mountain scenes, at different times of day and each time come across the 'haze' concern. The impact of this hazed area depends very much upon the amount of it that is contained in the image, for example if you have a large areas of impressive sky (and that can include plain pink) and interesting sea/foreground a small area of hazed mountain has less impact. The problem comes that you can not always control the distribution of the areas.
Anyway, here's an edit based upon your originals, your mention that it was the pink sky that excited you about this view and my experience of getting up extremely early and being on site to view, explore, appreciate the colours and take pictures of these times of day

In ViewNX2..............................

I looked at the three RAW images and decided that there was nothing within two of them that I needed that could not be achieved from the one with the good histogram to make the scene look natural.

I experimented with WB and very quickly came to a conclusion that no change was necessary if my priority was to retain that pink sky to how you said and my experience of viewing them was.

The picture mode was changed to Nikon 'landscape' as I find this is a good starting point with some flat scenes.

Increases were made to Shadow Protection and D Lighting to pull out the shadows a bit along with a slight increase in colour boost.

In Elements........................

A gradient mask was used to increase the saturation and boost the pink slightly in the sky area.

Sharpening and resizing for web.................... that's it.



Further work that could improve this for me, a slight desaturation of the water, a slight rotation to the left undertaking it with a little bit more care (as I would normally) as there's a slight clipped area above mountains to the left.

Grahame

[Brownbear]

Thank you Grahame!

You certainly make it sound simple enough and your edit looks good at this size. I have a disc with View NX2 on it somewhere, so I will have to find it and try it out.

I am hesitant on using just one exposure and lightening up the mountains using just one image because I would expect to see a lot of noise at full size, and also to capture the true dark pink of the sky... However, I will try it. And I will also try Frank's suggestion of bracketing 5 shots (the next time around), and no doubt I will learn from doing both.

Truly appreciated.

Hi Christina,

I'm going to add my little bit having now read through all the latest additions to this thread.

The reality is that you are the only one who knows the colours and lighting at the time you viewed this scene and you are the only one that can decide if a 'finished' picture either meets what you saw, or it's manipulation is suitable for your tastes.

I have also been experimenting with the mountain scenes, at different times of day and each time come across the 'haze' concern. The impact of this hazed area depends very much upon the amount of it that is contained in the image, for example if you have a large areas of impressive sky (and that can include plain pink) and interesting sea/foreground a small area of hazed mountain has less impact. The problem comes that you can not always control the distribution of the areas.
Anyway, here's an edit based upon your originals, your mention that it was the pink sky that excited you about this view and my experience of getting up extremely early and being on site to view, explore, appreciate the colours and take pictures of these times of day

In ViewNX2..............................

I looked at the three RAW images and decided that there was nothing within two of them that I needed that could not be achieved from the one with the good histogram to make the scene look natural.

I experimented with WB and very quickly came to a conclusion that no change was necessary if my priority was to retain that pink sky to how you said and my experience of viewing them was.

The picture mode was changed to Nikon 'landscape' as I find this is a good starting point with some flat scenes.

Increases were made to Shadow Protection and D Lighting to pull out the shadows a bit along with a slight increase in colour boost.

In Elements........................

A gradient mask was used to increase the saturation and boost the pink slightly in the sky area.

Sharpening and resizing for web.................... that's it.



Further work that could improve this for me, a slight desaturation of the water, a slight rotation to the left undertaking it with a little bit more care (as I would normally) as there's a slight clipped area above mountains to the left.

Grahame

[Mike Buckley]

I have a disc with View NX2 on it somewhere, so I will have to find it and try it out.

You're much better off downloading it from the Nikon website and getting the latest version.

[Stagecoach]

I am hesitant on using just one exposure and lightening up the mountains using just one image because I would expect to see a lot of noise at full size, and also to capture the true dark pink of the sky...

Christina,

Your comment about noise intrigued me in that noise was just something I did not notice or even consider whilst playing with the image. As I had forgotten to save the PSD I did a quick repeat and even boosted the shadows more to look for noise, none if working within the realms of reality.

As the previous image was only 1200 px here's one at 1550 px. From working on my own images of sunsets/sunrises with similar lighting with the D300 I am aware of having to control noise, I think this just demonstrates the superior noise performance of the D7100.



Grahame

[ajohnw]

Well I did say hopefully in the right place when I initially adjusted contrast etc. The orange does have a pink tinge too.

Noise - I if I can push the full sized image up as much as I did from the -1.3 EV shot - what noise? Some how I suspect that there is an assumption that there will be noise.

This one is from 008.NEF. -2.3EV No curves, just colour temperature for basics. Then a bit of vibrancy and shadow lift. Rest as before.



Then as it's a shame to hide some of the other colours a bit of gradient in the upper sky and a very weak inverted S curve which lifts shadow contrast/brightness and also does the same to the highlights.



This is the result of a slightly different colour temperature being set. Otherwise same processing as the 1st one.



There is scope for variation there and no point trying to get that right later it needs to be as close as it can be before doing anything else. The clue in this shot is water,sky and snow colour. Something is likely to be shifted as there is mixed colour temperatures. The curve used from raw also needs to be correct before doing anything else. If a problem leave it straight. If it needs changing try leaving it straight and just changing the black and white points. Then try adding one point and moving it around starting in the middle of the line. It can be moved up and down the line to see the effect and help decide where to put points. A lot of them and a lot of departure from a straight line is usually not a good idea. Might be easier to just leave it straight and then use levels in normal PP. Levels usually has numbers so small changes can be made more easily. The nasty bit is the middle slider on the input.

Black and white points can also have effects on the colouration. As can highlight and shadow processing so it's easy to get into a right mess. Local work even worse.

After all of this your very likely to find that your camera wont record the colours accurately. Fact of life unless a specific ICC etc profile is generated for the camera. Cameras have colour errors that are easily visible to the eye. Colin's may not but then it costs rather a lot of money. If it was profiled it might still have problems with this shot.

I'm also wondering if your camera fakse 100 ISO. They do it by under exposing roughly by 1 EV. You mentioned that you set +/- 1. If you did it's probably best to forget 100 and just use 200 as the minimum.

Noise? This is the full image. It's had rather a lot of sharpening and contrast boosts. That will always make noise worse.

http://www.23hq.com/ajohnw/photo/16162211

There is a bit but at realistic sizes for a crop sensor not worth bothering about. The answer would be to process it out after correcting the colour temperature making sure that a reasonable amount of detail remains. Simple noise reduction usually needs a size reduction to achieve that..

John
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[ajohnw]

I'm inclined to forget what Adobe get up to, They use a default raw conversion curve. If you look there should be 3 or 4 of them available and using each in turn will show differences. Landscape, portrait etc and I think AdobeStandard.

I used Rawtherapee for this one to keep it simple. That converts NEF's according to a man called Dave Coffin. He predates Adobe and raw files and probably helped Adobe in this respect. I could also have used Adobe curves as Rawtherapee has the option. I might try them later out of curiosity.

If for some reason people try Rawtherapee remember that the 100% additional views have to be used for fine adjustment as the main screen wont show them clearly. Rawtherapee is an excellent tool to teach people to go slowly and in the right order plus using the minimum as it has such a lot of facilities. The GIMP or any layer type plus touch up package can be used with it. Sometimes this means saving the file though at the moment. If for the GIMP best save png.

John
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[Brownbear]

Thank you Grahame and John! Truly appreciated!

I presumed that noise would be a problem based on my experience with photographing dark birds with higher ISOs for which I always avoid lifting the exposure, shadows because of obvious noise. So it is nice to know that there is more leeway for post processing dark landscape scenes photographed at a lower ISO.

John - I must say you did an incredible job with these last edits. I like the 2nd and especially the 3rd edit even without the dramatic pink sky, for the soft colours and soft pinkish sky. Thank you for taking the time.

[ajohnw]

Thank you Grahame and John! Truly appreciated!

I presumed that noise would be a problem based on my experience with photographing dark birds with higher ISOs for which I always avoid lifting the exposure, shadows because of obvious noise. So it is nice to know that there is more leeway for post processing dark landscape scenes photographed at a lower ISO.

John - I must say you did an incredible job with these last edits. I like the 2nd and especially the 3rd edit even without the dramatic pink sky, for the soft colours and soft pinkish sky. Thank you for taking the time.

I like the practice Christina. I'm trying to sort my PP out too. I just tried something I have never done before on a shot like this. Luminance layer mask for the light parts, very severe levels settings on it to restrict the effects to the right areas and a pink tint. Then a gradient as the sky is extremely flat. Sorting out the right pink seems to be a bit of a problem.



John
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[ajohnw]

This one is same as above except a tinted layer, gradient and a bit of hand work. Then a luminosity mask as before.



The gradient was 2 lightnesses of the same tone. Think this is easier than the other method as it's easy to change the tone in the layer.

I messed the mask up a little while doing hand work on it. I suspect that part can be seen!

Picking a pink is worse than trying to pick a dress for my wife, Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't

John
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[Brownbear]

Hi John,

I must say that it is very interesting to see all of your versions. I still prefer the 2nd and 3rd versions of your last try. Yes, I too have learned that the pink is a challenging colour to capture in camera and to bring out in post processing, but I do like your pink better than your orange.

We both know that I am going to have to photograph this scene again. On my next try I promise to have a much better version to work with. In fact, I may just forget about the pink sky in this particular scene (because the light is flat in the rest of the scene) but no worries I will find another scene with a pink sky to photograph, somewhere, someday.

Seriously, your feedback and all your post processing tips are helpful to see and learn from. Thank you.

[Stagecoach]

I doubt if anyone will like the "pink" in the sky but here goes. A quick attempt. First thing is colour temperature adjustment which is best left to the individual but the camera is way out so there is a need to push it way up, something like 22000K in this one. It's fairly critical. This may be the best pink the camera can produce as they are not well known for accurate colour reproduction without calibration. I used the 10 -1.3EV exposure.
John
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John,

I had the fortune tonight to glimpse a pink sky and managed to grab the camera with the intention of taking some shots and look at the effect of varying WB settings in PP. Unfortunately after taking a couple of shots I noticed the camera WB setting had been set on flash (from yesterday) but managed to grab another couple in Auto WB before the pink was gone.

Basically, having looked very carefully at the sky, clouds and colours I would say that the pink the camera captured is pretty close as far as my eyes can determine to spot on what I saw. The images with camera WB settings of Auto and Flash both show a WB of 5900 but with slightly different tint and changing the WB to above 7000 gives something that just was not what I witnessed.


Nothing done to the image other than open the RAW in ACR, left all defaults and a resize in Elements.

So, my question is on what basis are you determining 'that the camera is way out' and you needed to push Christina's image up to 22000K?

I would suggest that my D300 is extremely capable of producing accurate pink, are you suggesting that a D7100 is not so capable because it was going to be the next one I purchase

Grahame