Still Struggling with Mountain Scenes

[ajohnw]

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

Not really suggesting that at all. I stumbled on a camera review that showed a shot taken of a colour checker. Each square had a smaller square in the centre corrected to show the correct colour. The difference was surprising. Most reviews that do this show a colour gamut with dots on it - where colour should be and where colour was - hard to appreciate what that means in practice.

The colour temperature slider was the only way I could get any sort of pink out of the shot. Like I said I doubted if any one would like it. I was sort of suggesting that this might be the area that needs changing so that Christina could get what she actually saw. The darker PP was pushed even higher than that. Odd thing is that the snow and water remained ok. Might be rawtherapee, might be the shot. I have read that colour temperature can get surprisingly high in the shade and that for instance according to the wiki poleward blue skies range from 15 to 27 thousand K.

I assume you have downloaded Christina's raws and tried those. Would there be any difference if a D300 was used instead. I doubt it. I suspect the problem is the exposure and any attempts to shift it spoil the colour. I'm away for most of the week but was going to try different raw conversions to see what they did. What I see quickly with a no correction linear conversion is pink but more violet tinted than yours is.. Also vignetting in the corners which most software would take out.. This sort of thing with no PP other than resizing.



John
-

[Stagecoach]

John,

Yes it was the RAW file 010 that I used which was the one with the histogram within the ends and I'm going to download again and run through the procedure I recorded once more in ViewNX just for practice.

Have not got time now as I'm trying to PP a couple of moth shots I was just about to post and noticed a problem in the black background.

My interest with these pale pinks is that on a couple of occasions I have had to revert to losing them to retain the rest of the image.

Grahame

[Brownbear]

To finish off my post processing exercise....

But first for Grahame... The Nikon 7100 camera is a great camera and has no trouble capturing accurate pinks... It is only in this scene when adjusting the pink that it doesn't work, and I think it may be because the image was taken before sunrise.

My Edit trying View NX2 from a single exposure, copying Grahame... (my first time using View NX2) I couldn't keep the pink sky or bring it back.



And my post processing exercise following Frank's guidelines. The exposure is more true to the scene (predawn) and the pink is also more true to the scene. Not as sharp as it should be because I had difficulty aligning the layers just right.



Thank you to everyone for your help. I've learned a lot about photographing this scene, post processing, and also the limits of post processing.

[Mike Buckley]

Christina,

This is the second time you've mentioned having to align the layers. If your tripod did not move, you don't have to manually align the layers. When you use the Move tool to move the image in one window into another window, hold down the Shift key while doing so. The layers will be automatically, perfectly aligned. At least that's how Elements works, so Photoshop CC probably works the same.

[Brownbear]

Hi Mike,

Thank you for sharing. The next time I try combining images I will try holding the shift key. New to me. Truly appreciated. (No my tripod did not move)

Christina,

This is the second time you've mentioned having to align the layers. If your tripod did not move, you don't have to manually align the layers. When you use the Move tool to move the image in one window into another window, hold down the Shift key while doing so. The layers will be automatically, perfectly aligned. At least that's how Elements works, so Photoshop CC probably works the same.

[ajohnw]

John,

Yes it was the RAW file 010 that I used which was the one with the histogram within the ends and I'm going to download again and run through the procedure I recorded once more in ViewNX just for practice.

Have not got time now as I'm trying to PP a couple of moth shots I was just about to post and noticed a problem in the black background.

My interest with these pale pinks is that on a couple of occasions I have had to revert to losing them to retain the rest of the image.

Grahame

I wondered about the D7100 but decided to save money and go for the D7000. Mainly on the basis that 16mp is plenty and the noise graphs here.

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikon-d7100/13

If you go to the section marked noise jpg there is the option to show a graph and results for raw. I concluded up to 6400 it just about wins. The noise is somewhat different to what I expected. Say 2000 odd ISO, noise is clearly evident in mid tones but fairly easy to get rid of providing there isn't a huge amount of detail that needs to be kept. Even just reduction will remove lots of it. Not much done on birds in flight but looks like ETTR on the bird itself might be a good idea - by that I mean making adequate allowance for back lighting. Probably more than adequate on darker birds completely blowing the sky. Both cameras do have a real 100 ISO setting. My software might not be reading the exif's correctly.

On Christina's shot I suspect this is near correct. Pink glow fading to the top some of which may be down to vignetting in the lens used. There is no need for multiple exposures AT ALL other than to get one right. This is just a conversion from nef 10 with some curve work. It was autobrightened so basically highlight end dragged down plus minor changes at mid to centre anchors. Slight warming too. I didn't do any pre sharpening so tree detail is still mushy but ok at this size and light level.



It's curious how often hdr techniques crop up and cause problems as there isn't sufficient dynamic range there to need it. No doubt this will continue.

John
-