The Monastery

[jordand]

1 - Auto exposure, Aperture-priority AE, 1/10 sec, f/14, ISO 200 at 11mm.


2 - Auto exposure, Aperture-priority AE, 1/8 sec, f/10, ISO 100, Compensation: -1/3 at 11mm.


3 - Auto exposure, Aperture-priority AE, 1/10 sec, f/14, ISO 200 at 11mm.


4 - Auto exposure, Aperture-priority AE, 1/8 sec, f/10, ISO 320 at 11.5mm.


All shot on Nikon D7000 with Tokina AT-X 116 PRO DX 11-16mm F2.8 lens and processed with ACR9.1 and PS CS6.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Jordan,

This is a good series, shot with a Nikon D7000 and an 11-16mm lens, mostly at 11mm (16mm FF equivalent angle of view).

I give that additional information for the benefit of Izzie, who is just 'getting to know' how best to use her 14-24mm lens (on FF D810).

I think she will find these good compositional examples.

The only problems I see with these are some areas that are (sometimes vastly) over exposed, which are emphasising lens and/or sensor problems - if these were mine, I might spend some time trying to reduce/remove the worst of these by fair means or foul, in PP. Ask me if you need more on this.

You certainly had a challenging dynamic range in these.

Also; I'm not sure you had the Chromatic Aberration correction turned on in ACR - I'd have expected it to do a better job than this, might be worth checking and possibly adjusting for better results.

It helps if you number and provide EXIF data for C&C, I will do this above shortly.

Cheers, Dave

PS Jordan, while extracting the EXIF data, I observed two things that might help your images display better to more people;
a) You are uploading large images to TinyPic, who are downsizing them to 1599 width, this softens them. Ideally you should downsize them yourself to be say 1500 x 1000 (ish), sharpen with USM at Amount 100%, Radius 0.3 px and Threshold 1 using UnSharp Mask, Save As a new file name and upload those to TinyPic.
b) You are uploading with a colour profile of ProPhoto RGB - some browsers will display these with muddy colours. You should always convert the profile for on-line jpgs to be sRGB for best results.

[Shadowman]

Nice series.

[Dave A]

I really like this series, well done.

Dave

[Dave Humphries]

Hi again Jordan,

You replied to me by PM, but it is better for everyone if you put that information and queries here.

Could you do that please? - or just post a short reply here and I'll copy it across - then answer your questions.

Thanks in advance, Dave

[jordand]

Hi, Dave.

Thanks for the detailed explanation.

Starting from the bottom, I do convert the color profile to sRGB when posting to one of Bulgarian photo sites due to very distinct change in colors. I haven’t noticed this behavior in CiC, but I’ll keep your advice in mind.

Resizing and sharpening before uploading is easy.

The trickiest moment here was how to process the brightest areas without making them look over processed. I tried some tricks in ACR, CS6 and Nik Color Efex, but obviously to no good ending.

If I had the chance I’d have taken these photos in a different time of the day, but this is a monastery and the access is limited by the visiting hours, so yes, I’d appreciate very much your suggestions and ideas about ways to solve the dynamic range issues.

Greetings!
Jordan

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Jordan,

Firstly, my apologies for the delay in promised reply, but I wanted to give myself sufficient time to do a good job.

If I had the chance I’d have taken these photos in a different time of the day, but this is a monastery and the access is limited by the visiting hours~.

Yeah, I guessed that.

The trickiest moment here was how to process the brightest areas without making them look over processed. I tried some tricks in ACR, CS6 and Nik Color Efex, but obviously to no good ending.

Yes, it can be a problem, especially if, due to scene content, dynamic range and metering, some areas end up being well over exposed, when shooting; I always use the RGB histogram and try to avoid blinkies in areas of of image which will be important. I appreciate that there's not always time and we learn as we shoot, so I'm constantly revising my methods as my experience grows.

I’d appreciate very much your suggestions and ideas about ways to solve the dynamic range issues.

Unfortunately, I can't give you a foolproof way to process these, because it very much depends on the individual shots. I also don't use Nik, so I've no idea what that might have done to them.

One thing I mentioned above was to make sure the Chromatic Aberration correction turned on, I'm pretty sure it wasn't, since there's some visible in all of these. In the snip I took from the top right corner of #3, you can see this most unequivocally on the vertical bars of the closest balustrade (the false colour edges on opposites sides).



Also visible are significant sharpening/processing artefacts, flares and possibly sensor bleed in to dark areas from adjacent over exposed pixels.

I have to say, I'm not a fan of automated processing (e.g. Nik), not that I have used Nik, but my early experiences trying to use other such processes, especially on challenging shots such as these, just added to a 'loss of control' over what was happening at 'pixel level' which didn't aid my understanding - or help my pictures.

It would be interesting to see what could be done from RAW with one of these shots and simple/manual processing.

You recall I said:

I might spend some time trying to reduce/remove the worst of these by fair means or foul, in PP.

The above represents what I'd call 'fair means', now let's try 'foul', by which I mean simply hiding any remaining artefacts that are still visible in the final image.

I'm not skilled in the use of PS layers and masks, so others may cringe at what I'm about to suggest, but (until my skills develop) it works for me. I would normally keep a duplicate layer of the original image during processing, but after that I work directly on pixels on the top layer, this is done at 200%, working on a small area of the image at a time.

Looking at the smears of flare over the dark areas (posts), you can clone from areas of better contrast.
Looking at the CA (here), you can wipe over most with a 100% desaturate sponge tool, setting brush size and edge hardness as appropriate for the areas of image you're working on.

Here's that snip processed, click between the two in LyteBox to see what I have done (it's not perfect).



Labour intensive? Heck yes - but normally I have only a tiny area of an image that needs such work. It is key to avoid, or correct these issues as soon as possible in the process; initially when taking, by correct, or bracketed, exposures. Then by dealing with the remaining problems in a sensible order in PP and particularly avoiding doing things like sharpening too soon - e.g. I do not sharpen at all at the RAW stage (in ACR).

Unfortunately, these jpgs perhaps require too much work to make it worthwhile. However, I suspect that if re-processed from RAW, and if that CA and flare was dealt with effectively before any Nik processing or sharpening was applied, things may be a lot better and much less 'foul' processing would be needed.

Hope that helps, Dave

[Wavelength]

Excellent images

[jordand]

Hi, Dave.
Thanks a lot for you detailed explanation and for the time you spent. It’s very helpful.
As for the Chromatic Aberration, this is a well known issue with the Tokina 11-16 and I usually deal with it in ACR, but this time I’ve forgotten.
One other thing I was thinking of was a speedlight that might be useful in similar situations, filling the shadows to the front, while camera takes readings form the background.
Maybe it is about time for me to get one…

[Dave Humphries]

One other thing I was thinking of was a speedlight that might be useful in similar situations, filling the shadows to the front, while camera takes readings form the background.
Maybe it is about time for me to get one…

Using a flash for daylight fill is a valid technique, although it has limitations.

In most of the Monastery scenes above, there would be two problems with that approach;
a) Because light falls off with distance, all you may achieve is a brighter immediate foreground, with a darker mid-distance (e.g. along the rows of beams under the roofs)
b) The flash lit area may not cover the full angle of view of the 11-16mm lens, at least, not without an additional 'lens' in front of the flash tube to spread it

Not that I want to discourage you from buying and using one.

Cheers, Dave

[selig1656]

Nice series the recommendations by Dave are on target, another way to cover the exposure possibilities is the use of bracketing.

[bnnrcn]

Very nice series