White is bright but is it right

[JBW]

We are redoing one of our ponds. Our gardener has put in a fair number of flowers with greem, yellow, red and white being the dominant colors.

I'm playing with the image style using Neutral with contrast and sharpness set to +2 out of 3 and Saturation set to 0

ISO 100 ~ Shutter Speed 1/3s ~ F/16 ~ Natural Light

[Shadowman]

We are redoing one of our ponds. Our gardener has put in a fair number of flowers with greem, yellow, red and white being the dominant colors.

I'm playing with the image style using Neutral with contrast and sharpness set to +2 out of 3 and Saturation set to 0

ISO 100 ~ Shutter Speed 1/3s ~ F/16 ~ Natural Light

Brian,

The camera didn't choose those settings did it? There are details to be seen in that bright area but barely visible on my monitor.

[JBW]

Brian,

The camera didn't choose those settings did it? There are details to be seen in that bright area but barely visible on my monitor.

My choices. I agree that the details are subtle. But nothing is blown out, I'm certainly open to suggestions.

[Shadowman]

My choices. I agree that the details are subtle. But nothing is blown out, I'm certainly open to suggestions.

First option would be to use exposure compensation until you can harness the intensity of the highlights, another option would be to do an HDR; I think there is enough dynamic range to attempt it with this composition.

[JBW]

First option would be to use exposure compensation until you can harness the intensity of the highlights, another option would be to do an HDR; I think there is enough dynamic range to attempt it with this composition.

Help m4e out here please and thank-you. There is an adjustment in my cameras menu called 'ev' which I have not used. There is also the dial that allows me to set my exposure -2 to +2 which I use all the time. Do these options do the same thing?

[DanK]

Look at the histogram. There is no need for HDR in this shot; you don't have the full range of luminance in the image.

The problem, I think, is in the right-hand hump in the histogram. That's the flower. It has almost no tonal range. That's why it's hard to see details--the veins are barely darker than the bright part of the petal.

I don't think you can fix this with a change in exposure. The flower seems to be exposed fine--not nearly bright enough to clip. I think that if you want to show detail on the flower, you are going to have to do some editing. Maybe expand that part of the tonal range and add contrast and local contrast to the flower. I think the way I would try this would be to select the flower and work separately on that. However, I think that although this doesn't sound all that complicated, it might be very hard (for me anyway) to get this to look the way I would want.

[billtils]

Brian

Dan is correct. I'm not sure what the Capture One v11 equivalents are but in v10, they would be Local Adjustments > New layer > Select the white leaf then play around with Highlights in the HDR tab, Clarity, and the Luma curve.

[JBW]

Brian

Dan is correct. I'm not sure what the Capture One v11 equivalents are but in v10, they would be Local Adjustments > New layer > Select the white leaf then play around with Highlights in the HDR tab, Clarity, and the Luma curve.

No HDR tab in C1. Clarity and luma yes.

[Manfred M]

No HDR tab in C1. Clarity and luma yes.

First of all I agree with Dan; HDR (High Dynamic Range) is not required for this image. Unless there is clipping in both the highlights and shadows, HDR is not warranted. That being said, you sort of have part of this functionality in C1; look at the box I highlighted in red. It lets you pull out shadow detail and downplay highlights.




When I look at your histogram, it indicates that you have blocked up shadow detail (unlikely in the lighting situation you were shooting in) and when I look at the shot, there are areas where there could be specular highlights (sunlight reflecting off the leaves), so I expect that your exposure is off a bit on the underexposed side by a good stop or more.

A histogram is not a stand-alone tool, but it has to relate back to your scene. In a daylight scene, it is very rare to get pure black in shadows, so when I see the level of blacks that you show here, I get a bit suspicious. Likewise, when I see areas that appear to be specular highlights, but the highest substantive white value is around 210 rather than being closer to 255, I get suspicious as well.

Help m4e out here please and thank-you. There is an adjustment in my cameras menu called 'ev' which I have not used. There is also the dial that allows me to set my exposure -2 to +2 which I use all the time. Do these options do the same thing?

As I don't shoot a Sony, I could not say why there are two places for this. On my Nikons (and Panasonic as well, I think), I too have two places to dial in exposure compensation. One is for general exposure compensation and the other allows me to do the same for the built in flash or for one of the dedicated flash units. I wonder if that might be what you are seeing; best to check your camera manual on that one.

[billtils]

No HDR tab in C1. .

Brian

Something odd somewhere in your set-up:

[JBW]

Brian

Something odd somewhere in your set-up:

This will help people understand how my mind works. In 3 or so years of using C1 I never connected C1 High Dynamic Range with 'HDR".

I use it to pull out information from blown out areas or when I do some burning. Silly me!

[JBW]

to the manual I go. like it or not I am slowly and with great resistance moving down the path to techy.

[Manfred M]

This will help people understand how my mind works. In 3 or so years of using C1 I never connected C1 High Dynamic Range with 'HDR".

I use it to pull out information from blown out areas or when I do some burning. Silly me!

In that case you are using it appropriately. I find C1's naming of this function is a bit of a stretch. HDR by definition requires more than one image. What these two functions do is not really HDR (tone mapping) but rather opening up / closing up shadow detail and opening up / reducing highlight areas.

[JBW]

In that case you are using it appropriately. I find C1's naming of this function is a bit of a stretch. HDR by definition requires more than one image. What these two functions do is not really HDR (tone mapping) but rather opening up / closing up shadow detail and opening up / reducing highlight areas.

I must be getting more informed. I understand what you're saying

[billtils]

What these two functions do is not really HDR (tone mapping) but rather opening up / closing up shadow detail and opening up / reducing highlight areas.

I'm not sure that everyone would agree with your distinction between HDR and Tone Mapping Manfred - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_mapping

[Dave Humphries]

I know nothing about Sony cameras, sorry, but the following thought occurs ...

There is an adjustment in my cameras menu called 'ev' which I have not used. There is also the dial that allows me to set my exposure -2 to +2 which I use all the time. Do these options do the same thing?

I wonder whether one of these settings is the stop range for the exposure bracketing function?
In which case, unless you actually engage bracketing, that adjustment will (apparently) do nothing (to single shots), whereas the other adjustment should have an immediate effect on the exposure of your shots.
If they both have an immediate effect, perhaps it's just two ways to access the same thing?
- and I'm feeding you red herring

Cheers,
Dave

[JBW]

I know nothing about Sony cameras, sorry, but the following thought occurs ...



I wonder whether one of these settings is the stop range for the exposure bracketing function?
In which case, unless you actually engage bracketing, that adjustment will (apparently) do nothing (to single shots), whereas the other adjustment should have an immediate effect on the exposure of your shots.
If they both have an immediate effect, perhaps it's just two ways to access the same thing?
- and I'm feeding you red herring

Cheers,
Dave

but tasty red herrings. When I pull up Exposure compensation in the help guide there are 10 yes 10 entries. Literally from a to z. With Z being zebra stripes.

[DanK]

I don't have a Sony either, and I don't want to download the manual from an unknown site, but my guess would be the same as Dave's. One setting will increase or decrease the exposure relative to what the camera guesses is neutral. Another that has to be somewhere in your menus will tell the camera how many stops there should be between exposures when you bracket. The manual should tell you which is which, but it should be easy to test. Just do this:

1. Take a picture with both of these set to zero
2. Take the same picture with one of them set to +2, leaving the other one at zero.
3. Now reverse it: set the first back to zero and the second to +2.

One of photos 2 and 3 should be 2 stops brighter than 1. Whichever control you used for that one is the exposure compensation setting.

However, I think all of this, while important in general, is a distraction with respect to the OP. While the image is a little underexposed, that isn't the main issue. The main issue IMHO is that there is very little tonal range or contrast in the white flower, so it shows very little interesting detail. that is not a problem that a change in exposure will fix.

[Manfred M]

I'm not sure that everyone would agree with your distinction between HDR and Tone Mapping Manfred - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_mapping

I suspect that the issue is the lack of clarity in my explanation.

My assumption was that I suspect that most people would equate HDR with software like Lightroom, Photoshop, Photomatix, NIK, etc. that take a series of images that have been taken with different exposures and turn these into a single image using tone mapping. There are other ways of creating high dynamic range image using techniques like image fusion or even hand blending, so I tend to refer to HDR images based on the technique used to create them.

The issue I have with the Phase One naming technique in Capture One is that it is NOT an HDR technique as it is purely based on a single image. It is working with the data from a single image only. Any blown highlights or crushed shadow detail cannot be recovered and has been lost. What Phase One is doing (and this is fundamentally no different than what Lightroom or ACR do) is to take highlight and shadow detail and map it over towards mid-tone values (different parts of the "S" curve that is mentioned in the Wikipedia article you linked to). I have no idea why they suggest this has anything to do with HDR.

My point to Brian is simply that regardless of what Phase One happened to call this functionality, it is definitely not HDR in terms of how most people understand what HDR is.

[billtils]

I suspect that the issue is the lack of clarity in my explanation.

My assumption was that I suspect that most people would equate HDR with software like Lightroom, Photoshop, Photomatix, NIK, etc. that take a series of images that have been taken with different exposures and turn these into a single image...

Thanks for the explanation - that makes sense.