On 11/7/2012 5:32 PM, Brian Swale wrote:
> Wayne, Jim and Chris, thanks for your comments.
>
> Chris, that photograph of the rhododendron is the best I have done of that
> colour.
>
> In the last couple or so years I have discovered that a certain hue of red (or
> zone of red) in tulips, roses and rhododendrons is the very devil to
> photograph. The red colour seems to bleed all over the place.
>
> I don't understand it, but I do seem to recall Moose writing about it several
> times some years back, with a cure ... :-)
Well, if it's been some years, And you have just posted 20 images for your
'slide' show ...
Your problem with the reds (and yellows, elsewhere), are symptoms of a larger
problem your images regularly display. You
complain separately about loss of detail in bright clouds.
You let highlights clip quite often. When all channels clip, you get
undifferentiated white. When just one channel
clips, you get undifferentiated washes of that color. Far the most common
channel to clip in natural surroundings is
red, in red, orange and yellow flowers and foliage.
Full solution of this problem for your work would involve several steps, in
ascending order of cost and/or learning.
1. Bracket your exposures. At first, take tests with five shots as a test, from
- 1/3 EV to -1 2/3. Look first at the
histograms and images themselves for highlights. There will be an exposure in
which the clouds, skies, whatever will
look quite natural and there will be no little stack of pixels up against the
right edge of the histograms
Then look through them at the shadows. In the darker ones, important shadow
detail will most likely be lost, at least
without processing. When shooting at base ISO, you may find an exposure for
some images which both retains highlight
details and shadow details. With other subjects, and at higher ISOs, that won't
be the case.
My impression is that you are hesitant to deviate from the Exposure that the
knowledge of the engineers who created the
camera dictates. Exposure is a situation where experience must overrule
authority. Perhaps this essay from an
independent, professional authority will help.
<http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2012/09/why-iso-isnt-iso.html>
2. Much as the simplicity, and perhaps ascetic minimalism, of shooting JPEGs
may appeal to you, it is not helping your
cause. Forcing a wide dynamic range into 8 bit data is a real problem.
Excellent as Oly's JPEG engine is, it has to make
compromises at the ends of the range to maintain a natural look in the mid
tones.
Shooting Raw offers all sorts of expanded possibilities for retaining details
important to particular images, that would
otherwise be lost. This particularly applies to the highlights you have trouble
with. Shooting Raw costs you essentially
nothing other than a couple of pennies of storage.
3. FastStone is a wonderful image viewer, I use it all the time. No matter how
much you love it, for whatever reasons,
it would be a mediocre Raw converter in any case, and is poor for the simple
reason that it only converts to 8 bit.
Likewise, it would be a middling simple image editor - if it could work in 16
bits. I'll bet a worldwide survey of
successful photographers who sell images of the kind you would like to make
would find none who use such a primitive editor.
Oly's Viewer 2 is a far superior raw converter and image editor to FastStone.
It's free for your camera, if you don't
already have it. Yes, I know, it's more work, takes more time. I recall reading
over your comments on deciding to try
watercolor (a very difficult medium) because it looked easy, then discovering
it is more difficult than you thought.
Well, good technical photography technique, including after the exposure, takes
time, good tools and practice, too.
4. A cheap, old computer and second rate software are like cheap art supplies
and tools. You can draw, paint, sculpt
with them, but it's more difficult, and likely avails less success.
Unfortunately, the situation is even worse of
nature/landscape photography. It's like a temporary darkroom in a closet in
film days, with a cheap enlarging lens. You
can print stuff, but it's hard work, takes too much time and effort and is
generally not as good as one would like.
I don't recall what your computer set-up is now. I do recall you talking about
something far less than what you need.
You don't need bleeding edge, but you don't need something at least middle of
the contemporary road.
5. Through only a partial fault of your own, you have a camera that is below
average in dynamic range and particularly
prone to highlight blow out. Ignoring brand loyalty in favor of careful
research would have revealed the problems to come.
In any case, it's also unfortunately true that Oly Viewer 2 doesn't do anything
to recover highlights. I've tried it
with the same images against Adobe's Raw converter (ACR) on E-PL1 and E-M5
files. ACR is FAR, FAR superior for
handling/recovering highlights. You don't have to pay for PS, the same ACR is
in LightRoom, for much less, and even in
Photoshop Elements (PSE), for even less - perhaps less full featured, but at
least 16 bit. And PSE is a more more
capable editor than FastStone, too, with 16 bit support for basic editing.
6. Finally, as hinted above, the E-3 is not particularly good at wide dynamic
range subjects, which very many of yours
are. Unfortunate, but just what is. If you want to understand more of why, even
more of why ISO is a rubbery number and
why a good Raw converter is crucial, read this.
<http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2012/10/raw-is-not-raw.html>
If it gets too technical later, at least look at the first graph. The E-3 is a
lot like the E-P1, the curve shooting up
sharply until it goes BANG against the top, clipping highlights. This quote
from Ctein's review talks to the practical
result of the softer shoulder of the E-M5's curve.
"The OM-D has an excellent 12-stop (give or take) exposure range, with a
very attractive roll-off in the
characteristic curve highlights
<http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2012/10/raw-is-not-raw.html>.
... In Figure 1 the
direct reflections of the sun in the glass of the greenhouse and the cars
of the Ferris wheel are far beyond the
exposure range of any medium, silver or silicon, but they fade out
gracefully without looking artificially clipped."
He also echoes couple of things I spoke of above. This is a recognized
technical expert who has made his living for
decades with photography.
"That's Raw of course, but I only do Raw photography, so that's all I'm
gonna be writing about in these two posts.
... Still, given the uncontrolled lighting situations I photograph under,
there are often times when I want to
bracket exposures to hedge my bets or to be able to merge frames later for
an extended exposure range."
I don't want to take away from you joy in presenting a series of images to the
public successfully. But I do want to
make what I hope will be some constructive criticism of their technical
aspects, particularly regarding exposure. You've
got a good eye for landscape, flowers still life, etc., but you could do a
better technical job of capturing them.
So here, buried in a long post, are some comments on your Pecha Kucha
presentation images, focusing on the above issues.
There are visual illustrations of many comments here.
<http://galleries.moosemystic.net/MooseFoto/index.php?gallery=Others/Brian_Swale>
1. *North Hagley Park trees.* I've commented on this before. Blown highlights
in the foliage and grass. There's just
something wrong in the mid tones. They don't have the strong local contrast I
actually see in this kind of light. Flip
to it from other images. Doesn't it look flat? And oddly unsaturated, in spite
of the foliage color? Possibly the result
of pulling up shadows in a simple editor?
2. Rose. Perfect!
3. Street scene. This is nicely exposed and processed. In spite of the wide
dynamic range, the cloud looks fine and
shadows hold most details. There are a few spots of blown highlights, but it's
a good example of how natural that looks
when they are small and widely separated. It's large areas that are trouble.
4. *There is the road itself.* Badly clipped cloud detail. The clouds have a
yellow tint, especially around the edges.
I'm guessing that is an artifact of uneven channel clipping. There is a small
amount of black clipping, but as small,
scattered points, it isn't obvious. Significantly less exposure would probably
look great after lifting the shadows a
little. Bracket!!
5. *Mount Cook over Lake Pukaki.* Wonderful! The contrast compression effect
of long distance shots has brought the DR
right in to the camera's range. I could see it also with a bit of LCE in the
mountains but it's great as it is.
6. *Cluden Hill*. Absolutely beautiful light, marred by the wildly overexposed
upper right. Same problem as #4, but more
of a shame, as subject, light, composition and the crocodile in the clouds are
so nice.
7. *Clyde cemetery. *Good subject and light. Good exposure. The E-3 seems to be
doing a good job without large expanses
of brightness. Do you use it with only the central spot for exposure? I'd think
ESP exposure (or whatever they call it
now) would do a better job on all those blown skies. The original ESP on the
OMPC does a better job.
Something about the long branch reaching out reminds me of St. Ansel's famous
shot of the Sentinel Dome Jeffery Pine.
8. *Young Lane.* Man, that's beautiful! And yet, it could be a little better.
Some of the leaves in the foreground have
gone white from clipping. - 1/3 or -2/3 EV would look a little better. Shot in
Raw and processed in ACR would also
probably fix it.
Or crop to 35 mm proportions, losing the very bottom. Actually, I think that
tightens up the composition and makes it
stronger. Still some blown leaves, but not as many.
9. *towards Waikerikeri Valley Road*. There went the sky again, no detail but
yellowish bits. Nice composition. The flat
light means it could use a little punch added.
10. *Clyde Dam. *Look! You can do it! This is a high dynamic range subject,
perfectly exposed, sacrificing a tiny bit of
shadow detail for perfect highlights and mid tones. Whatever you did here,
expose other landscapes the same way. (And
bracket, at least as you learn how to do this regularly!)
11. *absolute size of the dam.* Moderate DR, and exposure if fine. Doesn't do
much for me, though. I think a more
vertical crop is stronger. The water in the shade could use some help, too.
12 & 13. Lake landscapes. I encounter a number of natural subjects that just
knock me out in person, but seem to defy
capture in an image that conveys what I saw. some, I think I will never capture
to my satisfaction, but I keep trying.
These seem to be in a less difficult category. I imagine they are just lovely
in person. To me, on my screen, the are
just kind of blah. That's where a quality editor and some skill with it can
help.
14. Composed at an angle. If there was such a convention, St. Ansel killed it
off with his famous images of the winding
Snake River, river below the Tetons and elsewhere. Very nicely composed. A
little less exposure would have helped the
upper right.
15. Mirrored reflection. Great subject and composition. Blown highlights in the
sky. Stepped tonal transitions in the
water, rather than smooth, the result of 8 bit editing and/or over compression
of the JPEG.
16. Brutal enduring cliffs. Somehow, I imagine that in this direct light, there
would be more contrast in those
interesting surfaces. Lots of interesting imaginary creatures and faces to be
seen in the rock!
17. Brutal enduring cliffs. Well here's turnabout, and a possible lesson. The
sky is properly exposed, but the bright
rocks on the left are badly blown out. can be improved a great deal, but will
never be technically first rate without
Raw and negative exposure compensation.
18. Italian Gully. Nicely composed and exposed. No real DR challenges.
19. Lake landscape. Nice view! A good example of sacrificing shadow detail for
the more important highlights. As
outlined above, both can be captured at once, with the right technique and
equipment/software.
20. Favorite Hill. A tough one. As taken/presented, highlights are blown AND
shadow detail is poor. The shadows can be
brought up a little. Only solutions for the sky are to make it all blue or
graft one on.
D. R. Moose
--
What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
--
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