This photo opportunity was enabled by the scaffolding currently around the rear of our house This allowed me to climb onto our new flat dormer roof (part of our loft conversion) and set up a tripod to capture the sunset. I took three bracketed exposures (-2,0, +2 EV) and then merged them in Photomatix to create an HDR image.... with which I'm very pleased.
I don't do HDR very much and some of the examples I've seen give HDR a bad reputation as very over processed, I especially don't like the halo effects around high contrast edges. With a little bit of effort these downsides are avoidable.
A little part of the web for me to talk about Photography, what I'm up to, share experiments, recent shots, hints and tips. To share my (limited) experience with others and to gain further skills myself.
Showing posts with label clouds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label clouds. Show all posts
Monday, October 18, 2010
Friday, January 29, 2010
Air Force Memorial meets new Recruit ND110 Filter
It's been crazy busy at work (and play) and has therefore been a while since I blogged. I've missed the therapy of writing stuff down.
Anyhow, this is currently my best shot with my new toy. I got me a B&W ND110 filter and i'm sure I'm going to love it.
Inspiration for getting this came from some of my flickr contacts the the great shots they're produced with it. It basically reduces the light by 10 stops so there is 1000 less times light reaching the sensor. It's so dark it's almost black to look through, so dark that autofocus and metering don't work. You need to set the shot up, focus, take a meter reading and then screw the filter on. Switch to manual focus and bulb mode and leave the shutter open for the amount of time you calculate (+10 stops + a bit for good measure) based off of the original meter reading.
This is the same shot of the Airforce memorial in Englefield Green as the others in this set www.flickr.com/photos/marklandon/sets/72157623151244607/ but with processing done in Photoshop after the basic RAW conversion in Lightroom. (the others were just lightroom)
So we start with a 5 minute exposure using an ND110 filter to give the streaked clouds. Basic raw conversion in LR, import to Photoshop, a bit of healing to remove a few dust spots, noise reduction, conversion to mono using a gradient map, convert to grayscale from RGB then change to duotone and apply a quadtone (richer B&W's) (tutorial from Scott Kelby) . I think I then did a curves adjustment layer to fine tune contrast then convert back to LAB colour and then a large amount of unsharpmask shapening on the lightness only channel which avoids halo's and artefacts. the Original shots for comparison can be seen below. I think I much prefer the richness and sharpness of this one.
Anyhow, this is currently my best shot with my new toy. I got me a B&W ND110 filter and i'm sure I'm going to love it.
Inspiration for getting this came from some of my flickr contacts the the great shots they're produced with it. It basically reduces the light by 10 stops so there is 1000 less times light reaching the sensor. It's so dark it's almost black to look through, so dark that autofocus and metering don't work. You need to set the shot up, focus, take a meter reading and then screw the filter on. Switch to manual focus and bulb mode and leave the shutter open for the amount of time you calculate (+10 stops + a bit for good measure) based off of the original meter reading.
This is the same shot of the Airforce memorial in Englefield Green as the others in this set www.flickr.com/photos/marklandon/sets/72157623151244607/ but with processing done in Photoshop after the basic RAW conversion in Lightroom. (the others were just lightroom)
So we start with a 5 minute exposure using an ND110 filter to give the streaked clouds. Basic raw conversion in LR, import to Photoshop, a bit of healing to remove a few dust spots, noise reduction, conversion to mono using a gradient map, convert to grayscale from RGB then change to duotone and apply a quadtone (richer B&W's) (tutorial from Scott Kelby) . I think I then did a curves adjustment layer to fine tune contrast then convert back to LAB colour and then a large amount of unsharpmask shapening on the lightness only channel which avoids halo's and artefacts. the Original shots for comparison can be seen below. I think I much prefer the richness and sharpness of this one.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)