Eddie's turn

Often with a 500mm lens a moving person or object more than fills a frame. Such was the case with this surfer, eddie, as he approached the pier where I was photographing him.

It was early June. The days were long, the water warm and the waves were really holding up late in the day. This series of shots was taken just before sunset and were quite dark as I shot them at 1/500 of a second. This speed is necessary as these young surfers change directions so quickly they'd be a blur at slower shutter speed.

Eddie was well into a nice long ride when he began to whip back and forth, up and down the face of the wave.



His next move was to turn back down. His centrifugal force left him parallel with the water's surface.



He finished off his turn, straightened up and filled the frame as shown the top of this post.

I used Lightroom to generate 2 brighter exposures and one darker one. I was limited as I was ending with shots that were 2 stops too dark so my HDR had to have a light boost. I used the exposure command to add 2ev 4ev and -2ev to the orginal shot. One the brighter images I turned up the noise suppression in Lightroom as it is superior to Photomatix or Photoshops noise filters.

I used the Photomatix plugin to generate the HDR from the 4 exposures as this dumps the TIF temp files when the HDR is made. I used detail enhancement with only a few options adjusted to tonemap the image.

I saved it as a 16 bit TIF which I took into photoshop to edit. Generally I shift the histogram toward the middle using whatever image adjustment options I can until I get a decent Bell curve. The result is what you see here.

Mariners Village with a faked Orton

Mariners Village 8832 Orton, originally uploaded by brookville.

Every year the landscape architect at Mariner's Village does a new arrangement for the entrance. I took this shot just to the right of the entrance at Captain's Row.

I first did an HDR with the 3 exposures I took at +/-2 and 0ev. I used photomatix to generate the HDR and tonemap it. I pushed the gamma a little bit in photomatix also because even reducing light smoothing, I was still getting a dark image. My exposures had good histograms but it was an overcast day.

The HDR looked like this:



I took the photomatix output into Photoshop where I further adjusted the exposure.

I then copied the steps from a Michael Orton suggestion on his website and in his book. I started by duplicating the layer twice. I changed the blending mode to Screen on the top layer and merged down with the next layer.

I duplicated the resulting layer again and this time I Gaussian blurred it until the major shapes were there but it was really very much softened. I changed the blending mode of this layer to Multiply.

I used an image adjustment layer with the curves option and played around with the curves a little bit before just settling on the results of "auto."

I then flattened the image to what you see at the top of this post. There are lots of ways to adjust along the way including the radius of the Gaussian blur and the curve adjustment step. Of course you can do anything you want at this point but I was sticking to what I saw in his method of making an "Orton Sandwich."

The 0EV exposure can be seen here:

HDR and Monopods

reef plantwall 0272, originally uploaded by brookville.

Reef Street contains a wall of plants on the north side between Pacific and Speedway. I wanted to see if I could get the detail clear as there was only a slight breeze.

I was shooting with the camera mounted on a monopod which is really better suited for sports photography rather than HDR. Unless it's planted into some dirt, it's too easy to tilt it and this of course creates alignment problems at HDR creation time.

It as just an experiment but I learned it's not the way to go. Surf Photography - Yes - a monopod is a nice tool. HDR - No.

I only ended up with 4 exposures I could use ranging from -4 through +2 which of course made the image gamma a little darker than I wanted.

I used CHDK's autobracketing function and noticed some problems there too. So I once again updated my CHDK firmware operating system after this series of shots.

CHDK - HDR - Still learning.

Oh I did tonemap in Photomatix including popping the gamma back up to where it should have been to begin with.

lighthouse 0081

lighthouse 0081, originally uploaded by brookville.

I took this group of shots 10-15 minutes before sunset in between the rains February 5, 2009. I originally shot about 7 or 8 as I recall using CHDK's hacked autobracket option for the Canon G7. It autobrackets and increases and decreases the exposure in the interval set up in the CHDK menu. I set the interval to 2 stops which means on the third interation I am now at +6 and -6 or way past what is necessary. My last two shots were all black and all white. I kept the first 4.

The colors were bouncing off the water creating all sorts of colored light patterns in the clouds. I hadn't intended to take pictures as I was just going to the corner for drinking water. I couldn't pass this up and was stopping on every street. There was no post on this street so I had to brace the camera against my stomache. It's hard to stand still and not breathe while the autobracket sequence continues to change on each shot.

I made tht HDR from the 4 handheld exposures I kept. They were in JPG format, though the Canon G7 hacked with CHDK willl do RAW files. I wasn't prepared and didn't have it set and didn't know until I got home, so this entire set was made from multiple jpg's. Not optimal I know but it still worked.

Tonemapping in Photomatix and Photoshop. The colors were there in the street for the original shot though. Great time of day.

HDR PANORAMA

I shoot a lot of pictures in the marina. The community along the north side of the marina harbor really was fashioned after one of Paolo Soleri's arcologies. As for Paolo Soleri and his politics, that is a discussion for another person's blog. I took these shots for the look of this seaside architecture.

I originally took several autobracketing sequences in each of four overlapping directions. I do my sorting and picking in Lightroom. It allows me to separate into collections the groups of images I will pick my HDR assemblies from. Initially I narrowed it down to 22 pictures in four groups. I had 6 for the left, 5 for left center, 5 for for right center, and 6 for the far right. In Lightroom I also reduce the noise where needed, and make sure I have all the white balances equal. Lightroom outputs 16 bit Tiff's as temp files until the HDR is created. It then automatically cleans those up for you.

Ideally I should have an equal number shots in each group with the EV'S spanning the same range. The shot on the right also contained a fence and walkway where I was shooting from. It didn't add anything to the picture so I didn't use the far right's group of photos.

The final panorama of the north marina harbor shown here is made from 16 shots I kept. The HDR's were first generated for 3 overlapping images (6 exposures,5 exposures,5 exposures left to right as I wrote above.) The resulting HDR's were tonemapped in Photomatix and photomerged into a panorama in Photoshop. The automation in photoshop didn't require any editing. I did adjust the levels and reduced the noise a little further to make a cleaner shot.

Though the left foreground was beginning to be shaded by the Marriott hotel and other buildings, for the most part I had good light. HDR allowed to the shaded part to be more clearly seen.

I already have a wider sequence of the panorama south of the Manhattan Beach pier which I will be working on later if this one goes well.

HDR for broad range single shots

The original shot done on the run is here:




Here's another shot in which the foreground was too dark before making an HDR out of it. I was in the Manhattan Village Parking Lot a few minutes after sundown on November 22, 2008. Sometimes the number of stops in an image requires HDR to view the full range. I had to be somewhere so I didn't have time to set up and shoot it for an HDR. It was just one of those see it, shoot it, and run shots. The sunset was too good to pass up. I always shoot in RAW format which gives me 12 bits at least in each channel making it a MDR or medium dynamic range photo.

I used 5 exposures which I generated in Lightroom. I do this so I can control the noise on each exposure. I have tried this in Photomatix but the noise removal in that program doesn't even remotely compare. I also make sure the Black levels are off (set to 0) as it eliminates white and black dots caused by color peaking. Other than noise and black level adjustments, I set my exposures here on single image RAW files. Generally this is all I do in Lightroom although there are exceptions to that statement which I'll explain in another post with another image. I believe I did use Lightroom to crop it too.

I did tonemap it in Photomatix. To get to Photomatx I used Lightroom's plugin which creates temporary 16 bit TIFFs with Lightroom's edits. Photomatix then in turn will generate an HDR after it determines what exposures you want there. I simply use the values in set in Lightroom (generally 0, +/- 2, +/-4) as Photomatix makes its own guess. I haven't compared the two yet but I will. I used photoshop for a final tuneup which usually involves using the image adjustment levels command and if necessary noise reduction.

Though not a true HDR, I think you'll see that turning an MDR image into a 32 bit per channel radiance file, and then processing like an HDR gets more out of a picture when the original picture range has more than 5 stops.

As I've written below there already is a very large debate on what a High Dynamic Range is and isn't so I won't try to to get into that discussion here. You may read more about that subject if you like at:

Mixmaster's HDR discussion

I believe he provides links with more information as well.

Hand held point and shoot HDR

About 20 minutes after sundown I stopped to reshoot an HDR I had done badly the night before on a walk street in Marina Del Rey. I used a Canon G7 hacked with CHDK. It autobrackets and increases and decreases the exposure in the interval set up in the CHDK menu. I realize the G7 will autobracket exposures for 3 shots up to +2 and -2 but CHDK allows me to set larger intervals and the increase and decrease is NOT limited to 2 stops.

I had a little trouble with the hand held part the night before and Photomatix, Artizen and Photoshop did poorly with my poor alignment effort. So I used a post tonight. However the post was flimsy and I didn't fare much better. Photomatix couldn't generate a decent HDR with the 5 frames, but Photoshop did.

I took the photshop result back into Photomatix and tonemapped it there. I like the street and I should redo it with a tripod.

BROOKVILLE ON THE LEFT COAST

I was dashing to the corner in between the rains with my ancient point and shoot G7 not really expecting the sun to pop through the clouds the way it did. The street as you can see was flooded as was part of the walk street I shot this at. It made a nice reflective surface.

I didn't expect to do an HDR shoot when all I went out for was drinking water. There happened to be a couple of short posts at the end of the walk street to keep cars off the sidewalk. I used one to steady the camera. CHDK's latest compile has a bracketing option that allows you to shoot continuously and with each shot in a set, raises or lowers the exposure by the stops you specify. It also adds RAW files to the point and shoot but in this case I forgot to set it and ended up with 5 jpegs. Like I wrote above I really wasn't prepared for this.

I stopped a few more times on the way to the corner. In most cases there were 5-6 pictures taken. More walk streets to come as I process the pics I took.

Intro

I started this blog to write about some of the images I've created.

Some people have asked for more information and in the coming weeks, months etc., I'll be adding to this.

There already is a very large debate on what a High Dynamic Range is and isn't so I won't try to to get into that discussion here. You read more about that subject if you like at:

Mixmaster's HDR discussion

Please note that the above discussion is from a man who has a very strong opinion about his definition.

I don't. To me it's the finished product that you can see for yourself that counts. You either like it, you don't or it doesn't elicit any type of response.

To me, it's up to you.