Post Your Cool Pic Here! / General Chatting / Forums

Forums

4hv.org :: Forums :: General Chatting

« Previous topic | Next topic »

Post Your Cool Pic Here!

first previous 12 13 14 15 next last

Move Thread

LAN_403

Reaching

Sun Jun 04 2006, 07:48PM

Registered Member #76 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 10:04AM
Location: Hemer, Germany
Posts: 458

all you need is time and strong nerves. i couldnt sleep at this night and i decided to try to catch a lightning bolt. i was sitting about 2 hours on our window with an exposure time of 2 seconds and series pic function. i took around 200pics to get this one,never thought that it would be so great.. call it luck

Steve Conner

Sun Jun 04 2006, 10:43PM

Registered Member #30 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706

Wow, that is a neat sunrise photo, wumpus

I like how you type sun[rises|sets], it saves typing, but kind of takes the romance out of it.

This is a sunset seen from the top floor of a building in Glasgow city centre.

The Wumpus

Mon Jun 05 2006, 12:20AM

Registered Member #325 Joined: Fri Mar 17 2006, 12:42AM
Location: Turku, Finland
Posts: 55

Very nice. However, two things you could try out to turn it into a really cracking shot:

Crop out the three chimneys and some of the sky so that the church tower is in the golden ratio both horizontally and vertically.
Clone out the flare spot.

Bjørn

Mon Jun 05 2006, 06:20AM

Registered Member #27 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 02:20AM
Location: Hyperborea
Posts: 2058

The ideas are good but you always stand the risk of ending up with a dead picture that no one dislikes and no one loves.

Steve Conner

Mon Jun 05 2006, 08:43AM

Registered Member #30 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706

What I like about the picture is all the detail and aerial perspective, that you can't see in a thumbnail. I uploaded the full size pic just as it came out of the camera. I guess if I cropped a little off the left-hand side, it would make the sun, the church tower, and the three chimneys into a more even composition without throwing away too much nice detail. And that would get rid of the flare spot too.

Better still, if the picture ended up square, I could pretend I had a Hasselblad.

I think the monitor I use at home has a different gamma or something, the picture looks very dark on this computer here. If I had been using old-fashioned B&W film, I would have dodged the bottom half when making the print. The exposure I used was a compromise between getting the sky burnt out and the city completely black. But now I know more about how digicams work, I realise that compromise has more to do with the limited dynamic range of the JPEG files than the camera itself.

Does anyone here shoot in RAW format and adjust the dynamic range later? Is there software that lets you reduce the dynamic range by dodging and burning like you do when printing a black and white negative? I know Photoshop does dodging and burning, but can it use the full 16 bits per colour that you get from modern digicams?

Bjørn

Mon Jun 05 2006, 09:32AM

Registered Member #27 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 02:20AM
Location: Hyperborea
Posts: 2058

Does anyone here shoot in RAW format and adjust the dynamic range later? Is there software that lets you reduce the dynamic range by dodging and burning like you do when printing a black and white negative? I know Photoshop does dodging and burning, but can it use the full 16 bits per colour that you get from modern digicams?

I always let the camera shoot in RAW+JPEG. I usually use the JPEG files since they are much faster and simpler to work with and often they are like I want them to be. I keep the RAW files as you would keep a negative for possible future use. Pictures taken in difficult lighting or with very delicate colour ranges often benefits a lot from RAW and careful post processing.

Photoshop handles 16 bit per colour very well so there is no problem working with RAW files. Most cameras only deliver 12 bit but that is rarely a problem.

The Wumpus

Mon Jun 05 2006, 02:42PM

Registered Member #325 Joined: Fri Mar 17 2006, 12:42AM
Location: Turku, Finland
Posts: 55

I usually use the following techniques which gives good results in most cases:

Shoot in RAW to get the full dynamic range.
Import into Photoshop with a good converter and check that the contrast setting is not too high.
When postprocessing, work in 16 bits/channel and use the levels or (preferably) curves tools to ajdust the contrast so that the darkest pixel is mapped to (0,0,0) and the brightest pixel is mapped to (255,255,255). Do this in a colorspace with a reasonable gamut (e.g. Adobe RGB). For simplicity it might be worth trying the "Auto contrast" tool, but sometimes it can throw off the color balance.
Adjust saturation to taste, e.g. + for landscape and - for portraits.

It pays to use adjustment layers so you can tweak the settings without introducing quantization errors (histogram banding).

BTW, a good technique for landscapes is too take two or three bracketed exposures and blend them together in PhotoShop using layers and the gradient tool. Basically like a ND-grad filter only more flexible.

Dr. Drone

Wed Jun 07 2006, 01:18AM

Registered Member #290 Joined: Mon Mar 06 2006, 08:24PM
Location:
Posts: 1673

Part Scavenger

Wed Jun 07 2006, 02:27AM

Registered Member #79 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 11:35AM
Location: Arkansas
Posts: 673

Wow! Do you get lightning from those?

Desmogod

Wed Jun 07 2006, 03:26AM

Registered Member #139 Joined: Sat Feb 11 2006, 11:01AM
Location: Perth, Western Australia
Posts: 358

Lightning, oh yes, and LOTS of it.
I saw a fair few up in NW Aus when I lived there.
The temperature drops dramatically, like 10-15 degrees C, then it just rolls in.
I'll look for some pics.

first previous 12 13 14 15 next last

Moderator(s): Chris Russell, Noelle, Alex, Tesladownunder, Dave Marshall, Dave Billington, Bjørn, Steve Conner, Wolfram, Kizmo, Mads Barnkob