Trinity Church

This is the famous Trinity Church in Boston (by Henry Hobson Richardson). Stunning

architecture and decoration, extreme wide exposure range. Perfect for HDR. Please give

your comments.

Clever to taken very nice visual angle, incredible control on exposure & crisp details, vivid colors, Dennis, another great piece!!! Best regards

Dennis, as much as HDR is not my favorite, it looks great here, The angle is great, colors are vivid, light is beautiful, and the whole is very interesting.My nit is the washed out light on the R window, it disturbs a bit, otherwose it is a pearl! I hope you can correct it somehow.

... and Pnina, it is interesting that the white window lower right is not actually blown out at all, in fact you can see the detail of the exterior through the window. Unfortunately, it is the only window in the entire church that is actually clear glass, which I believe was set there temporarily because of some outside construction. Here is the shot showing the window exposures so you can see where it came from.

and I was in love with the great E.V. range of Tri-X. That's all over now, and I miss being able to 'guess' exposures and, if wrong, be able to 'work with' the negative to rescue all the information (in B&W at least).

 

Soon, Dennis, instead of having to set up a tripod and take multiple exposures to get a shot such as this, I understand you'll be able to just point and shoot (or so my thoughts suggest after advances I foresee in sensor technology)

 

Is that really possible in the near future?

 

Or just the stuff of pipe dreams?

 

You're a professional photography futurist . . . can you tell me what the future of HDR is going to be in four years or sooner?

 

I'm anxious to know.

 

I have expensive and worthy cameras, but if something new is coming out soon that will do HDR (with minimal digital noise) in one exposure, I'd like to know about it.

 

It might transform certain parts of my photography and open up new vistas in genres where I'm already strong.

 

Outside of a Nikon or Canon engineer (or maybe Fuji, which seems to have a niche in sensor technology to themselves), you're the only person I know of who can make even an educated guess.

 

So, Mr. Expert, what lies in the near future for photography -- especially HDR images?

 

And will you be posting as you move around France?

 

John (Crosley)

... professional photography futurist? Come now. I'm a long way from the days when I was seriously involved in this stuff. There is, however, a camera that does this already. Edward Horn, a PN photog from Boston, sent me this note when I asked about one of his shots: "The trick is that my camera (Fuji S5) takes a 6 1/2 stop HDR image right out of the lens. The damned this is that you have to trick photoshop into using it as HDR. Very frustrating. This was done in CS2. CS3 handles the colors much better." I've done a bit of research, but haven't come to the conclusion that it is really much of an advancement over a good camera.

 

However, the other issue is that I like the craftsmanship of the HDR, the exposing for the different elements, and then putting it all together. The process of tone-mapping is really where the rubber meets the road. It is where you get "hyper-realistic" images to the non-realistic (if you want to see someone who revels in the colors of HDR, see the work of Yinka Oyelese) to the realistic. Since I'm interested in reproducing something of the visual effect of the actually seeing the location (churches, primarily), I look to do the tonemapping to get the most natural effect. To see the best examples of this that I've seen, you should look at the work of Theo Jacobs and MG Lizi.

 

Because of this, I would not probably have much to do with any automated HDR process, although I can see places where it would help. It would be like standardized "development" of images in Lightroom.

 

Sorry, John, but once again there is little that I can offer you in the way of technical help. You're far beyond needing my help. As for posting while I'm in France, that all depends on how much access I can get to the internet. I will be processing shots continuously, of course, and would hope to post about five or six shots a week. Thanks for the note.

Thanks Dennis, for explaining it to me and showing the example.

Wonderful details, beautiful light and colors, holds my interest for a long while. The HDR is still slightly noticeable, the upper windows are a wee bit overcorrected IMO. The old HDR disease. Brighter, the windows would look more natural. Not a major issue of course

 

Cheers

 

Carsten

Immaculate work!!!!!!!!! Regards.

Exceptional work. The colors are so incredibly rich, as if lifted from an oil painting. Luminous! The angles make for great composition as well.

... thanks so much for your comments. I am actually proud of this shot because it was my first session where I planned to do HDR and this image was, in my opinion, the most productive. Trinity Church is difficult to capture, precisely because of the colors and the contrasts and the windows. This shot actually captured what Trinity is like, as I am sure you know, Jeff. Sorry I missed you when you were roughing it down on Cape Cod. Hope your Mom sent you money!

Simply awesome colors, Dennis. You nailed it here.

... that you wandered deep enough into my portfolio to find this shot. It is my favorite in the Trinity Church and the first shot where I realized what could really be accomplished on my part using HDR for my church photographs. I appreciate your kind words very much.

...Great to see your latest HDR pics of Trinity - it really is a challenging church to photograph. We swapped notes a couple of months ago about HDR here and since then I have been experimenting a little more. I seem to get my best results by starting exposures at +1 stop and then taking succesive shots decreasing the exposure one stop at a time until the highlights stop flashing on the review screen(Canon). Sometimes it takes -5 stops (7 stop range) to keep the highlights in check. Also, the HDR conversion process (CS3) does seem to over saturate the colors and I think you might improve this picture (as I might my own first attempts) by desaturating the color a little. Next time I am in Boston, I will definitely bring my tripod and have another go! I have not tried anything other than CS3 for HDR, is it the best for the natural HDR look?

Cheers, RickDB

... this was my first HDR experiment, about a year ago. We went to Trinity with the express purpose of trying it out. I haven't used CS3 for the HDR yet, but have been working with Photomatix, trying to master the nuance of that. As far as some of the work I've done, I often do eight or nine stops, but that is primarily because the churches have such subtle variations of light. Looking forward to seeing what you'll do there at Trinity. As you said, it is challenging to shoot there.

 

As for the desaturation, perhaps on the others images I would, but this one I found to be quite accurate. In fact, it was the first HDR where I felt that I hit the naturalistic look I was going for.