alt.street Big Sur II

Big Sur II, looking North in remote Big Sur, Monterey County,

California during an overcast sundown. Your ratings and critiques

are invited and most welcome. If you rate harshly or very

critically, please submit a helpful and constructive comment/Please

share your superior knowledge to help improve my photography.

Thanks! Enjoy! John

Part of the beauty of this shot is due to the use of the shadow/highlight tool in Photoshop. The so-called split neutral density filter no longer has much applicability if one uses a D200 with its sensor which has great sensitivity -- beyond the ability visually to reproduce all the exposure values (EVs) in a scene, (much like film with great latitude) I believe, and the shadow/highlight tool (Image > Adjust Image > Shadow/Highlight) in Photoshop, and adjusting the sliders to minimize the highlights and bring out the shadows, to taste, gives a more accurate representation of the feel and mood of a place like this.

Nothing can approximate truly what the eye sees -- the eye for instance constantly adjusts white balance, is truly panoramic (unless you have tunnel vision) and so forth, so 'rules' about imitating what the eye sees are so much bunkum, although trying to relate to reality has some sense. For instance, if there were a purple cast to this, one would spot the flaw immediately.

But the split neutral density filter has been a maintstay of the landscape or still life outdoor photographer photographing scenees with much brightness, (say in the sky, as here, and darkness below, also as here) and often the range of Exposures Values (range of brightness to darkness) exceeded the range of a digital sensor, leaving either the shadows murky or the highlights 'blown'.

Photoshop has a way using conversion to 'LAB' view to merge two images (almost always digital captures), one image slightly underexposed and one slightly overexposed, to mimic the effects of film and thus recreate an image with great range of EVs, but that in effect is a replacement for a digital sensor that has a limited range of capturing EVs.

That method has a place where part of a scene is in sunlight and another is in shadow, but for a D200, not a scene like this, even though this sky really was quite bright, as are all daylight skies, except during violent storms.

A deficiency of using the 'LAB' view and merging images is they must be identical images and that requires using a tripod, while this method (shadow/highlight tool) does not require using a tripod at all.

I have found that the D200 sensor seems to have the greatest range of any camera I have used (D2X, D70, D2H, D2Hs, of the Nikon line, and if one attempts to bring out detail in what appears to be shadow or darknesss in a D200 image, frequently one can be successful, with a minimum of digital 'noise' and even that can be minimized by 'noise filters' and low ISO shooting (Nikon has at least two built-in 'noise' filters that I leave 'on' all the time for since I shoot at high ISO so very frequently.

So, the sky, here, has had the highlight filter (the entire image actually) applied, the 'shadow' filter also was applied to the entire image, though barely, and the repressentation here is about what I remember the scene to have been in actuality and in mood.

Further, if I were to convert this to B&W, it would appear much more as a scene shot through a 'red filter' I think, with the detail in the clouds, much as a 'red filter' shot does, and in writing about it, I have convinced myself to do just that soon enough just to test that theory.

The colors here turned out spectacularly well, also, in part because the camera was on a 'vivid' setting but at low ISO, and that is partly because of the low tonal separation which gave little chance for the 'highlights' of the colors to show brightly and to stand out much before the onset of the next color or the plant next to it -- these being small plants.

The effect appears to be to make these small, typical coastal ground cover plants to appear a little jewel-like. I recommend these settings and this method for a 'woodsy' scene or a scene such as this, in which the foreground foliage, say, has highlights, (see right) which might be interesting in themselves or be ignored.

It also helps that this was taken, stopped for maximum sharpness with the very sharp Nikkor 12~24 Nikkor DX zoom lens (digital cameras only, at about a 12 mm setting, me almost hanging over this cliff.

(I write this because there are so very few on Photo.net who write about the 'how' of their work, though they post spectacular work, as though it were a great big secret, or they're incapable of (or don't recognize the importance of) communicating for the many members who would like to create wonderful images.

I haven't done many landscapes, largely because so many on this site do them so well, and they're almost 'common' being stock in trade for so many who live in the windswept plains and in the mountains where there's little else to photograph.

But I also live in an area of spectacular beauty, chronicled by Ansel Adams, Edward, Cole, and Brett Weston, and others, using their huge view cameras and trying to emulate their work (or compete with it) using a 35 mm until lately, or even anything less than a 2-1/4 square camera seemed futile, until now.

Now, with 10.2 and 12.2 megapixel cameras 'affordable' for advanced photographers, and stunning reproduction available and ink-jet printing just having exceeded anything available in any 'lab' (just now for the first time with the latest Epson printer), anyone can produce spectacular prints at home without ever going to a photofinisher or opening a 'wet lab'. (a boon for allergic guys like me, and also sure to save many marriages and keep black paint from sullying many bathrooms.)

I have awaited a digital sensor with great 'range' of sensitivity, to capture exposure values (EVs) beyong the ordinary 'range', and it seems the D200 has made a great stride in that direction. In the future, I will be taking such shots with my D200s, instead of my D2Xs just for that reason.

John (Crosley)

Interesting reading, John! You put a lot of thought and work into your photo to get it to show so well.

Have you tried shooting in RAW? (Or are you already?) The fact that you talk about using in-camera noise filters (etc) leads me to believe that you don't, as such processing doesn't save to RAW files to the best of my knowledge. Anyway, given that you choose to be so careful about your final image, I think you'd love the extra control of using RAW. For one thing, the RAW file should have even more latitude than a jpg.

Another question... you talk about Photoshop's lab view merge. I'm not very knowledgeable about PS. Is that the same as the HDR feature I've heard of?

I leave my cameras on with JPG, large, fine with optimum compression as a default since I shoot so much.

For landscapes such as this, in which I may take several views, however, experience such as this, is showing me I may be well advised also to take a NEF (raw) exposure as well.

I am unsure abou the relationship of the LAB merge and the other view you mention (HDR merge in photoshop) or whether they are the same thing, as I am only marginally familiar with them, though on my way to learning.

I haven't always taken such great care, but this was a marginally-good image that had potential, and with some good work it became more than passable, and in fact quite good, I think. I'd pretty proud of it, as I think it is as good as the scene can be portrayed.

Usually I'm a shoot and scoot kind of guy, but for landscapes, there's little reason for that, and 'merging' images may be the key.

I'm probably going to go for a drive in a while and take some landscapes, and I'll take your advice about shooting 'RAW'--NEF for some of those views with some 'range'. I haven't shot 'raw' because I have very much liked the in-camera processing so far -- it's generally been superb for my 'street' style of shooting and for general subjects.

For landscapes, however, I think 'raw' is worth a try, despite the extra very large memory required. (I bought 2 gig Sandisk Ultra II chips yesterday for $89.00 on sale and have 25 hard drives -- all full, and they're getting cheaper -- and I'm copying all drives to DVDs)

By the way, don't confuse one type of 'merging' with another -- one merge is to create panoramas from photos with overlapping scene edges, another is to create photos with overlapping dynamic range from a single identical scene, using the LAB conversion. See David Cardinale's Digital Shooter, or some such archives -- use Google to find it. It's a good reference.

John (with thanks Peter)